UNIVERSAL LIBRARY OU_ 160802 AdVayd | I IWSdSAINA OSMANIA UNIVERSIFY LIBRARY Call No. 82 7.ώ2 Accession No. a4 LESS! 7 / ee . ae Title κε Mohr f fee on a Cf Ceenm This book should be returned on or before the date Author pve Cynran , ΓΝ ff last marked helow. WiIsTOnyY FRDERAL GOVERNMENT HISTORY OF FEDERAL GOVERNMENT IN GREECE AND ITALY BY EDWARD A, FREEMAN EDITED BY J. B. BURY, MAA. ΡΟΝ ον ππωσωσω “LELOW ° 7 WE, DUB λΤ SECOND EDITION London MACMILLAN AND CO. AND NEW YORK 1899 ‘Could the interior strueture and regular operation of the Achaian League be ascertained, it is probable that more light might be thrown by it on the science of Federal Government, than by any of the like experiments with which we are acquainted.” Tur FEDERALIST, No. xviii. First Edition, published 1863, entitled " History of Federal Government, Srom the foundation of the Achaian League to the disruption of the United States. Vol. 7. General [ntroduction—History of the Greck Federations.” PREFACE BY THE EDITOR THE first and only volume of Mr. Freeman’s [History of Federal Government appeared in 1863. Soon after its appearance he left the subject for that of the Norman Conquest, and never resumed it. 10 is much to be regretted that he did not carry out his design, at least so far as to tell the story of the Con,, federation of the Swiss Cantons, and fully discuss Swiss Federal institutions, even if he had stopped short of the United States. The most recent Swiss historian of Switzerland, Dierauer, in his Geschichte der schweizerischen bidyenossenschaft (1. p. 265), has expressed this regret. ‘ Man kann es nur Iebhaft bedauern dass der englische Historiker nicht dazu gekommen ist in einer Fortsetzung seines Werkes die (Geschichte der schweizerischen Eidgenossenschaft, den ‘angesehensten oder Ichrreichsten’ Teil seiner Aufgahe, zu bearbeiten.” But while the History of Federal Government as a whole was never completed, the first volume has all the value of a complete work. Ina letter written in 1861, in connexion with arrangements for the publication of his book, Mr. Freeman observed that even if the work were never finished “this one volume—an essay on Federalism and a history of its Greek form—-would be a substantial work in itself.” It was therefore after his death decided to reprint it as a History of Federal Government in Greece. The manuscript of an additional chapter, which was to have been the first in Volume II, and was written before the author deserted his subject, was discovered among his papers. It contains a full account of the defective forms of vi PREFACE BY THE EDITOR Federalism which have appeared in Italy, comprising the Leagues of early Italian history, and the Lombard Confederation of a later age. This discovery has enabled us to adopt the more com- prehensive title, 4 Ilistory of Federal Government in Greece and Italy. A fragment on the German Confederacy (which was to have been the beginning of Chapter XI) has been added. The present work, then, is merely a reprint of the older volume, with the addition of a new chapter on Italy, and a new fragment on Germany. The original text has not been altered, except in a few cases where positive mistakes—afterwards recognized as such by the author—had crept in. ‘The references to authorities have been revised. No additions have been made to the footnotes by the editor, except such as were indicated by Mr. Freeman himself in an interleaved copy of his work. The editor has reserved for an Appendix all observations and corrections which seemed required to bring the history of Greek Fedcralism up to date. Inscriptions have been published since the appearance of Mr. Freeman’s work, which throw considerable light on some points tin the Achaian and /Etohan Constitutions. A work of much value, though hardly marked by the lucidity of exposition which we are accustomed to expect in French writers, has been devoted to these Leagues by M. Marcel Dubois, and has been found very useful. It may be observed that M. Dubois, while his views differ in many respects from those of Mr. Freeman, fully recognizes his “ érudition irréprochable.” The only matter of importance in which Mr. Freeman’s account of the Achaian and Aftolian Federal systems needs modification is the Constitution of the Senates. We have now direct evidence that the AXtolian Senate was a body of Repre- sentatives chosen by the States. We have no such direct evidence for the Achaian Senate, but we have some distinct indications pointing in that direction, as M. Dubois has shown ; and the analogy of the Aitolian League confirms these indica- tions. On the other hand, there is not an atom of evidence See Appendix II p. 651, note to p. 262, PREFACE BY THE EDITOR Vii for Mr. Freeman’s guess that the Achaian Boulé was chosen by the Federal Assembly.* This being so, certainly for the Attohan, and probably for the Achaian Senate, a parallel and contrast may be drawn between the Federal Assemblies of these old Leagues and the Federal Assembly of modern Switzerland. The object of both the ancient and the modern Federations was to provide that hoth each State as a whole, and each citizen individually, should have a voice in the Federal Assembly. They necessarily set about accomplishing this object in very different ways, because Primary Assemblies were the rule in the age of the Greek Leagues, and Representative Assemblies are the rule in modern times. The Federal Assembly, which met at Thermon or Aigion, consisted of two parts: the Bouleutai or Senators, elected by the States, and all the Mtolian or Achaian citizens who chose to attend. So, too, the Federal Assembly which meets at Bern consists of the “Council of States,” composed of Representatives elected by the States, and the “ National Council,” composed of Representatives who are elected directly by the people in the electoral districts, into which each Canton is divided. Thus the Council of States, corresponding to the Boulé, represents the States, while the National Council is the clement which in an age of Representative Assemblies responds to the mass of citizens (πλῆθος) In an age of Primary Assemblies, Of course, the differences between the two systems are endless. The Greek system had, in particular, the advantage that un- represented minorities—even minorities of one—-could attend the Federal Assembly and speak for themselves. And it is also evident that, as the Greck Bouleutai were almost certainly elected in the Assembly of each State, a Representative of Patrai might be assumed to represent the majority of his fellow- citizens in a measure in which the member of the Council of States clected by the State Government of Bern could not be assumed to represent the opinions of the majority of the Bernese. Consequently, the citizens of the Greek Leagues often con- 1 See Appendix IT p. 643, note to p, 239. Viil PREFACE BY THE EDITOR sidered -it unnecessary to attend the Assemblies themselves, knowing that their interests were represented by the Bouleutai ; and hence the second part of the Assembly was of a very fluctuating kind. Sometimes the Assembly seems to have con- sisted altogether of the Boulé. Both the Greek method and the Swiss method resulted in dividing the Assembly into two constituent parts; but while the nature of Representative in- stitutions secures that both parts of the Swiss Assembly are permanent Chambers, under the Greek system, one part—the Representative—was permanent, while the other part fluctuated and sometimes vanished altogether. No references to contemporary events have been altered, and the reader must bear in mind that he is reading words which referred to the situation of Europe and America in 1862 and 1863. He must remember that the war between the North and the South had not yet been decided, and that two Federal Governments then existed together in America, the Confederate States and the United States. He must remember that France was in the hands of the “Emperor ” Louis Napoleon Buonaparte, and the absurd proposal of a Confederation of Italian princes with the Pope at its head—put forth “only to become the laughing-stock of Europe” (p. 75)—was then an event of a couple of years ago. Elsass and Lothringen were then French (p. 273); the Ionian islands were under English “ protection ” (p. 270). If Mr. Freeman had himself issued a new edition of his work, he would doubtless have brought the book up to date in this respect, and substituted new comments on the historical developements in Europe which have taken place since he wrote. He ventured to -foretell (p. 91) that “the United States and the Confederate States will have exchanged ambassadors before the year 1941, or even before the year 1869.” He would have had something to say on the actual issue of the war which falsified that prophecy. He speculated on the theoretical possibility of a Federal State of monarchical constitution ; he would have had some observations to make on the great mon- PREFACE BY THE EDITOR 1x archical Bundesstaat which was established in 1870, and which seems likely to last “longer than through a single generation ” (p. 75). He would have pointed out that, though Federal in form, it is not “a real Federation.” The position of Elsass and Lothringen, incorporated in the ‘‘ Empire” as Prussian depen- dencies, but not members of the Federation, is another instance of subject districts in a Federal State, and one wonders whether they will be ultimately elevated, hike Ticino, to the position of equal states. Mr. Freeman did not refer, in his Federal analogies, to the compulsory Referendum of the Swiss Constitution of 1848 ; but he would now, doubtless, have had some remarks to make on the optional Referendum introduced in 1874—that curious and ingenious attempt to find a substitute for the advantages of the Greek Ekklésia, in circumstances in which such an Ekklésia is not possible. The Referendum may be said to constitute a fourth exception (sce p. 53) to the Representative system in modern Europe and America. Touching South-Eastern Europe, the remarks with which Mr. Freeman closed his first volume are as applicable to-day as they were in 1863. Bulgaria is now only nominally a vassal state ; the Bulgarians have won their freedom, and have shown that they are, perhaps, more worthy to possess it than any other state in the [lyric peninsula. But the “tinkering” policy of the Treaty of Berlin has not madc it less true, and further tinkering by any such treaties in the future will not make it less true, that the only safeguard against Austrian and Russian aggression 1s a South Slavonic Federation, just as the only safe- guard of Greece against absorption in the Macedonian monarchy was found in the Federal tie. In the present circumstances of the European world, the Illyric peninsula seems naturally marked out as a field for a most interesting experiment in Federal politics. One .may hope that the only question is whether the Margos or Washington of the Southern Slaves will delay his appearance until the peninsula has been entirely delivered from Turkish bondage, or whether a Federation will prove the instrument of that deliverance. ° Χ PREFACE BY THE EDITOR Another question of the day which Mr. Freeman would, doubtless, have touched upon in a new edition of his work is that of an “Imperial Federation,” as it is called, of the British Empire. The self-contradictory character of this idea, which he clearly showed, would have furnished him with a new illustration, by contrast, of the true meaning of Federalism. No one who masters his lucid cxposition of the nature of Federal Government in Chapter II is hkely cither to be misled by such a phrase or to fall into the opposite error of the vulgar politician, who never loses an opportunity of confounding a bond of dependency with a tio of federation. To suppose that this error is due to a reminiscence of the fact that the states and kingdoms which the Romans termed “federate” were in every sense dependencics on Rome and not her equal allies, would be to credit those who commit it with more historical knowledge than they are at all likely to possess. The Index has been prepared by Mrs. A. J. Evans, ΤΟ SPYRIDON TRIKOUPES, LATE GREEK MINISTER AT THE COURT OF LONDON My pEAR Mr. TRIKOUPES, There is no man to whom I can inscribe so fittingly as to yourself a volume which deals mainly with the restoration of Grecian freedom after a period of foreign oppression. As the native historian of regenerate Greece, you fill a position strikingly analogous to that of the illustrious writer who forms my chief guide throughout the present portion of my work. Like Polybios, your youth was spent among men and exploits worthy of the countrymen of Aratos and Philopoimén; like Polybios, too, your later years have been spent in recording, in the still living tongue in which he wrote, the great events of which you were an eye-witness and a partaker. You have helped to win for your own immediate country an honourable name among the divisions of the Greek race; you have helped to place /‘tolia on the same level as Achaia, and to raise the name of Mesolongi to a reputation no less glorious than that of Megalopolis. And in one ee ΧΙ] DEDICATION respect you are more happy than your great predecessor. Polybios lived to see a time when the freedom of his country was wholly extinguished, and when all that he could do for her was to procure for her some small allevia- tion of her bondage. You have lived to see your country answer the calumnies of her enemies by conduct which they cannot gainsay; you have seen Greece once more draw on her the eyes of admiring Europe by one of the justest and purest Revolutions in all recorded history. While all that he could do was to obtain some contemp- tuous concessions from an overbearing conqueror, you are called on to take your share in the deliberations of an Assembly where every honest heart in Europe trusts that twice-liberated Hellas will be at last allowed to fix her own M achatas wins over Elis 411 State of Sparta ; parties of Old and Young . . . . 411 Intrignes of the Kleomenists with Aitolia . . . . 412 First and unsuccessful mission οὗ Machatas . . . . 412 220—219 Revolution at Sparta; Agésipolis and Lykourgos chosen Kings 413 Second mission of Machatas; Sparta joins the /Mtolian Alliance, and begins war with*Achaia_ . . . . 414 219 Beginning of the Social War ; its character . . . . 414 Paramount importance of Philip; his virtues and military skill . . . . . . 414—415 219---218 Generalship of the younger Aratos . . . . . 415 Successes of Philip . . . . 416 AKtolian ravages in the Cantons of Dymé, Pharai, and Tritaia . . . . . . 416 ‘*Sonderbund ” of the three Western Cities . . . . 417 Loss and recovery of Aigeira . . . . . . 418 219—218 Dorimachos tolian General: sacrilege of the Attolians at Dion and Dédina . . . . . . 419 Psdphis annexed to the Achaian League . . . . 419 Philip’s conquests of Phigaleia and Triphylia . . . 419 Relations between Philip and the League . . . 420 Personal relations between Philip and Aratos . . . 420 Plots of Apellés against Aratos and the Achaians . . . 421 218 Philip’s interferences with the Achaian election . . 422—423 218—217 Generalship of Epératos ; connexion of this election with the events of the preceding year . . . . . 423—424 Philip recovers Teichos . . . 424 Further schemes of Apellés ; Aratos_ restored to Philip’s favour . . . . . 424---426 218 Influence retained by Aratos in the Achaian Assembly . . 426 Treason of Apellés against PAIND 5 Philip crushes the plot. . . . . . . 427 218—217 Weak administration of Epératos . . . 428 217—216 Aratos general ; decrees of the Achaian Assembly . 428—429 217 Aratos’ mediation at Megalopolis; combination of full Federal sovereigniy with strict regard to State rights . . . . . . . . . . 429 CONTENTS XXXVll B. ς. 218—217 217 217—216 § 2. 216 215 214 213 214 211 218 218—217 210 PAGE Philip’s success in Northern Greece _.. . . 430 Mediation of Chios and Rhodes ; failure of the proposed Con- ference . . . 4380—431 Second mission from Chios, Rhodes, Byzantion, and Egypt. 431 Philip turns his mind towards Italy . . 432 Opening of a new period ; close connexion of the history of Eastern and Western Europe from this date . . 432 Influence of Démétrios of Pharos; he counsels interference in Italy. . . . . . 433 Opening of the Congress of Naupaktos . . 434 Speech of Agelaos; his policy compared with that of Iso- kratés . . . . . . . . . 435—437 Peace of Naupaktos . . . . . . . . 438 Agelaos Aitolian General . . . . . . . 438 From the End of the Social War to the End of the First War with Rome B.C, 217—205 Analogy between the Peace of Agelaos and the Peace of Nikias . . . . 439 Connexion of the Macedonian and Punic Wars . . 499 Beginning of Roman influence in Greece . . . . 439 Impolitic conduct of Philip . . 440 Philip’s treaty with Hannibal; its various forms and “prob- able explanation . . . 441 Hellenic position assumed by Philip j in the Treaty . . 442 Philip’s relations with Peloponnésos . . 444 Affairs of Messéné ; interference of Philip and Aratos . 444445 Last infiuence of Aratos over Philip. . . . . 445 Philip’s second attempt on Messéné . . 445 Death of Aratos; comparison between him and Philo- poimén . . . . 446—447 Beginning of the Roman War ; Roman ‘policy of alliances . 447 Position of Rome ; her alliance with Atolia . . . 448---449 Plots for the “σθαι οι ” of Akarnania . . . . . 449 Roman conquests . . . . . . . . . 449 Invasion of Akarnania; heroic defence of the Akarnanians and retreat of the Atolians . . . . . 449—450 Condition of Sparta; sedition of Cheilén . . . 450 Banishment and return of Lykourgos . . . . . 451 Reign of Machanidas . . . . . 461 ZEtolian and Akarnanian embassies at Sparta ; 3; speech of Lykiskos . . . . . . . 451 Sparta in alliance with ‘Etolia . . . . . . 453 ΧΧΧΥΙΙῚ CONTENTS B.C. PAGE 210 Naval warfare of Sulpicius ; desolation of Aigina . . . 453 209 The League asks help of Philip . . . . 453 Philopoimén General of Cavalry ; he reforms abuses . 453—454 209 King Attalos chosen General of Attolia . . . 455 Attempts at mediation on the part of Rhodes, ete. . . 455 Philip at Argos. . . . 456 209 Conference at Aigion ; demands of the Mitolians . . 456—457 Negociations broken off by Philip . . . . . 457 Philip repulses the Romans . . . . . . 458 His alternate debauchery and activity . . . . . 458 Exploits of Philip and Philopoimén . . . . 458 208—205 Character of the last years of the War . . . . . 459 207 Philip’s attempt on Hérakleia . . . . . 459 208 Philip’s cessions to the Achaian League . . . . 460 208—207 Philopoimén General of the League; his reforms . . 461-—462 The Three Battles of Mantineia . . . . . . 464 207 Third Battle of Mantineia; complete victory of the Achaians . . . . . . 464—465 Philopoimén ravages Lakénia . . . . . . 465 Nabis Tyrant of Spar ta . . . . . . 465 Peace between AXtolia and Macedonia . . . . . 466 205 Conference αὖ Phoiniké ; general peacc. . . . . 466 Note on the Generalships of Αταΐοβϑ . . . . . 468 CHAPTER ΙΧ HISTORY OF FEDERAL GREECE FROM 'THE PEACE OF EPEIROS TO THE DISSOLUTION OF THE ACHAIAN LEAGUE Character of the Period . . . . . . . 471 81, From the Peace of Epetros to the Settlement of Greece under Flamininus B.C. 205—194 202—200 Aggressive proceedings of PAABD 5 ; his dealings with the Achaian League . . . . . . . 472 200 His devastation of Attica . . . . . . 478 Justice of the war on the Roman side . . . . . 478 200—197 Second Macedonian War . . . . . 478 Real good-will of Flamininus towards Greece . . . 474 Union of Greek States under Rome . . . . . 475 Relation of the Federal States to Rome . . . . 478 Condition of Aitolia ; Generalship of Damokritos . . 476 200 Indecisive Meeting at Naupaktos; Aitolians join the _ Romans . . , . . . . . 476 CONTENTS ΧΧΧΙΧ Β. Cc. 205—204 202—201 201—200 199 198 198—197 197 198 § 2. 194 1938—192 192 Position of Achaia ; influence of Philopoimén Reunion of Megara with the League War with Nabis; deliverance of Messéné Generalship of Kykliadas Philopoimén goes again to Crete . . Philip at Argos; his vain attempt to gain the League . His pretended cession of Triphylia and Orchomenos The League joins the Roman Alliance; terms of the treaty Constitutional details. supplied “by the account of the debate . . . . . . . Share of the League in the war Unsuccessful siege of Corinth by Lucius Quinctius Argos betrayed to Philip and ceded by him to Nabis Exploits of the Achaian troops at Kleénai and in Asia . State of Epeiros ; attempts at peace ; Charops acts for PAGE 477 477 477 477 477 478 478 479 479 480 480 481 482 Rome . 482 Beeotia constrained to join the Romans 483 Firm adherence of the Akarnanians to Philip 483 Submission of Akarnania . 484 Proclamation of Grecian Freedom . 484 New Federations in Thessaly and Euboia 484 Recovery of Argos. 485 Relations of the Eleutherolakénic towns to Achaia 485 Nabis retains Sparta ; discontent of the tolians . 485— 486 Withdrawal of the Roman garrisons . 486 From the Settlement of Greece under Flamininus to the death of Philopoimén B.c, 194—183 Affairs of the Achaian League 486 Eminence of Megalopolis ; parallel of Vir ginia 486 _ Megalopolitan Presidents 486 Absence of Geographical Parties . 487 Influence of Philopoimén ; his internal and external policy 487 Other Federal statesmen: Lykortas, Diophanés, Aristainos . 488 The Macedonian party extinct. . 488 Discontent against Philopoimén at Mogalopolis ; ; he raises the smaller towns into independent States . . . 488—489 Philopoimén’s fourth Generalship . 490 War with Nabis ; independent action of the League 490 Antiochos invited by the Attolians . . . 490 Treacherous resolution of the Aitolian Senate . . . 491 Murder of Nabis by the Attolians . . : . . . 491 xl CONTENTS B.C. PAGE 192 Philopoimén unites Sparta to the Achaian League . . . 492 The union not forcible, yet contrary to Spartan feeling . . 492 192 Antiochos elected tolian General ; his relations with Achaia, Beeotia, Epeiros, Akarnania, and Elis. . . 493—494 191 Defeat of Antiochos at Thermopylee . . 494 191—189 το] δὴ War ; submission of AZtolia to the Roman “ Faith "494 Working of the /Etolian Constitution . . . . . 495 189 AXtolia becomes the Dependent Ally of Rome . . . 495 191 Union of Elis and Messéné with the Achaian League . - 496 Dealings of Flamininus with Messéné . . . 497 Annexation of Zakynthos prevented by Flamininus . . 497 The League extended over all Peloponnésos . . . . 498 Relations between Achaia and Rome . . . . . 498 Roman intrigues with the newly-annexed cities. . . 499 191 First disturbances of Sparta composed by Philopoimén . - 500 189 Spartan attack on Las . . . . . . . . 500 Secession of Sparta . . . . . . . . 501 189—188 Embassy to Rome . . . . . 601 190—188 Philopoimén’s two successive "Generalships . . 501 188 Execution ofSpartansat Kompasion; changesintheS; partan laws 502 Impolicy of Philopoimén’s treatment of Sparta. 502 Continued disputes at Sparta; policy of the moderate party there. . . . 503—504 Roman intrigues for the dissolution of the League . . 504 182 Formal reunion of Sparta. . . . . . . 504 Quiet incor poration of Elis . . . . 505 183 State of parties in Messéné ; revolt under Deinokratés . . 505 Capture and execution of Philopoimén at Messéné . . 505 182 Re-admission of Messéné to the League . . . 506 Three Messénian towns admitted as independent States . 507 180?Schemes of Chairén at Sparta . . . . . . 507 191—183 Constitutional notices . . . . . . - 507 189 Yearly meetings removed from Aigion . . . . - 508 Constitution of the Senate . . . . . 508 185 Rejection οὗ Eumenés’ offer to pay its members . . . 508 Legal resistance to Roman encroachments . . . . 509 185—183 Assemblies refused to Q. Cecilius and to Flamininus . 510—511 § 3. From the Death of Philopoimén to the Battle of Pydna B.C. 183—168 Condition of the League at the death'of Philopoimén . . §12 Parties in the League; the elder Roman party not wilfully unpatriotic. . . . . 612 Growth of the extreme Roman party under Kallikratés . . 512 CONTENTS xli B.C. 180—179 180 179—178 172—168 173 171 169 167 157 171 167 169 167—157 173 171 174 173—171 171 170 170 170—169 169 169—168 PAGE Presidency of Hyperbatos . . . . 513 Slavish doctrines οἵ Hyperbatos and Kallikratés : ; " opposition of Lykortas . . ᾿ . . §13 Embassy of Kallikratés to Rome ; reseript of the Roman Senate . . . . . . . . 513—514 Kallikratés elected General . . . . 514 Effects of the war with Perseus on the Federal states . . 514 Greek patriotic feeling now on the Macedonian side . 515 Character of Perseus. . . . . . . 515 Character of L. Amilius Paullus . . . . . . 516 Dependent condition of Aftolia ; civil dissensions . . - O16 Roman and Macedonian parties ; Lykiskos General . 517 Perseus in /Etolia; part of the country joins him . . 517—518 Massacre by A. Beebius . . . . . . 518 Dissolution of the Aitolian League . . . . . 518 Death of Lykiskos . . . 518 Affairs of Akarnania ; debate i in the Akar nanian Assembly 518—519 Leukas separated from Akarnania. . . - 4519 State of Epeiros ; parties of Kephalos and Charops . . 519 Geographical parties in Epeiros . . 920 Conquest and desolation of Epeiros ; tyr anny of Charops . 520 Condition of Boeotia ; alliance with ‘Per seus . . 521 Intrigues of Q. Marcius ; dissolution of the Beeotian League 521522 Achaia during the war with Perseus . . 522 Decree of non-intercourse between Achaia and Macedonia . 522 Debate on its proposed repeal . . . . . . §22 Missions of Marcellus and the Lentuli . . . . . §23 Roman dealings with individual cities . . . . . 623 Demands of Atilius and Marcius . . . . . . 524 Mission of Popillius and Octavius. . . . . . §24 Further inroads on Federal rights. . . . . . 625 Convention of the Moderate Party . . . . . 625 Archén General . . ΝΕ . . . . . 526 Embassy from Attalos ; debate on the restoration of Eumenés’ honours. . . . . . . 526 Negociations with Quintus Marcius . . . . . 526 Polybios opposes Appius Claudius. . 528 Embassy from the Ptolemies ; debate at Sikyén on the Egyptian question . . . . . . - 628—529 8 4. From the Battle of Pydna to the Dissolution of the Achaian League B.c. 167—146 Effects of the Conquest of Macedonia on the relations between Rome and Achaia . . . . . . 530 xl CONTENTS B.C. PAGE 167 Embassy of Domitius and Claudius; demands of the Romans . . . . . . . 531 Challenge of Xendn ; deportation of the Thousand Achaians 531—532 164—151 Embassies on behalf of the exiles ; insidious reply of the Senate 532 Position of Polybios at Rome 533 151 Release of the Exiles . . ὅ88 Character of Roman dealings with foreign nations. 534 Dispute between Sparta and Megalopolis . 534 166—159 Mission of C. Sulpicius Gallus ; separation of Pleurdn from the League 535 152 Debate on the Cretan Alliance 535 151 Return of Stratios and Polybios 536 Causes of the final war with Rome 536 156—150 Disputes between Athens and Ordpos . 536 Menalkidas of Sparta General of the League . 537 150 Achaian interference at Ordpos 537 150—149 Generalship of Diaios . . 538 149 Disputes with Sparta ; Diaios before Sparta . 538539 Death of Kallikratés . . . 539 Damokritos elected General . . . . 539 149—148 Fourth Macedonian War; mediation of Q. Cacilius Metellus 5389—540 148 Victory and banishment of Damokritos 540 148—147 Second Generalship of Diaios ; suicide of Menalkidas 540—541 147 Embassy of L. Aurelius Orestes ; tumult at Corinth 541—542 Embassy of Sextus Julius Cwsar . δ48 Kritolaos elected General ; sham Conference at Tegea 543 147—146 Unconstitutional proceedings of Kritolaos 544 Efforts of Metellus to preserve peace . 645 146 Tumultuous meeting at Corinth ; violence of Kritolaos . 544—545 Beginning of war with Rome ; further efforts of Metellus 546 Secession and siege of Hérakleia . 547 Battle of Skarpheia ; defeat and death of Kritolaos 547 Diaios succeeds to the Generalship . 547 Negociations between Sdsikratés and Metellus . 548 Cruelty and corruption of Diaios ; death of Sésikratés . 549 Mummius at the Isthmus ; battle of Leukopetra and sack of Corinth . . . 549 Achaia not yet formally reduced to 8 Province 550 146—145 Dissolution of the League, and abolition of Democracy in the cities . . . 551 145 Polybios legislates for the Achaian cities 551 Nominal revival of the League . 552 CONTENTS xii PAGE Devotion of the Peloponnésian people ; later parallels 552 Errors of the League, mainly the result of Roman intrigue . 553 General results of the Achaian League . 554 Roman opposition a witness to its value 554 The Achaian League a natural model for liberated Greece 554 Future of South- Eastern Europe; Monarchic Federalism probably the true solvent 555 CHAPTER X OF FEDERALISM IN ITALY Recapitulation . . . . . . 557 Indirect influence of Greece ; direct influence of Rome. 557 Connexion of Italian history with the subject of Federalism 558 Italian history a transition between the Greek and the medieval Federalism 558 § 1. Of the Federations of Ancient Italy Prevalence of Federalism in Ancient Italy 559 Its causes 559 These causes of gener al application 559 Instances of Confederations beyond Greece and Italy 559 Greater importance of the Italian Leagues 560 Uncertainty of the ethnology of Ancient Italy . 560 Early existence of Federations in Italy—-Nature of the evidence 561 Late preservation of old Italian Constitutions 561 League of ErruRIA 562 The Twelve Cities 562 Constitution of the States 563 Amphiktyonic origin of the League 563 Constitution of the Federal Assembly . 568 Traces of Federal Kingship . 564 Laxity of the Federal tie 564 Power of war and peace in the League, ‘and also i in 1 the States 564—565 The accounts of our authorities how far trustworthy 565 Probable scheme of the League 565 League of SAMNIUM 566 Absence of details 566 The Samnite Cantons . . . 566 Effect of the separation of Capua . 567 Analogy with Aitolia and Switzerland . 567 xliv CONTENTS PAGE Samnite struggle against Rome . . . . . . . . 567 Lessons of Samnite history . . . . . . . . . 568 League of LATIUM . . . . . . . . 568 Abundance of untrustworthy details . . . . . . . 568 Treaty between Rome and Carthage, B.c. 508 . . . . . 569 Nature of the League . . . . . . . . . . 569 The Thirty Cities . . . . . . . . . 570 Relations of Rome to the League . . . . . . . . 570 Probable origin of Rome . . . . . - $571 Latin proposals of union with Rome, B.C. 337 . . . . 57] Close union of the Latin towns illustrated by the pr oposal . . . 571 Dissolution of the League, B.c. 8384. . . . . . 572 ξ 2. The Roman Commonwealth and the Italian Allies Rome not a Federal State; but containing qwasi-Federal elements . 572 Gradual incorporation of other States with Rome . . . . . 572 Three great classes in Italy: Romans, Latins, and Italians . . . 573 The nature of the struggle between Patrician and Plebeian . . . 574 Quasi-Federal nature of the Roman Tribes. . . . 575 Near approach of the Roman system to Federalism and to Repr esenta- tion. . . 575 The greatness of Rome mainly due to her quasi- Federal elements . 576 The Socran WAR, B.c. 90—89 . . . . . . . 576 Its historical importance . . . . . . . . 576 Probable results on the Italian side . . . . . . . 577 Nature of the Authorities for the period . . . . . . 577 Character of the Roman dominion . . . . . . . 578 Condition of the Italian Α11165. . . . . . . . 578 Claim of Roman citizenship for the Allies . . . . . . 579 Advantages and disadvantages of such admission . . . . 579 Difference of feeling among the Italians ; among the States 1 near Rome ; among the Samnites and Lucanians ; ; among the Etruscans and Umbrians. . . . . 580 Federal or Representative institutions the true remedy. . . 581 The claim of the Allies opposed by the worst, and supported by the best men of both parties at Rome . . : . 581—582 Tribuneship of Marcus Livius Drusus, B.c. 91. . . . . . 582 Beginning of the SocraL WAR B.c. 90. . . . . 583 Analogy between the Italian Allies and the American Colonies . . 584 Federal Constitution of the seceding States . . . . . . 585 Italicum the capital of the League . . . 585 ‘Constitution of the Federal Government borrowed from 1 that of Rome . 585 Rome the great obstacle to a permanent Italian Federation . . . 586 The Social War, 8.0. 90—89 . . . . . . . . 686 CONTENTS Successes of the Allies . Movements in Etruria and Umbris ia The Senate yields the demands of the Allies The other States accept citizenship, but Samnium and Lucania still hold out Legislation of P. Sulpicius, B.C. 88 Illusory nature of the franchise granted to the Allies Their discontent . Their cause embraced by Marius and Sulpicius The Civil War, B.c. 88—82 . The Samnite War still continues . Last stage of the war; the Samnites before Rome, 1 B.C. 82 Battle at the Colline Gate Permanent devastation of Samnium by ‘Sulla § 3. Of the Lombard League Gradual incorporation of the Provinces with Rome Rome forsaken by the Emperors . . The Imperial succession always maintained . The Kingdom of Italy, A.p. 568—1250. Union of the Crown of Italy and Germany, A.D. 961 Weakness of the royal authority, 1039—1056 The Normans in Apulia and Sicily, 1021—1194 ; condition of Rome : ; Northern Italy in the twelfth century ; predominance of the Cities ; their practical independence . . . . . Reigns of Lothar II. and Conrad ITI. (1125—1152) Imperialist reaction ; election of Frederick (1152) Character of Frederick . . His position not to be confounded with that of moder n “Austri ia . The War not strictly a national struggle, but astruggle between royalty and municipal freedom . . Frederick enters Italy, A.p. 1154. Collision of claims between the Emperor and the Cities Early successes of Frederick . Destruction of Milan, A.p. 1162 Oppression of Frederick’s agents . . Four opportunities for the Union of Italy : (1) 3 in . the ‘Social War; (2) under the Lombard League ; (3) under Manfred ; (4) under Victor Emmanuel . Distinction of northern and southern Italy . The Campanian Republics, A.p. 889—1138 . The Cities supported by the Pope, Eastern Emperor, and King of Sicily, A.D. 1166 . . Parallel with the revolt of the Netherlands . xlvi CONTENTS PAGE First movements in the Veronese March, A.p. 1155 . . . . 602 Beginning of the LomBARD LEAGUE . . . . . . . 602 Relations of Venice and the Lombard Cities . . . . . . 602 Action of the Emperor Manuel . . . . . . . . 602 Condition of the Eastern Empire . . . . . . . . 603 Manuel aspires to reunite the Empires. . . . . . . 603 Growth of the League, A.p. 1164—1168 . . . . . . 604 Accession of Lodi . . . . . . . . . . 604 Foundation of Alexandria . . 604 Indirect importance of the Lombard League in Federal History ; ; ala- logy with America and the Netherlands . . . . . 605 Congress of the League . . . . . . . . 606 The League not a true Federation ; and why it did not become such . 606 Personal character of Frederick ; he yields in time . . . . 607 Second Lombard League . . . . . . 607 No definite moment of separ ation in Italy . . 607 No such tendency to union in Italy as in the Netherlands and Ameri ica 607 The Lombard cities really sovereign ; the Dutch and American pro- vinces not so. . . . . . . 607—608 Vigour and constancy of the ‘Confeder ates . . . . . . 608 Peculiar policy of Venice ; siege of Ancona, A.D. 1174 . . . . 609 Course of the war ; siege of Alexandria, A.D. 1174—-1175 . . 609 Negociations between the Emperor and the cities broken off by the Papal Legates . . . . . . . . . . 609 Battle of LEGNANO, A.D. 117 6 . . . . . . 610 Change in Frederick’s policy ; negociations for peace . . . . 610 Frederick reconciled with Venice and the Church. . . . . 610 Rights of the Empire as understood by the Lombards . . . 610 Truce for six years between the Emperor and the League, A.D. 1177 . 611 Various cities join Frederick : Cremona, Tortona, and Alexandria . 61] Peace of Constanz, A.D. 1183; the treaty is in form a pardon, but amounts to surrender of direct sovereignty . . . . 612—613 The Second Lombard League . . . . . . . 614 The First League primarily political the Second League primarily ecclesiastical . . . 614—615 Union of Italy under Frederick or Manfr od hindered by the Pope 3 ; good and evil which it would have prevented . . 615 Italian nationality a purely modern idea. . . . . . 615 Question of Italian Confederation or Consolidation . . . 616 Italian Federation discredited by Louis Napoleon Buonaparte . . 616 Arguments on behalf of, and against, Federalism in Italy. . . 616 The question decided by the Italians . . 617 Federalism no longer appropriate in Italy ; local independence the true policy . . . . . . . . . 617 Future restoration of the Empire . . . . . . . . 617 CONTENTS xlvii FRAGMENT OF THE KINGDOM AND CONFEDERATION OF GERMANY PAGE Influence of the Empire on Germany . . . 618 The three Imperial Kingdoms: Germany, Italy, and Burgundy . 618—619 Closest connexion between Germany and Burgundy . . 619 Connexion between Germany and the Empire growing into identity . 620 The German Confederation, a lax Staatenbund ; its theory and practice 621 Its peculiarities ;: (1) Most of its members principalities ; (2) it arose from the splitting up of a more united State . . . . . 621 Process of disunion in Germany . 622 Germany really a Federation since Peace of Westphalia, A.D. . 1648. 1806 622 The Kingdom of Germany . . . . . . . . 623 Comparison with England and France . . . . . . . 625 Origin of the German Kingdom . . . . . . 623 Different history of England, 800-— 1087 ; "France, 888— 1202; and Germany, 986—973, 1039—-1056 . . . 624 Circumstances which strengthened the Royal authority in Germany . 624 Retention of National Assemblies in Germany and England, but not in France . . . . 625 The Royal Domain ; the Fre ee Cities ; ; the Ecclesiastical Princes . . 625 Contrast between German and French Kings . . . . . 625 Contrast between the later history of the Kingdoms _. . . . 626 Causes of disunion in Germany : (1) The Crown elective ; chiefly owing to its connexion with the Empire . . . . . . . 627 The Empire essentially elective . 628 Ways in which the Imperial and elective character of the German Crown diminished the royal authority . . . 628 (2) The German Confederation mainly composed of Principalities . 629 Connexion between this cause and the weakening of the monarchy . . 629 Origin of the German Pr incipalities ; ; royal officers become sovereigns . . . . 629 The Diet a Federal Congress rather than a National Par liament . . 629 Governments, not peoples, represented in the Diet . . . . 680 The Diet sinks into a diplomatic Congress . . . . . . 630 Other peculiarities of the German Confederation . . . . . 630 Loss of the ancient divisions . . . . . . . 630 Comparison with England and France . . . . . . 630—631 Splitting up of the ancient Duchics . . . . . . 631 Constant partitions and annexations . . . 631 Different position of the arriére vassals in France ‘and i in Ger many . 632 Vast number, and singular disproportion in size of the German States . 633 Position of Austria and Prussia. Parallel with Beotia . . . 633 xl viii CONTENTS APPENDIX I, 1. Note on the Cities of the Achaian League. 2. Note on the Cities of the Lykian League . 3. The Federal Coinage of Akarnania 4. The Federal Coinage of AXtolia . APPENDIX II. Additional Notes by the Editor INDEX PAGE 635 637 638 638 639 659 Ι DEFINITION OF FEDERAL GOVERNMENT 3 from any higher power, but, as a matter of absolute right, by virtue of its “inherent powers as an independent commonwealth. But in all matters which concern the general hody, the sove- reignty of the several members will cease. Mach member is perfectly independent within its own sphere ; but there is another sphere in which its independence, or rather its separate existence, vanishes. It is invested with every right of sovereignty on one Sove- class of subjects, but there is another class of subjects on which rea οὗ it is as incapable of separate political action as any province or ;, all city of a monarchy or of an indivisible republic. The making{external of peace and war, the sending and receiving of ambassadors,(™tters. generally all that comes within the department of International Law, will be reserved wholly to the central power. Indeed, the very existence of the several members of the Union will be diplomatically unknown to foreign nations, which will never b called upon to deal with any power except the Central Govern ment. A Federal Union, in short, will form one State in relation to other powers, but many States as regards its internal adminis- tration. This complete division of sovereignty. we may look upon as essential to the absolute perfection of 7 the Federal ideal. But that ideal is one so very refined and artificial, that it seems not to have been attained more than four or five times in the history of the world. But a History of Federal Government must embrace a much wider range of subjects than merely the history of those states which have actually realized the Federal idea. We must look at the idea in its germ as well as in its Wider‘ perfection. We shall learn better to understand what perfect range οὗ Federalism is by comparing it with Federalism in a less fully- torical developed shape. In order thus to trace the Federal principle view. from its birth, we shall have to go back to very carly times, and; in some cases, to very rude states of society. But of course it will not be needful to dweil at much Tength on those common- wealths of whose constitution and history it would be impossible to give any detailed account. For some commonwealths, which may fairly claim the name of Federal Governments in the wider sense, a mere glance will be enough. Our more detailed examina- tion must be reserved for a few more illustrious examples of Federal Union. There are a few famous commonwealths which, Choice of either from having perfectly, or nearly perfectly, realized the tor mesial Federal idea, or else from their importance and celebrity in the ijustra- general history of the world, stand out conspicuously at the very tion. Four great examples of Federal Govern- ment. The ACHAIAN LEAGUE, Bc. 281- 146. The SwIss CANTONS, A.D. 1291-- 1862. The UNITED PRo- VINCES, A.D. 1579- 1795. The UNITED STATES, A.D. 1778- 1862. Character- istics of 4 GENERAL INTRODUCTION CHAP. ------- re ee .... -Ὁ...ὦ.. first glimpse of the subject, and whose constitution and history will deserve and repay our most attentive study. Four Federal Commonwealths, then, stand out, in four differ- ent ages of the world, as commanding, above all others, the attention of students of political history. Of these four, one belongs to what is usually known as “ancient,” another, to what is commonly called “medieval” history ; a third arose in the period of transition between medieval and modern history ; the creation of the fourth may have been witnessed by some few of those who are stil] counted among living men. Of these four, again, one has been a thing of the past for many centuries ; another has so changed. its form that it can no longer claim a place among Federal Governments ; but the other two, one of them among the least, the other among the greatest, of inde- pendent powers, still remain, exhibiting Federalism ἢ ina perfect, or nearly perfect, form, standing, in the Old World and in the New, as living examples of the str ength and the weakness of the most elaborate of political com)inations. These four famous Commonwealths are, First, the ACHAIAN LEAGUE in the later days of Ancient Greece, whose most flourishing period comes within the third century before our own era. Second, the Confederation of the Swiss CANTONS, which, with many changes in its extent and constitution, has Jasted from the thirteenth century to our own day. Third, the SEVEN UNITED PROVINCES of the NETHERLANDS, ncn marr nS ae whose Union arose in the War of Independence against ‘Spain, and lasted, in a republican form, till the War ofthe French Revolution. Fourth, the UNITKD STATES of NortH AMERICA, which formed a Federal Union after their revolt from the British Crown unde George the Third, and whose destiny forms one of the most mt portant, and certainly the most interesting, of the politica problems of our own time. Of these Four, three come sufficiently near to the full realiza- tion of the Federal idea to be entitled to rank among perfect Ι FOUR GREAT FEDERAL COMMONWEALTHS 5 Federal Governments. The Achaian League, and the United the Four States since the adoption of the present Constitution, are indeed Great Con- the most perfect he most parfect developments of the Federal principle which pera the world has ever seen. The Swiss Confederation, in its origin a Union of the loosest kind, has gradually drawn the Federal bond tighter and tighter, till, within our own times, it has assumed a form which fairly entitles it to rank beside Achaia and America. The claim of the United Provinces is more doubt- ful;! their union was at no period of their republican being so close as that of Achaia, America, and modern Switzerland. But the important place which the United Provinces once filled in Kuropean history, and the curious and instructive nature of their political institutions, fully entitle them to a place in the first rank for the purposes of the present History. All these four then I purpose to treat of at some considerable length. Over less perfect or less illustrious examples of the Federal system I shall glance more lightly, or use them chiefly by way of contrast to point out more clearly the distinguishing characteristics of these four great examples. Thus, for instance, the modern The Ger- German Confederation is, in point of territorial extent and of m8 Con- . . federation. the power of many of the states which compose it, of far greater importance than any of the European instances among the Four. But its constitution is so widely removed from the perfection of the Federal idea that, for our present purpose, this Union, which includes two of the Great Powers of Europe, is chiefly valuable as illustrating by contrast the more perfect constitutions of Achaia and Switzerland. On the other hand there can be little other doubt that there were in the ancient world several other Con- ancient federations, whose constitutions must have realized the Federal °“""? les ; idea almost as perfectly as the more famous League of Achaia. But some of these possessed so little influence in the world, that they can hardly be said to havea history. In the caso of others we know absolutely nothing of the details of their constitutions. Northern Greece, especially, in the later days of Grecian freedom, in Greece ; abounded in small Federal States, but we have no such minute knowledge of their history and constitution as we have of those of Achaia. Even the great and important League of Aitolia, so long the rival of Achaia, is far better known to us in its external history than in its internal constitution. Again it is clear that in Italy ; the Thirty Cities of Latium, and probably some other similar 1 See Motley’s Rise of the Dutch Republic, iii, 514. in Lykia. Other German leagues ; the Hanse Towns. Other American Confede- rations. 6 GENERAL INTRODUCTION CHAP. I Leagues among the old Italian commonwealths, must have been united by a Federal bond of a very close kind. But we know hardly anything about them except what may be picked up from the half-mythical narratives of their wars and alliances with Rome. Lykia too, beyond all doubt, had a Federal constitution which was in some respects more perfect than that of Achaia itself. But then Lykia has nothing which can be called a history, and its Federal constitution arose at so late a period that its independence was provincial rather than strictly national. So, in later times, the Swiss Confederation was really only one of several unions of German cities, which happened to obtain greater importance and permanence than the rest. One of these unions, the famous League of the Hanse Towns, still exists, though with diminished splendour, in our own day. So, in days later still, the precedent of Federal union given by the English settlements in North America, has heen followed, though as yet with but little success or credit, by several of the Republics which have arisen among the ruins of Spanish dominion in the same continent. All these instances, Greck, Italian, German, and American, will demand some notice in the course of our present inquiry. But they will not need that full and minute attention which must be reserved for Achaia, Switzerland, the United Provinces, and the Umited States. Before, however, we go on to describe in detail the constitu- tion and history of any particular Federal state, it will be desirable to make some further remarks on Federal Government in general, and to draw out at some lenyth the points of contrast between that and other political systems. CHAPTER If CHARACTERISTICS OF FEDERAL GOVERNMENT WITH OTHER POLITICAL SYSTEMS I HAVE already given something like a defini Government in its perfect form, premising thi form is not to be looked for in all the examples w under our present survey. We have seen that it found in all even of the four illustrious Confeder: have selected for special examination. Compared stitutions of Achaia and America, the Federal ec Swiss Cantons before the French Revolution, and ever the Seven Provinces, will appear to be only remote : the Federal idea. But in the present Chapter, whe to contrast Federalism with other political systems, my picture of a Federal Government wholly frox perfect examples. Much, therefore, that I shall : quite inapplicable to the Umted Provinces or to the League, much more so to the so-called German Conft our own day. A Federal Commonwealth, then, in its perfect which forms a single state in its relations to other which consists of many states with regard to its int ment. Thus the City of Megalopolis in old times New York or the Canton of Ziirich now, has absoh rate existence in the face of other powers:- it can or peace, or maintain ambassadors or consul;. Federal Government of Achaia, America, or Sve only body with which foreign nations can haves But the internal laws, the law of real property, . even the electoral law, may be utterly different and at Sikyén, at New York and in Illinois, a Geneva. Nor is there any power in the Ass IISTICS OF FEDERAL GOVERNMENT ~~ cnap Δ. /ashington, or the Federal Council at Bern, rsities into harmony. In one point of view gle commonwealth, as truly a national whole nn; in another point of view, there is a col- ign commonwealths as independent of one and Spain can be. We may then recognize fect Federal Commonwealth any collection of is equally unlawful for the Central Power to he purely internal legislation of the several ὁ the several members to enter into any diplo- with other powers. Where the first condition _ the several members are not sovereign ; their owever extensive in practice, is a merely muni- nce. Where the second condition is not obtained, wever ancient and intimate, is that of a mere her than that of a real Confederation. But another ll here arise. Even among those commonwealths secure to every member full internal independence, every member any separate external action, there ; diversities as to the way in which the Central ses its peculiar functions. It 1s here that we reach of Federal Governments into two classes which has wn by most of the writers on the subject.? In the e Federal Power represents only the Governments «al members of the Union; its immediate action is those Governments; its powers consist simply in issuing to the State Governments, which. when within the s of the Federal authority, it 1s the duty of those e exceptional case, to be discussed in the course of the history, tate holding diplomatic intercouse with foreign powers by express deral power. Sce an instance in Polybios, ii. 48. This is most ‘ase in which the exception proves the rule. thli, Geschichte des schweizerischen Bundesrechtes, i. 554, ‘erschied zwischen Staatenbund und Bundesstaat ist in dem ranismus beider zu erkennen. Auch in dem Staatenbunde ‘aten zu einem Staatsganzen verbunden, aber dieses ist ‘r wieder als ein besonderer, von den Einzelstaaten ver- taat organisirt, sondern die Bundesgewalt ist entweder tibertragen oder aus den staatlichen Spitzen der Einzel- esetzt. In dem Bundesstaate dagegen gibt es nicht bloss ‘aten, sondern auch einen vollstandig organisirten Zentral- achiische Bund zur Zeit von Philopoemen nicht mehr ein ein Bundesstaat ; so sind die nord-americanischen Frei- die Schweiz seit 1848 als Bundesstaat organisirt.’’] II TWO CLASSES OF FEDERATIONS Governments to carry out. If men or money be . Federal purposes, the Federal Power will demand the. several State Governments, which will raise them in suc as each may think best. In the other class, the Federal 1 will be, in the strictest sense, a Government, which, in the o. class, it can hardly be called. It will act not only on t. Governments of the several States, but directly on every citizen of those States. It will be, in short, a Government co-ordinate ) with the State Governments, sovercign in its own sphere, as they poy, are sovereign in their sphere. It will be a Government with direct. the usual branches, Legiskutive, Executive, and Judicial ; with 4! citia the direct power of taxation, and the other usual powers of a Government; with its army, its navy, its civil service, and all the usual apparatus of a Government, all bearing directly upon every citizen of the Union without any reference to the Govern- ments of the several States. The State administration, within its own range, will be carried on as freely as 1f there were no such thing as an Union; the Federal administration, within its own range, will be carried on as freely as if there were no such thing as a separate State. This last class is what writers on International Law call a Composite State, or Supreme Federal Government.1 The former class they commonly remand to the head of mere Confederacies, or, at most, Systems of Confederate States.2 Yet it is quite possible to conceive the existence of a Federal Commonwealth, in which the Federal Power shall act solely upon the several State Governments, which yet shall fully answer the two conditions of external unity and internal plur- ality. The American Union under the Confederation forbade diplomatic action to the several States ;* it therefore formed a single commonwealth in the eyes of other nations. Yet the Federal Power acted only on the several State Governments, and 1 This is what, in the Federalist, No. 9 (p. 47, ed. 1818) is called a Con- solidation of the States. But Hamilton is here only using the language of objectors, and the name consolidated would seem better to apply to non- Federal commonwealths, as distinguished from Federal. It is so used by Μ, de Tocque- ville, Démocratie en Amérique, i, 271. 2 See Wheaton’s International Law, i. 68 ; Austin’s Province of Jurisprudence, p- 217; Calhoun’s Works, i. 163; Federalist, Nos. 9, 21, 89 et passim. The distinction between the two classes is most fully and clearly drawn by Mr, J. 8. Mill (Representative Government, p. 301), by Professor Bernard (Lectures on American War, Oxford, 1861, pp. 68-72), and by Tocqueville (Democratie en Amérique, i. 250, 265 et seqq. ). 3 Articles of Confederation, Art. vi. § 1. Inade- quacy of the system of requi- sitions. .CTERISTICS OF FEDERAL GOVERNMENT ΟΗΑᾺΡ drectly on individual citizens. The Swiss Confedera- 1815 even allowed diplomatic action to the several s within certain prescribed limits! Yet, on the whole, the Swiss Confederation, and much more the American ° acderation of 1778, had far more in common with perfect deral, or “ Composite” States, than with lax Confederacies uke the German Bund. The real difference between the two classes seems to be that the one is a good, the other a bad, way of compassing the same objects.2— Both America and Switzerland found by experience that, without the direct action of the Federal Power upon individuals, the objects of the Federal Union could not be carried out. The several State Governments are indeed, under the other system, constitutionally bound to carry out all requisitions which do not transcend the limits of the Federal authority. But we may be sure that the State Governments will always lie under a strong temptation to dis- obey such requisitions, not only when they really transcend the limits of the Federal authority, but also when they are simply displeasing to local interests or wishes. Such a compact, in short, may constitutionally be a Federal Union, Int practically it will amount to little more than a precarious alliance.* Still a Confederation of this sort aims, however ineffectually, at being a true Federal Union. The American Confederation of 1778 professed, while the German Confederation does not profess,” to form one power, one nation,® or whatever may be the proper word, in the face of other powers and nations. The articles of Confederation wholly failed to carry out their own purpose ; and 1 See Wheaton, i. 90. 2 “The attributes of Congress under the Confederation and under the Con- stitution were (with some not very important exceptions) the same. What was done was to make them real and effective in the only possible way, by making them operate directly on the people of the States, instead of on the States them- selves.”’—Bernard, p. 69. 3 See Mill, p. 301. 4 Mill; Cf. Bernard, p. 68. See also Marshall’s Life of Washington, iv, 256-62. 5 On the German Confederation, see Mill, p. 300. 6 Τὶ do not feel called upon, at all events at this stage of my work, to enter into the great American dispute between National and Jedeval (see Federalist, Nos. 39, 40 ; Tocqueville, i. 268 ; Calhoun, i. 112-161; Bernard, p. 72). I con- fess that it seems to me to be rather a question of words. A power which acts in all its relations with other powers, as a single indivisible unity, is surely a nation, whether its internal constitution be Federal or otherwise. So to call it in no way takes away from the independent rights of the several members. In the language of Polybios, the word ἔθνος is constantly applied to the Achaian and other Federal commonwealths ; indeed he seems to use it as the special formal II SYSTEM OF REQUISITIONS the closer union of 1787, under the existing constitu the result. Still, for my immediate purpose, it does n needful to attend very closely to the distinction between two classes of Federations. In many of the ancient Lea, with which we shall have to deal, it is evident that, on the « hand, the League formed a single state in the face of all oth. states, and that, on the other hand, the independence of the several members was strictly preserved. But it is not always Th easy to say how far the Federal Assembly and the Federal tt _ Magistrates exercised a direct power over the individual citizens ἐς ὍΝ of each city, and how far it was exercised through the Assemblies in history and Magistrates of the several cities. We know, for instance, that in the Achaian League there were Federal taxes ;! we do not know whether they were directly Bathored hy Federal collectors, or whether they were merely requisitions to the several cities, which their Assemblies and Magistrates apportioned by their own authority. The latter arrangement is just as likely as the former; but, if it could be shown to be the plan actually in use, it would hardly have the effect of degrading the Achaian League from the rank of a Composite State to that of a mere Confederacy.” It is enough to enable a commonwealth to rank, for our present purpose, as a true Federation, that the Union is one which preserves to the several members their full internal independence, while it denies to them all separate action in relation to foreign powers. ‘The sovereignty is, in fact, divided ; title of such bodies. See, for instance, xx. 3, where ἔθνος, the Federal State, is opposed to πόλις, the single city-commonwealth., According to Tocqueville (i. 268) the American constitution is neither National nor Federal, but some third thing, for which no name exists. He calls it “un gouvernement national incomplet.” The truest difference between a Federation and a perfectly consolidated Government is that already given. In a Federal state the several members retain their sovereignty within their own range ; that is, the Federal power can- not alter their internal institutions. In an ordinary monarchy or republic, the supreme central power, in whomever it is vested, can alter the institutions of any province or city. See Bernard, p. 71. 1 Pol. iv. 60 ai κοιναὶ εἰσφοραί. * The system of requisitions is indeed in no way confined to Federal common- wealths ; it is quite compatible with monarchy, and indeed it has always been exceedingly common under barbaric despotisms, The Sultan requires a certain contribution from a district, which the authorities of the district levy as best suits them. ‘The royal administration is thus eased of a certain amount of trouble, and the district at once acquires a certain amount of municipal freedom. But that freedom, great or small, exists merely by concession or sulferance, not of right, as in a Federal State. it ; VACTERISTICS OF FEDERAL GOVERNMENT © cnap. yament of the Federation and the Government of the ;ave a co-ordinate authority, each equally claiming ;1ce within its own range. It is this system of divided reignty which I propose to contrast at some length with , other principal forms of government which have prevailed ‘different times among the most civilized nations of the world. Forms of government may be classified according to so many principles that it is needful to state at the onset what principle of division seems most suited for the comparison which I have taken in hand. The old stereotyped division into monarchy, Monarchy, taristocracy, and democracy, is sufficient for many purposes. A Aristo- cracy, and Demo- cracy. Absolute and Con- stitutional Govern- ments. A cross division needed. ‘more philosophical division perhaps is that which does not look so much to the nature of the hands in which supreme power is vested, as to the question whether there is any one body or individual which can fairly be called supreme. ‘This is the division of monarchies, aristocracies, and democracies, respectively, into absolute and constitutional examples of their several classes.! Thus the old Athenian commonwealth, where all power was directly exercised by the People, was an Absolute Democracy. An American State, on the other hand, where ‘the People is recognized as the ultimate soverelgn, where all power is held to flow from the people, but where a delegated authority is divided in different proportions between a Governor, a Senate, and a House of Representatives, is said to be an example of, Constitn- tional Democracy. In this way of looking at them, an Absolute Government of any of the three kinds has quite as many points in common with an Absolute Government of one of the other kinds, as it has in common with a Constitutional Government of its own class. But neither of these divisions seems suited to our present purpose? A Federal commonwealth may be either _aristocratic or democratic; or some of its members may be aristocratic and others democratic; those Aristocracics and Democracies again may exhibit either the Absolute or the Con- 1 See Calhoun’s Works, i. 28, 34 et seqq. * [Cf., on the classification of constitutions, Piitter, Historische Entwickelung der heutigen Staatsverfassung des teutschen Reichs (3rd ed.) ii. 159. He observes that, in discussing the constitution of the ‘‘German Empire,” ‘‘man dachte nicht daran, dass zum Massstabe der verschiedenen Regierungsformen sich noch eine hdhere Abtheilung einfacher und zusammengesetzter Staaten denken liess, und nur auf erstere jene dreyfache Eintheilung (namely, monarchic, aristocratic, democratic) passte.” He failed to recognize the theoretic possibility of a Federal Monarchy. | II CLASSIFICATION OF GOVERNMENTS 13 -- te .. -- a att stitutional type of their own classes; indeed, though Federal States have commonly been republican, there is nothing theorcti- cally absurd in the idea of a Federal Monarchy. The classifica tion of governments, which we must make in order to work out the required contrast between Federalism and other forms, will be in fact a cross division to the common classification into Monarchies, Aristocracies, and Democracies. Federalism, as 1 have already said, is essentially a compromise; it is something intermediate between two extremes. A Federal Government is most likely to be formed when the question arises whether several small states shall remain perfectly independent, or shall be consolidated into a single great state. A Federal tic harmonizes the two contending principles by reconciling a certain amount of union with a certain amount of independence. A Federal Federalism Government then is a mean between the system of large states ἃ Smt wnd the system of small states. But both the large states, the tween small states, and the intermediate Federal system, may assume a Great and democratic, an aristocratic, or even a monarchic form of govern- ama" ment, just as may happen. The two extremes then, with which the Federal system has to be compared, are the system of small states and the system of large states. Speaking roughly, the one is the ordinary political system of what is called classical antiquity, the other is the or- dinary political system of modern Europe. The system of small states finds its most perfect developement in the independent city-commonwealths of Old Greece; the system of large states finds its most perfect developement in the large monarchies of Europe in our own day. It is not too much to say that the large and the small state alike may be either monarchic, aristo- cratic, or democratic. As a general rule, small states have flourished most as republics, and large states have flourished most as monarchies, and the natural tendency of the two classes of states seems to lie in those two directions respectively. But The there is no sort of contradiction in the idea of a small state being Division . . . irrespec- monarchic or of a large state being republican. Many small 4, or principalities have enjoyed a fair amount of prosperity and good their government, and the experiment of governing a large country as several ' a single republic has been so seldom tried that we are hardly in govern. position to decide whether it is necessarily a failure or not.! ment. 1 See Tocqueville, i. 270, 271 ; ii. 250. Definition of Large and Small States. 14 CHARACTERISTICS OF FEDERAL GOVERNMENT — crap. But, this question apart, it is clear that a small republic may be cither aristocratic or democratic, that a large kingdom may be either despotic or constitutional. And it is also clear that, while free states, great and small, have certain points of resemblance, large states and small states respectively have also some points of resemblance, irrespective of their several forms of government. [0 is in these points, where large states, whatever their constitu- tion, form one class, and small states, whatever their constitution, form another, that Federalism takes its position, as a mean between the two, sharing some of the characteristics of both. I may add, that while Federalism, as a compromise, is liable to some of the inherent disadvantages of a compromise, it mani- festly, in those positions for which it is suited at all, goes a good way to unite the opposite advantages of the two opposite systems between which it stands as a mean term. I shall therefore now proceed, first to contrast at some length the two great systems of large and of small states, and then to show the way in which a Federal Government occupies a position intermediate between the two.! Speaking roughly, 1 understand by a small state one in which it is possible that all the citizens may, if their constitution allows or requires it, habitually assemble for political purposes in one place. By a large state I understand one in which such personal assemblage is impossible; onc, therefore, where, if the state he constitutional, the constitution must be of the representative kind. The large state, however, to have all the characteristics and advantages of a large state, must commonly be much larger than is absolutely necessary to answer the terms of this definition. But I by no means intend to confine the name to what are commonly understood by the name of Great Powers. All the Kingdoms of Europe, and even some principalities which are not Kingdoms, will count as large states for the purposes of this inquiry. All alike share the characteristics which distinguish them from the system of small states. The most perfect form of this last is found when every City, with its immediately sur- rounding territory, forms a commonwealth absolutely independent and enjoying all the rights of a sovereign power. 1 It may be objected that ἃ Federation may consist either of small or of large states as they are here defined. I shall recur to this point presently. ΤΠ CHARACTERISTICS OF THE INDEPENDENT CITY 15 --,--................-..... a ee This was the political system usual in the commonwealths of ancient Grecce and Italy, and it has been fully elucidated by the various great modern writers on Greck and Roman history, but most fully and elaborately by Mr. Grote. The ruling idea of the politicians of those ages was what Mr. Grote calls the “autono- Character- mous city-community.” A man’s “country,”! in those days, ners of the was not a region, but a city ;* his patriotism did not extend dent City. over a wide surface of territory, but was shut up within the walls of asingle town. His countrymen were nota whole nation of the same blood and language as himself, but merely those who shared with him in the local burghership of his native place. A Patriotism man, in short, was not a Greek or an Italian, but an Athenian ¢Bfined to ; . . . the City. or ἃ Koman. Undoubtedly he had a feeling, which may, in a certain sense, be called a patriotic feeling, for Greece or Italy as wholes, as opposed to Persia or Carthage. But this fecling was rather analogous to that which modern Europeans entertain for the great brotherhood of European and Christian nations, than to the national patriotism which an Englishman or a Frenchman entertains for England or France. The tie between Greek and Greek was indeed closer than the tic between European and Kuropean, but it was essentially a tie of the same kind. Real patriotism, the feeling which we extend to regions far larger than the whole of Greece, did not reach beyond the limits of a single Grecian city. This state of things is by no means peculiar to ancient: Greece and Italy ; traces of it are still to be seen in modern Europe ; and it existed in its full force in some European states down to very recent times. But it was in the brilliant times of ancient Greece and Italy that this system found its fullest developement, and that it made its nearest approach to being universal over the civilized world. In modern Europe independent cities have existed and flourished; a few indeed even now retain a nominal existence. But such independent cities have been, for the most part, merely exceptional cases, surrounded by larger states whose form of government was monarchical. In ancient Greece and Italy the independent city was the ruling political conception, and in ancient Greece, in the days of her greatest glory, it was the form of political life almost universally received. 1 ἸΙατρίς. The same use of the word is common in modern Greek. * Aristotle excludes from his definition of πόλις anything at all approaching to the size of a nation. Babylon is hardly a city—@ye περιγραφὴν ἔθνους μᾶλλον ἢ wodews, —Polit, iii. 8, 5. Of. Polyb. ii. 37. Full de- velope- ment of city-inde- pendence in Greece, Karly ap- proaches to Consti- tutional Monarchy, and to Federal Repub- licanism. Their com- parative wnimport- ance before the Mace- donian period. Municipal character of the Greek Common- wealths, CHARACTERISTICS OF FEDERAL GOVERNMENT 16 CHYAP. --- ee et Indeed the greater and more civilized the state, the more completely do we find the idea of municipal republicanism carried out. Neither of the other alternative forms of freedom, the constitutional monarchy and the Federal republic, was at any time absolutely unknown in the Grecian world. The polity of the Homeric age, the King or chief of each town, with a King of Kings at Mykéné as suzerain over at least all Peloponnésos, might conceivably have grown into a monarchy, first of the feudal, and then of the modern constitutional type. And, in the half-Greek states of Epeiros and Macedonia, we actually find that the heroic royalty did develope into something which may he fairly called a rude and early form of constitutional monarchy. The Epeirot Kings swore obedience to the laws; the Mace- donian, though a subject of a king, looked on himself as a freeman, and there were Macedonian assemblies which, however great may have been the royal influence, did impose at least some formal restraint upon the royal will! On the other hand, the robbers of Aiutolia, the respectable but obscure townships of the Achaian shore, and some other of the less advanced and less important members of the Hellenic body, possessed, as far back as we can trace their history, some germs of a polity which may fairly entitle them to rank among Federal commonwealths. But both the monarchic and the Federal states lagged for a long time far behind the purely municipal ones. In the Greece of Herodotos and Thucydidés, they play no distinguished part. In the Greece of Xenophin and Isokratés, they still remain far from prominent ; for the greatness of Thebes is really a muni- cipal and not a Federal greatness. In short, constitutional monarchy never attained any full developement in the ancient world, and Federalism became important only when the most brilliant days of Greece were past. Both in Greece and Italy, the most important states so early threw aside regal government altogether that the idea of the King ruling according to Law, though certainly not unknown to Greek political thinkers, had no opportunity to assume any fully-developed form. And though a day came when nearly all Greece was mapped out into Federal Republics, that day did not come till the system of perfectly 1 On the Macedonians and their Kings, see Edinburgh Review, vol. cv. (April, 1857), 317-20, and the note aud references in p. 327, See also Polybios, v. 27, 29; cf. Drumann, Geschichte des Verfalls, p. 23. Of the Molossian kingdom T shall have occasion to speak in my fourth Chapter. II THE GREEK CITY-COMMONWEALTHS 17 independent separate cities had run its short and glorious career. Throughout the most brilliant days of Greece, all the greatest Greek states were strictly sovereign municipalities. The political franchise of the state was co-extensive with the municipal franchise of the city. And this was equally true whether the form of government of that city was aristocratic or democratic. The difference between a Greek aristocracy and a aristo- Greek democracy was simply whether legislative power and °Ttic and + oy aye . : democratic eligibility to high office were extended to the whole, or confined to giiko, a part, of the class of hereditary burghers. In no case did they extend beyond that class; in no case could the freedman, the foreigner, or even the dependent ally, obtain citizenship by residence or even by birth in the land. He who was not the descendant of citizen ancestors could be enfranchised only by special decree of the sovereign Assembly. In the democracy and the oligarchy alike the City was the only political existence, the one centre of patriotism. To live at a distance so great that it was impossible to appear habitually at Assemblies held within its walls was felt to be equivalent to sentence of exile.t The essentially civic character of a Greek state was not even affected by the occurrence of that irregular form of Monarchy to which the Greeks gave the name of 7'yranny.2 Even the Tyrant is still Civic the Tyrant of the City; however oppressive his internal rule Tyranties. may be, he identifies himself with the military glory and out- ward prosperity of that particular city, and does not think of merging its separate being in any larger kingdom. He may conquer other cities by force of arms, but those cities are not incorporated like the annexations of modern potentates. Their inhabitants do not become the fellow-subjects of the inhabitants of the Tyrant’s own city; the conquered city remains a dependency of the conquering capital. It was not till Greece had, in the 1 «The natural limit of a democracy, is that distance from the central point, which will but just permit the most remote citizens to assemble as often as their public functions demand.”— Federalist, No. xiv. p. 71. This is equally true of all Greek commonwealths, aristocratic and democratic alike. 2 I shall, in my fifth Chapter, have occasion to speak more at length of the Greek Tyrannies. I will here only remark that I use the word throughout in its Greek sense. The Greek τύραννος is one who holds kingly power in a state whose laws do not recognize a King. He differs from the King (βασιλεύς) in the origin of his power, rather than in the mode of its exercise. The King may rule ill ; the Tyrant may (though he seldom does) rule well; still the authority of the King is lawful, that of the Tyrant is unlawful. In short, the word Hmperor, in its modern sense, exactly translates τύραννος ; but one cannot talk of an Emperor of Megalopolis. Condition of Depend- ent Cities in Greece. Difference between a dependent City and a member of a Federa- tion. 18 CHARACTERISTICS OF FEDERAL GOVERNMENT ~— cuHap. days of Macedonian influence, become familiarized with ex- tensive monarchies, that the old Tyranny of Dionysios gradually grew up, in the hands of Agathoklés and Hierdén, into something like a Kingdom of Sicily. Everywhere, whatever might be the internal form of government in the particular city, the autonomous town-community, owning no sovereign, no feudal or Federal superior, beyond its own walls, was the ruling political idea of Greece in her best days, and the more advanced and civilized was the state, the more closely did it cling to that one favourite ideal of a commonwealth. As in many other cases, we shall be better able to take in the force and prevalence of the rule by looking at cases which formed exceptions to 1.1 The sovereign and independent city was indeed the political ideal of Greece, but there were many Grecian cities which were far from being sovereign and inde- pendent. But this was simply because the force of some stronger city stood in the way of their sovereignty and independence. ‘There were many towns which were not independent ; but every town looked on independence as its right; every town which was not independent deemed its loss of independence to be an injury, and was constantly looking out for opportunities to recover the right of which it felt itself deprived. The call to make all Greeks autonomous was the popular cry set up by Sparta against imperial Athens.? But the condition of a city thus shorn of its sovereignty sets more clearly before us what the nature of the city-soverecignty was. Such a dependent city, as Mr. Grote has shown in the case of the allies of Athens, was by no means necessarily subjected to anything which we should call foreign oppression. It might, and in many cases did, retain its own laws, its own local administration, its own political constitution, oligarchic or democratic according to the strength of parties within its own walls. It might, or it might not, be subject to a tribute to the superior State; it might even, in some favoured cases, retain fleets and armies of its own, raised by its own government and commanded by its own officers. It is clear that a city in such a condition retains a degree of local independence far greater than is allowed to any merely municipal body in the least centralized of European kingdoms. Its condition at first sight seems rather to approach to the 1 On the relation of Dependent Alliance, see Arnold, Later Roman Common- wealth, i. 165, * Thucydidés, 1, 139 et al, II DEPENDENT CITIES IN GREECE 19 — purely internal sovereignty of a Swiss Canton or an American State. What it lacks of full sovereignty is exactly what they lack ; it lacks a separate being among the nations of the earth ; it cannot make war or conclude foreign alliances; its public quarrels are decided for it by a tribunal external to itself. Where then lies the difference? It is this. The municipality in a Constitutional Monarchy, the State in a Federal Republic, has indeed no direct corporate voice in the general administration, but that general administration is carried on by persons or bodies in whose appointment the citizens of the municipality or of the State have a direct or indirect voice. But a dependent city in Greece had its foreign relations marked out for it by a power over which it had no control whatever. An English town, as such, has nothing to do with peace or war, or with general taxation and legislation. But then laws are made and taxes are imposed by an Assembly to which that town sends representatives ; peace and war are virtually made by Ministers who are virtually appointed by that Assembly. An American State, sovereign as it is within its own sphere, has no more corporate voice than a mere municipality in those high national concerns which are entrusted to the Federal Government.! But then the Government to which those concerns are entrusted consists of a President and Congress in the choice of whom the citizens of that State have a voice no less than in the choice of their own local Governor and Legislature. Thus, in both cases, if national questions are not submitted to the smaller body in its corporate capacity, 1t is simply because, in relation to such questions, the citizens of the smaller body act directly as citizens of the larger. But in relation to this same class of questions, the citizens of a dependent Greek city had no means of acting at all. The most favoured ally of Athens, Chios, for instance, or Mityléné, quite as independent internally as an American State, had absolutely no voice, in any shape, in the general concerns of the Confederacy. So far were Chios and Mityléné from themselves declaring war and peace that they had no sort of control over those who did declare war and peace. Their fleets and armies were at the absolute bidding, not of a 2 The Federal Senators in the United States are indeed elected by the State Legislatures, and are held specially to represent the State Sovereignties. But the State Legislatures themselves are not consulted, and the Senators, when elected, vote as individuals, just like the Representatives, 20 CHARACTERISTICS OF FEDERAL GOVERNMENT ΟΗΔΡ, President in whose election their citizens had a voice, not of a King governed by Ministers whom their citizens indirectly chose, but at the bidding of the Assembly of the City of Athens, an Assembly in which no Chian or Mitylenean had a seat. A public dispute between Methymna and Mityléné was not judged, like a dispute between New York and Ohio,! by a Supreme Court nominated by a President of their own choice, but by the local tribunals of a distant city, over whose nomination they had not the slightest influence of any kind. In many respects the condition of a dependent Greek city resembled that of an English Colony. The two agree in most of those points which effectually distinguish both from the member of a Federation. Both, unlike the Confederate City or Canton, are strictly dependencies of a greater power. The Compari- Colony, like the Athenian ally, is independent internally, but its son with relations towards other nations are determined for it by a hae power over which neither the Colony nor its citizens have any sort of control.2 But there is one all-important difference between the British Colony and the Athenian Ally. The dis- qualifications of the colonist are purely local; he is a British subject equally with the inhabitants of Britain; he can come and live in England, and may become, no less than the native Englishman, elector, representative, or even Minister. The disqualifications of the Athenian ally were personal; the Chian or Mitylenean was not an Athenian, but a foreigner; if he transferred his residence to Athens, he lost his influence in his own city, while he acquired none in the city in which he dwelled. Partly because he personally remains an Englishman, partly because the instinct of perfect independence is not now so keenly felt as it was in old Greece, the colonist commonly acquiesces in the dependent position of his Colony. It is felt that dependence is more than counterbalanced by perfect internal freedom combined with the gratuitous protection of the mother- country. As long as the mother-country abstains from practical oppression, as long as the Colony does not become so strong as to make dependence palpably incongruous, an English Colony has really no temptation to separate. But, in a dependent Greek city, the citizens were personally in an inferior position to the citizens of the ruling state, while the city itself was deprived of a 1 See Tocqueville, Démocratie en Amérique, i. 254. 2 See Lewis, Government of Dependencies, p. 155 et seqq. 11 DEPENDENCIES COMPARED WITH ENGLISH COLONIES 21 power to which the political instinct of the Greek mind held that it had an inherent right. The sway of Athens did not necessarily involve either actual oppression! or any loss of purely local freedom ; it was the loss of all share in Sovereignty in the highest sense which the Greek city deplored when it was reduced to a condition of dependent alliance. It follows therefore that a system like the Athenian Alliance or Empire always remained a system of detached units. A areek city either remained independent, retaining its full sovereign rights, or else it became more or less dependent upon some stronger city. There was no means by which it was No means possible to fuse any large number of cities, like the members of Incor- of the Athenian Alliance, into a single body with equal rights poration common to all. A Federal Union easily effects this end, but it the system effects it only by depriving each city of the most precious attri- οἵ mee butes of separate sovereignty. A Constitutional Monarchy, by ities, means of the representative system, also easily effects it, though of course at a still greater sacrifice of local independence. Even under a despotism, there is not the slightest need for placing the inhabitants of a conquered, ceded, or inherited province in any worse position than the inhabitants of the original kingdom. But a Greek city had no choice but either absolute independence or a position of decided inferiority to some other city. It is clear that a city-commonwealth can incorporate only within very narrow limits. In such a commonwealth the city itself is every- thing in a way into which the inhabitants of large kingdoms can hardly enter. And the representative system, by which all the inhabitants of a large country are enabled to have a share in the government, is not likely to occur to men’s minds in such a state of things. Every citizen in a Democracy, every citizen of the ruling order in an Aristocracy, deems it his inalienable right to discharge his political functions in his own person. Conse- quently incorporation cannot be carried out over an extent of 1 That there were isolated cases of oppression on the part of individual Athenian commanders, like Pachés, there is no doubt. But there was certainly no habitual oppression on the part of the Athenian government. This has been forcibly brought out by Mr. Grote (vi. 47, aud elsewhere). See also North British Review, May 1856, p. 169. Cf. Lewis, Government of Dependencies, p. 102. I have drawn my picture of a Greek dependent city from the most favoured of the Athenian allies. But the condition of different allies of Athens differed much ; and the position of a dependency of Sparta or Thebes in the next generation was far inferior to that of the least favoured subject of Athens. Incorpo- ration carried as far as pos- sible by Athens, in the case of the old Attic Cities. Impossible in the case of the later Athenian Empire. 22 CHARACTERISTICS OF FEDERAL GOVERNMENT onap. territory so large as to prevent the whole ruling body from habitually assembling in the city. Athens indeed, in a remote and unchronicled age, actually carried incorporation as far as a city-commonwealth could carry it. There is no record of the causes and circumstances of the change, but there is no reason- able doubt that the smaller towns of Attica, Eleusis, Marathon, and the rest, were once independent states! which were after- wards incorporated with Athens, not as subjects of the ruling commonwealth, but as municipal towns whose inhabitants possessed the common Athenian franchise equally with the inhabitants of the capital.2 But then Attica was not so large a territory as to hinder all its free inhabitants from frequently meeting together in a capital whose position was admirably central. All Attica therefore was really incorporated with Athens. Athens became the only City, in the highest sense, in all Attica, and all the free inhabitants of Attica became her citizens. But this incorporation, which geographical position rendered possible in the case of old Attic towns, could never have been extended to all the members of the later Athenian Empire. If the jealousy of the Sovereign People could have stooped to communicate its franchise to subjects, or even to allies, it was utterly impossible that the rights of Athenian citizens could have been exercised by the inhabitants of Rhodes or of Byzantium. Even a Federal Union, except one which admitted the representative principle, could hardly have bound together such distant members; to unite them into a single commonwealth of the ancient type was physically impossible. 1 See North British Review, May 1856, p. 150. * There can be no doubt that this incorporation was the main cause of the great power and importance of Athens. As such, it is one of the great events in the history of the world. No other Greek city possessed so large an immediate territory, or so great a number of free and equal citizens, The territory of Sparta was much larger ; but then Sparta held the Lakonian towns as subjects ; their inhabitants had no voice in general politics ; whatever freedom they had was merely that of municipalities under a despotism, Thebes called herself the head of a Beeotian League, but the sinaller Boeotian towns, as we shall see when we reach that part of her history, looked on her as a Tyrant rather than a President. A Beeotian town was practically a subject dependency of Thebes, but throughout Attica, a territory hardly smaller than Bootia, the smaller towns were free muni- cipalities, and their inhabitants were citizens of Athens. This was a wonderful advantage, precluding all fear of internal treason or discontent, There is a dialogue in Xenophdn, comparing Beotia and Athens at length, in which the Athenians are always set against the Boeotians as a whole, not against the Thebans only. οὐκοῦν οἶσθα, ἔφη, ὅτι πλήθει μὲν οὐδὲν μείους εἰσὶν ᾿Αθηναῖοι Βοιωτῶν ; οἷδα γὰρ, épn.—Xen. Mem. iii. 5, 2. II INCORPORATION OF DEPENDENCIES 23 So in later times, wherever the system of city-commonwealvths existed, we find subject cities and districts following naturally in the wake of other cities, which bear rule over them. We find Depen- the system of the Athenian Empire followed, even in cases ‘encies of where no geographical obstacle prevented the imitation of the metiieeval earlier Athenian system of incorporation. Venice, Genoa, modern Florence, held sway over other cities and districts, sometimes Italian near neighbours, sometimes dependencies beyond the sea. In” ” both cases the subject countries often retained large municipal privileges, but in neither case did the Sovereign City ever dream of conferring on their inhabitants any share in its own more exalted rights. So in the old state of things in Switzerland, and of both the League as a whole and many of the several Cantons, ®w!s democratic Uri no less than oligarchic Bern, assumed the Cantons. character of despotic sovereigns over subject districts, which they too often governed yet more purely in the interest of the sovereign state than had been done by Athens or Venice. In short among city-commonwealths, where the Federal principle is not admitted, absolute political independence or absolute political subjection are the only alternatives. Once only in the history of the world has incorporation on a large scale been tried in the case of a city-commonwealth. And in that one case the experi- ment undoubtedly failed. The geographical position of Rome allowed an extension of the Roman franchise far wider than was possible with the franchise of Athens or of any other Greek Effects of city. From the narrow limits of the old Ayer Romanus the tion ot freedom of the Roman city was gradually spread over the whole Rome. of Italy, and, when it had long ceased to confer any real political rights, its name was further extended to the inhabitants of the whole civilized world. Within certain bounds, this liberal extension of the franchise made Rome the greatest and mightiest of all cities. But the same system, carried beyond those bounds, led directly to the destruction of Roman freed,» Federation was not tried ; it would have been inconsistent with the dignity of the Sovereign City. Representation was unheard of ; so the hundreds and thousands of citizens of the allicd states were gradually admitted to a personal vote in the Roman Assembly. The result naturally was that the Assembly became at last a frantic and ungovernable mob, utterly incapable of peaceful deliberation. When called on to discharge any political func- tions, to pass a law or to elect a magistrate, it commonly Town- autonomy in medie- val Europe. 24 CHARACTERISTICS OF FEDERAL GOVERNMENT onap. eee ee appealed at once to violence, murder, perhaps to open civil war. From such a state of things even the despotism of the Caesars was felt to be a relief. The Athenian, Venetian, or Bernese system was much as if the local Livery of London were invested with the supreme power over the whole United Kingdom, leav- ing to the other towns and counties full municipal, but only municipal, independence. The Roman system was as if the Livery of London were invested with the supreme power, every elector in the United Kingdom being at the same time invested with the freedom of the City. Greece then was the true home of the system of independent city-commonwealths, the land where the system reached its fullest and its most brilliant developement, the land where its good and its evil results may be most fairly balanced against each other. In ancient Italy the system hardly attained to full perfection ; it was modified by a far stronger tendency than in Greece to unite many cities by a Federal tie, and also by the steady and increasing power of the one City of Rome. In modern, and even in medieval, Europe Town-autonomy has always had but a comparatively feeble life. Many common- wealths of Italy, Germany, and the old Burgundian Kingdon,’ have attained to fame, wealth, and power; but, even in the most brilliant days of medieval Italy, town-autonomy was the exception and not the rule. Most European states, great and small, have always been monarchies. Such city-commonwealths as have existed have always had a far greater tendency than in Greece, sometimes to join themselves into Confederacies, some- times to degenerate from great Cities into petty Principalities.* And, in truth, the perfect city-autonomy of old Greece could not exist in medieval Europe. The still abiding life of the Roman 1 See National Review, April 1859, p. 337. 21 must remark, once for all, that medixval history cannot be properly understood unless it be fully understood that the Kingdom of Burgundy, the region between the Saone, the Alps, and the Mediterranean, is historically no part of France. It has been gradually acquired by the Kings and “ Emperors ” of Paris, by a series of stealthy robberies (r¢unions), reaching from the thirteenth century to the nineteenth. Part of the country still retains its freedom as the Western Cantons of Switzerland. Lyons, Besancon, Marseilles, were anciently Free Cities of the Empire; they have been swallowed up, while Geneva and Bern have as yet escaped ; that is the only difference. 3 Most of the points touched on in this paragraph I have worked out more at large in the Oxford Essays for 1857, Ancient Greece and Medieval Italy, p. 156 et seqq. Ul TOWN-AUTONOMY IN MEDIAVAL EUROPE 25 Empire forbade it. Tho parts of Europe where the cities Indepen- attained to the greatest splendour lay within the bounds of one dence of or other of the monarchies which retained the style and imperial ὌΝ pretensions of old Rome. Cherson! and the Campanian Re- by the publics were dependencies of the Byzantine Emperor ; so was Claims of Venice, in name at least, long after she had attained to practical perore ; independence. The other cities which possessed republican constitutions, in Italy, Germany, Switzerland, Provence, and the Netherlands,” all lay within the limits of the Empire of the West. However carefully the Imperial power might be limited in practice, no commonwealth absolutely denied its existence in theory. The city then was not absolutely independent ; it had an earthly superior, entitled always to honorary respect, often to some measure of practical obedience. A Greek city owned no king but Zeus ; a German or Italian city had at least a nominal king in Cesar.2 The title of “Free Imperial City,” borne as a badge of honour by many a proud medieval commonwealth, would have sounded like a contradiction in terms in the ears of an Athenian. Venice alone, through. her peculiar position and her peculiar policy, obtained complete independence in name as well as fact. The island city retained her nominal allegiance to the Emperor of the East till she became strong enough to dispense with all recognition of the successor either of Con- stantine or of Charles. But even Florence and Genoa in the days of their might would ‘hardly have denied that some vague and shadowy superiority over them belonged of right to the chosen King of Germany and Italy, the crowned and anointed Emperor of the Romans. From all these causes, the independ- ence of city-commonwealths, even in medieval, and still more in modern, Europe, must be looked on as merely a secondary element, existing only in an imperfect shape. It is to old Greece that we must ever look for its one great and splendid manifestation. 1 For the deeply-interesting history of Cherson, literally the Last of the Greek Republics, see Finlay, Byzantine Empire, i. 415 [History of Greece, ii. 350] et 5844. * Strictly speaking, the cities in the County of Flanders should be excepted, as Flanders, or its greatest portion, was a fief of the Crown of France. But the history of Flanders can hardly be separated from that of the neighbouring and kindred provinces which were all fiefs of the Empire. Provence, of course, was not French till late in the fifteenth century. 3 The Emperor of course was supreme, in theory at least, everywhere. But the independence of a town was often much more practically modified by the neighbourhood of some local Duke, Count, or Bishop. General view of the system of Inde- pendent Cities. Varieties in internal Canstitu- tions. 26 CHARACTERISTICS OF FEDERAL GOVERNMENT cuHap. Let us now strive to picture to ourselves the condition of a country whose great political doctrine is that of the perfect independence of each separate city. Such a land is crowded with towns, each of them acknowledging no superior upon earth and exercising all the rights of sovereignty as fully as the mightiest empires. Within limits, it may be, less than those of an English county, among a people one in blood, language, manners, and religion, you may pass, in a short day’s journey, through several independent states, each of which makes war and peace at its pleasure, and whose relations to its neighbours are regulated only by the public Law of Nations. From any lofty peak you may look down on several capitals ata glance, and see the territory of several sovereign commonwealths lying before you asin a map. Within this narrow compass there may be perfect examples of every varying shade of political constitu- tion! In one city pure Democracy may reign; magistrates may be chosen, laws may be enacted, treaties may be ratified, by an Assembly in which every free citizen has an equal voice. In another, an hour or two from its gates, all power may be in the hands of a narrow Oligarchy, who bind themselves by vath to be evil-minded to the People? In a third, at no greater distance, we may even find that name of fear, the Tyrant—the ruler whose power rests on no hereditary right, on no popular choice, but who dwells entrenched in his citadel, lording it over unwilling subjects by the spears of foreign mercenaries. Thus, within this narrow compass, we may see every form of govern- ment in its extremest shape, and we may see them too in all those intermediate forms by which each shades off imperceptibly into the others. We may see Democracies in which an acknow- ledged sovereignty of the People is found not to be inconsistent 1 (This is well brought out by Piitter in regard to the Germany of his day, Hist. Entw. der heutigen Staatsverf. des teutschen Reichs, ii. 162. ‘‘ Kurz was irgend einem, der mehrere unabhingige Staaten in Kuropa bereiset, deren Verschiedenheit in Verfassung, Gesetzen und anderen Ejinrichtungen begreiflich machen kann, das wird einen Reisenden in ‘Teutschland bald eben so deutlich, und oft noch viel auffallender belehren, dass es ganz verschiedene Staaten sind, wo er oft, nicht halbe Tagereisen braucht, um bald republicanische, bald monarchische, bald eingeschrinkte, bald beynahe despotische, bald erbliche, bald auf Wahlfreyheit beruhende Regierungsformen wahrzunehmen, um mit jedem neuen Gebiete wieder ganz andere Cesetze, ganz andere Miinzen, andere Posten, andere Soldaten zu finden.” 2 Arist. Pol. v. [viii] 9, 11. Nov μὲν γὰρ ἐν ἐνίαις [ὀλιγαρχίαις] ὀμνύουσι “Kal τῷ δήμῳ κακόνους ἔσομαι, καὶ βουλεύσω ὃ τι ἂν ἔχω κακόν.᾽" Π GENERAL ASPECT OF CITY-COMMONWEALTHS 27 with the practical ascendancy of a high-born and wealthy class, the leaders of the People but not their masters. We may see Aristocracies, where the ruling order is not a band of sworn oppressors, but a race of hereditary chiefs, submitted to, if not with cordial love, at least with traditional respect. We may aven see Tyrannies, where the Tyrant would scarcely, in modern language, deserve the name, where he is sometimes hardly to be distinguished from a popular chief, sometimes hardly to be distinguished from a hereditary King.’ And _ besides every variety of internal government, we may also see, within this same narrow compass, every possible variety of political relation between city and city. For, though every city claims inde- pendent sovereignty as its right, it may well be that every city is not strong enough practically to maintain that right. One city may stand absolutely alone, neither ruling over others, nor Varieties ruled by others, nor yet entering into habitual alliance with any Ἢ externa other power.? Others, though not connected by anything which | eranions: can be called a Federal tic, may yet be attached to each other by ancient affection ; they may be accustomed to have friends and enemies in common, and they may, without resigning any portion of their independent sovereignty, habitually follow the political lead of some mightier and more venerable city. Others may have sunk from independent into dependent alliance ; their internal laws and government may be their own, but their fleets and armies may be at the absolute control of another state.‘ 1 Tn the Islands and in the colonies Tyranny seems to have been less carefully distinguished from lawful Kingship than in continental Greece. Pindar freely applies the name βασιλεύς to the Sicilian Tyrants, but it may be doubted whether Herodotos, when speaking in his own person, ever distinctly applies the name to any Tyrant. This has been pointed ont by a writer in the National Review 1862, p. 300. The Tyrannies, both in continental Greece and in the colonies, must be care- fully distinguished from the few cases of lawful Kingship which lingered on in a few outlying places, Salamis in Cyprus for instance, long after its general abolition. 2 See the policy of Korkyra as set forth in Thucydidéy, i, 32, 37. 8 This was the condition of the Peloponnesian allies of Sparta during the great Peloponnesian War. Lacedamén took the habitual lead, but matters of common interest were debated by the voices of the whole Confederacy, and each city was free to act, or not to act, as itthought good. Sce Thuc. i. 125; v. 30; Grote, vi. 105. It is instructive to see how, after the temporary conclusions following the Peace of Nikias (B.c. 421), the different states gradually fell back into their old places and relations, Cf. Xen. Hell. vii. 4, 8. 4 This was the condition of Chios, Mityléné, and the other allies of Athens which never exchanged contributions of men for contributions of money. See Grote, vi. 2. Different relation between the City and its Territory. 28 CHARACTERISTICS OF FEDERAL GOVERNMENT ~— cHAP. @ Or they may even be without any fleet or army of their own ; they may pay tribute to some imperial city, which engages in return to defend them against all aggressors! Or some unhappy cities may have fallen lower still; dependent alliance may have sunk into absolute subjection. Law and life and property may all be at the absolute command of a foreign governor, for whom even the domestic Tyrant would be a good exchange. And his yoke may be embittered rather than alleviated, when his power is supported by the intrigues of degenerate citizens who find their private advantage in the degradation of their native city.” Again, as there may be every conccivable variety of relation between city and city, so we may also find, within the same narrow compass, every conceivable variety of relation between the city itself and its surrounding territory. In one district, as we have seen in the case of Attica, every free inhabitant, that is every man who is neither a slave nor a foreigner,® enjoys the full franchise of the City, votes in its Assemblies, and is eligible to its honours. In another, the rural inhabitants may be per- sonally free, protected by the laws in all their private rights, but shut out from the political franchise, subjects in short, rather than citizens, of the sovereign commonwealth.4 In the third, the City, the abode of free warrior-nobles, may be surrounded by lands tilled for them by serfs, Lakonian Helots or Thessalian Penests, whose highest privilege is to be the slaves of the Commonwealth, and not the slaves of any individual master. But, in all these cases alike, the City is the only recognized political existence. Each city is either sovereign or deems itself wronged by being shorn of sovereignty. At a few miles from the gates of one independent city we may find another, speaking the same tongue, worshipping the same gods, sharing in the same national festivals, but living under different municipal laws, different political constitutions, with a different coinage, different 1 This was the condition of the great mass of the Athenian allies. 2 This was the condition of the extra-Peloponnesian allies of Sparta after the great victory of Aigospotamos (B.c. 405). On the harmosts and dekarchies, see Grote, ix. 271 et seqq.; Isok. Panath. 58. 4 It must be of course borne in mind that the children of a foreigner, though born in the land, still remained foreigners, This seems strange to us as applied to the question of nationality, but it is simply the rule of burghership as it was carried out in many an old English borough. 4 This is essentially the condition of the Lakonian περίοἰϊκο. They had towns, but all notion of their separate political being was so utterly lost, that their inhabitants had more in common with ἃ rural population, II ADVANTAGES OF SMALL COMMONWEALTHS 29 weights and measures, different names, it may be, for the very months of the year, levying duties at its frontiers, making war, making peace, sending forth its Ambassadors under the pro- tection of the Law of Nations, and investing the bands which wage its border warfare with all the rights of the armies and the commanders of belligerent empires. : Now what is the comparative gain and loss of such a political system as this? There are great and obvious advantages, balanced by great and obvious drawbacks. Let us first look Compara- αὖ the bright side of a system to which the nation on which [108 gain the world must ever look as its first teacher owed the most ane syste brilliant pages of that history which still remains the text-book of all political knowledge. First of all, it is clear that, in a system of city-commonwealths, Advan- the individual citizen is educated, worked up, improved, to the oe of highest possible pitch. Every citizen in the Democracy, every common- citizen of the ruling order in the Aristocracy, is himself states- wealths. man, judge, and warrior. English readers are apt to blame such a government as the Athenian Democracy for placing power in hands unfit to use it. The truer way of putting the case would be to say that the Athenian Democracy made a greater number of citizens fit to use power than could be made fit by any other system. No mistake can be greater than to suppose Political that the popular Assembly at Athens was a mob such as gathers Fdtteation at some English elections, or such as the Assembly of the Roman jnaiviaual Tribes undoubtedly became in its later days. It was not an Citizen. indiscriminate gathering together of every male human being to be found in the streets of Athens. Citizenship was some- thing definite ; if it was a right, it was also a privilege. The citizen of Athens was in truth placcd in something of an aristocratic position; he looked down upon the vulgar herd of slaves, freedmen, and unqualified residents, much as his own plebeian fathers had been looked down upon by the old Eupatrids in the days before Kleisthenés and Solén.t The Athenian Assembly was an assembly of citizens, of ordinary citizens 1 This quasi-aristocratic position of the citizen necessarily follows trom the nature of a civic franchise. The freedom of the city could be acquired only by inheritance or by special grant. But in a great commercial and imperial city like Athens a large unqualified population naturally arose, among whom the citizens held a sort of aristocratic rank. Such an unqualified population may exist either in an Oligarchy or in a Democracy, and their position is legally the 90 CHARACTERISTICS OF FEDERAL GOVERNMENT οσηάρ. without sifting or selection ; but it was an assembly of citizens among whom the political average stood higher than it ever did in any other state. Our own House of Commons, though same in either case. The difference between Oligarchy and Democracy is a difference within the citizen class. In a Democracy civil and political rights are coextensive ; in an Oligarchy political rights are confined to a portion only of those who enjoy civil rights. The really weak point of Greek Democracy is one which T have not mentioned in the text, because I wish to make my remarks as far as possible applicable to city-commonwealths in general, whether aristocratic or democratic. Each gives the same political education to those who exercise political rights ; the difference is that in the Democracy this education is extended to all the citizens, in the Aristocracy it is confined to a part of them. The real special weakness of pure Democracy is that it almost seems to require slavery as a necessary condition of its existence. It is hard to conceive that a large body of men, like the qualified citizens of Athens, can ever give so large a portion of their time as the Athenians did to the business of ruling and judging (ἄρχειν καὶ δικάζειν), without the existence of an inferior class to relieve them from at least the lowest and most menial duties of their several callings. Slavery therefore is commonly taken for granted by Greek political thinkers. In Aristotle’s ideal city (Pol. vii. 10, 13) the earth is to be tilled either by slaves or by barbarian περίοικοι. In an Aristocracy no such constant demands are made on the time of the great mass of the citizens ; in an Aristocracy therefore slavery is not theoretically necessary. It might therefore be argued that Democracy, as requiring part of the population to be in absolute bondage, was really less favourable to freedom than to Aristocracy. In the Aristocracy, it might be said, though the political rights of the ordinary citizen were narrower, it was still possible that every human being might be personally free. But the experience of Grecian history docs not bear out such an inference. Slavery was no special sin of Democracy ; it was an imstitution common to the whole ancient world, quite irrespective of particular forms of government. And in fact, the tone of feeling, the general sentiment of freedom and equality, engendered by a democratic constitution, actually benefited those who were without the pale of citizenship or even of personal freedom. It must doubtless have been deeply galling to a wealthy μέτοικος, whose ancestors had per- haps lived at Athens for several generations, to see the meanest hereditary burgher preferred to him on all occasions. It must have been more galling than it was in a city like Coriuth, where strangers and citizens were alike subject to the ruling order. But Democracy really benefited both the slave and the stranger. The slave was far better off in democratic Athens than in aristocratic Sparta or Chios. (On the Chian slaves, see Thuc. viii. 40.) The author of the strange libel on the Athenian Commonwealth attributed to Xenophén makes it a sign of the bad government of Athens that an Athenian could not venture to beat a stranger (μέτοικος) or another man’s slave! (Xen. de Rep. Ath. i. 10.) This accusation speaks volumes as to the condition of slaves and strangers in aristocratic cities. {With the μέτοικοι at Athens, cf. the Natifs at Geneva; Miiller, Hist. de la Conféderation Suisse (Continuation), xv. 275 sqq. ] In modern times the experiment of a perfectly pure Democracy, one, that is, in which every citizen has a direct vote on all questions, has been confined to a few rural Cautons, where the demands on the citizen’s time are immeasurably smaller than they must be in a great city. The question of slavery therefore has not arisen. American slavery is, of course, a wholly different matter. On the general subject of ancient citizenship, see Arnold, Thuc. vol. iii. p. xv. (Preface. ) II POLITICAL EDUCATION OF THE CITIZENS 31 a select body, does not necessarily consist of the, 658 -wi men among the British people. Many of its mémbers will Compari- always be mere average citizens, neither better nor worse 398 with than many among their constituents. A town sends a wealthy tne une: ish House and popular trader, an average specimen of his class. A county of Com- sends a wealthy and popular country gentleman, an average ™S- specimen of his class. Very likely several of those who vote for them are much deeper political thinkers than themselves. But the average member so elected, if he really be up to the average and not below it, will derive unspeakable benefit from his political education in the House itself. He cannot fail to learn much from the mere habit of exercising power in an assembly at once free and orderly, and from the opportunity of hearing the speeches and following the guidance of those who are really fitted to be the leaders of men. ‘This sort of advantage, this good political education, which the English constitution gives to some hundreds of average Englishmen, the Athenian constitution gave to some thousands of average Athenians. Doubtless an assembly of thousands was_ less orderly than an assembly of hundreds ; but it must never be thought that the Athenian Ekklésia was a mere unruly crowd, ignorant of all order and impatient of all restraint. The mode of proceeding was regulated by fixed rules just as much as the proceedings of our Parliaments. As far as we know the history of Athenian debates, breaches of order were rare, and scenes of actual violence—common enough in the Roman Forum—vwere absolutely unknown. It was surely no slight gain to bring so many human beings into a position habitually to hear—and that not as mere spectators, but as men with an interest and a voice in the matter—the arguments for and against a proposal brought forward by Themistoklés and Aristeidés, by Periklés and Thucydidés, by Kleédn and Nikias, by Démosthenés and Phékién.t It is the habitual practice of so doing which is the true gain. Popular assemblies which are brought together only at rare intervals are incapable of wise political action, almost incapable of free and regular debate. The Parliament Contrast of Florence, for instance, was a mere tumultuous mob, which wien te Parlia- 1 Tocqueville, Dém. en Am. ii. 241, ‘‘C’est en participant ἃ la législation ment. que l’Américain apprend a connaitre les lois; c’est en gouvernant qu'il s’instruit des formes du gouvernement.” How much more truly could this be said of the Athenian. Compari- son of the Athenian citizen and the English member. Connexion of Athe- nian his- tory with the subject state of things to which they were applied. of Fede- ralism. 32 CHARACTERISTICS OF FEDERAL GOVERNMENT σῃάρ, seldom did anything except vote away its own liberties. Such a political franchise could give no political education whatever. But the Athenian citizen, by constantly hearing questions of foreign policy and domestic administration freely argued by the greatest orators that the world ever saw, received a political education which nothing else in the history of mankind has ever been found to equal.? The ordinary Athenian citizen then must really be compared, not with the English ten-pound householder, but with the English Member of Parliament in the rank-and-file of his party. In some respects indeed the political education of the Athenian was higher than any which a private member in our Parliament can derive from his parhamentary position. The comparison is instructive in itself, and it is more closely connected with my immediate subject than might at first sight appear. When I come to the political history of the Achaian League, I shall have to compare the working of popular government, as applied to a large Confederation of cities, with its working as applied, on the one hand, to a single city like Athens, and, on the other, to a large country, whether a republic or a constitutional monarchy. I shall then show how the principles of the Achaian constitution, no less democratic in theory than the Athenian constitution, were modified in practice by the requirements of the wholly different Athens, in short, is the typical City and the typical Democracy. A clear view of the Athenian constitution is absolutely necessary in order to understand, as we go on, the modifications which later Greek Federalism introduced into the old ideal of the democratic city. I therefore do not scruple, with this ulterior purpose, to enlarge somewhat more fully on Athenian political life than would be of 1 One of the few faults in M. de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America is his failure to appreciate the Greek republics. Such words as the following sound strange indeed to one who knows what Athens really was. ‘Quand je conipare les républiques greeque et romaine a ces républiques d’Amérique ; [65 bibliotheques manuscrites des premitres et leur populace grossi¢re aux mille journanx qui sillonnent les secondes et au peuple cclairé qui les habite,” ete. (ii, 227). Fancy the people who heard and appreciated A’schylus, Periklés, aud Aristophanés, called a “ populace grossi¢re,” because they had no newspapers to enlighten them! And this by a writer who, in his own walk, ranks deservedly among the profoundest of political philosophers. It is some comfort that Lord Macaulay, at all events, could have set him right. See the well-known and most brilliant passage on the working of the Athenian System in his Essay on Boswell’s Life of Johuson. I ATHENIAN DEMOCRACY 33 itself necessary in a comparison between the system of separate city-commonwealths and the system of larger states. The Athenian citizen, the Achaian citizen, the English Member of Parliament, resemble each other in being members of popular bodies each invested with the most important powers in their respective countries. But the functions of the three are not exactly the same, nor is the political education received by the three exactly of the same kind. The Athenian had the highest political education of all, because he had the highest responsibility of all. The comparison between Athens and Achaia I will put off to another Chapter; I will now rather try to show what the Athenian political education really was by comparing the powers and responsibilities of the ordinary Athenian citizen with those of an ordinary Member of our own House of Commons. There can be no doubt that an Athenian citizen who habitu- ally and conscientiously discharged his political duties was called on for ἃ more independent exercise of judgement, for a more careful weighing of opposing arguments, than is_ practically required of the English private member. ‘The functions of the Greater Athenian Assembly were in a few respects more limited, but, 7esponsi- on the whole, they were much more extensive than those of the ard English House of Commons. The Assembly was more directly Athenian a governing body. Démos was, in truth, King, Minister, and citizen Parliament, all in one. In our own system the written Law ΠΝ Οὗ the ) ; y W English entrusts the choice of Ministers, the declaration of war, the Member. negociation of peace, in general the government of the country as distinguished from its legislation, to the hereditary Sovereign. But the conventional Constitution adds that all these powers Position shall be exercised by the advice of Ministers who, as chosen by οἱ the " . . . ele nglish the Sovereign out of the party which has the majority in the winistry. House, may be said to be indirectly chosen by the House itself. These Ministers, ἃ body unknown to the written Law, but the most important element in the unwritten Constitution, exercise royal power during the pleasure of the House.? As long as they 1 Matters of Legislation, which we think so pre-eminently the business of a popular Assembly, were at Athens by no means wholly in the hands of the Ekklésia. Its powers were a good deal narrowed by the institution of the Nomo- thetes (see Grote, v. 500). On the other hand, the Assembly exercised exactly those functions of electing to offices, and declaring war and peace, any direct share in which we carefully refuse to the House of Commons, 2 With us a body which has no existence in the eye of the Law exercises the chief power in the name of the Sovereign and during the pleasure of the House D Received duties of the private Member. Different duties of the Athenian Citizen. 3-4 CHARACTERISTICS OF FEDERAL GOVERNMENT — cHap. retain the confidence of the House, they take the management of things into their own hands! The House asks questions; it calls for papers; it approves or censures after the fact; but its vote is not directly taken beforehand on questions of peace, war, alliance, or other matters of administration. It leaves such matters to the Ministers as long as it trusts them; if it ceases to trust them, it takes measures which practically amount to their deposi- tion. No Minister remains in office after a direct vote of censure, or even after the rejection of a Government motion which he deems of any importance. He may indeed dissolve Parliament ; that is, he appcals to the country. But if the new Parliament confirm the hostile vote of the old one, he has then no escape ; he is hopelessly driven to resignation. No Minister receives instructions from the House as to the policy which he is to carry out; least of all, when he rises in his place in Parliament to advo- cate one policy, is he bidden by the House to go to his office and take the requisite administrative steps for carrying out another policy. Hence, under our present parliamentary system, the average member is in truth seldom called on to exercise a per- fectly independent judgement on particular questions of import- ance. He exercises his judgement once for all, when ke decides whether he will support or oppose the Ministry ; by that decision his subsequent votes are for the most part determined. Whether this is a high state of political morality may well be doubted ; it is enough for our present purpose that it is the political morality commonly received. Matters were widely different in the Athenian Assembly. Every citizen who sat there exercised much higher functions than those of an English private member. He sat there as a member of a body which was directly, and not indirectly, sovereign. [lis own share of that corporate sover- eignty it was his duty to discharge according to his own personal of Commons. We shall presently have to contrast this with the Achaian and American system by which a magistrate, chosen for a fixed time, exercises nearly the same powers in his own person, Athens differs from all these by what may be called vesting the royal authority in the House of Commons itself. 1 The gradual change of political language and political habits is curious. The Sovereign no longer presides at a Cabinet Council, because the practical function of the Ministers is no longer to advise the Sovereign, but to act for themselves, subject to responsibility to Parliament. Therefore it has of late become usual to apply the name of ‘‘Government”’ to the body which used tc be content with the humbler title of ‘ Ministry” or ‘‘ Administration.” Its members are felt, subject to their parliamentary responsibility, to be the real rulers, II COMPARISON BETWEEN ATHENS AND ENGLAND 35 convictions. Athens had no King, no President, no Premier ; The As- she had curtailed the once kingly powers of her Archons till sem>ly ἃ they were of no more political importance than Aldermen or ; ont as Police Magistrates. She had no Cabinet, no Council of Ministers, well as a no Council of State! The Assembly was, in modern political Patla- language, not only a Parliament but a Government. There was’ indeed a Senate, but that Senate was not a distinct or external Function: body : it was a Committee of the Assembly, appointed to put οἱ me matters in regular order for the Assembly to discuss. There” ’ were Magistrates, high in dignity and authority —the ten Generals, on whom, far more than on the pageant Archons, rested the real honours and burthens of office. But those of the Magistrates were chosen hy the Assembly itsclf for a definite Gener. time ; it was from the Assembly itsclf that they received those instructions which, in all modern states, whether despotic, con- stitutional, or republican, would issue from the ‘“ Government.” There was nothing at Athens at all analogous to what we call Nothing “ Office” and “ Opposition.” Periklés, Nikias, Phokion, appeared @nalogons | . . to “ Office in the Assembly, as Generals of the Republic, to propose what ang «op. measures they thought fit for the good of the state. Their pro- position.” posals, as coming at once from official men and from eloquent and honourable citizens, were doubtless always listened to with respect. But the acceptance of these proposals was by no means a matter of course; their rejection did not involve immediate resignation, nor did it even imply the rejection of their proposcrs at the next yearly choice of Magistrates. The Assembled People was sovereign ; as sovereign, it listened to its various counsellors and reserved the decision to itself. Periklés, Nikias, and Phokién, were listened to; but Thucydidés,? Kleén, and Démosthenés were listened to also, and their amendments, or their substantive pro- posals, had as fair a chance of being carried as those of the Generals of the commonwealth. A preference given to the pro- posal of another citizen involved no sort of censure on the official 1 T cannot but think that Mr. Grote, to whom, more than to any other man, we are indebted for true views of the Athenian Democracy, has been sometimes led astray by his own English parliamentary experience. He clearly looks on Nikias and other official men as coming nearer to the English idea of a ‘ Govern- ment,” and Kle6n and other demagogues as coming nearer to the English idea of a “Leader of Opposition,’ than the forms of the Athenian commonwealth allowed. TI have tried to set this forth at some length in an article in the North British Review, May, 1856, p. 157. 2 I mean of course Thucydidés son of Melésias, the rival of Perikl¢s ; quite a different person from Thucydidés the historian. B.C. 415. Direct Di- plomatic action of the As- sembly, BG. 343. Effect of these powers on individual citizens, 36 CHARACTERISTICS OF FEDERAL GOVERNMENT σπλρ. man who was thus placed in a minority; it in no way affected his political position, or implicd any diminished confidence on the part of the People. The Sovercign Assembly listened patiently to the arguments of Nikias against the Sicilian expe- dition, and then sent him, with unusual marks of confidence, to command the expedition against which he had argued. It was the Assembly which, by its direct vote, decided questions of peace and war; it was the Assembly which gave its instructions to the Ambassadors of Athens; and it was the Assembly which listened, in broad daylight and under the canopy of heaven, to the proposals which were made by the Ambassadors of other powers. In modern times, even a republican state has some President, Secretary, or other official person, to whom diplomatic communications are immediately addressed. The consent of a Senate may be necded for every important act, but there 1s some officer or other who is the immediate and responsible actor.! We shall see a very close approach to this system when we come to look at Greek Democracy as modified in the Federal constitution of Achaia. But in the pure Democracy of Athens there is no approach to anything of the kind. When King Philip has to communicate with the hostile republic, he does not commission a Minister to address a Minister; he writes in his own name to the Senate and People of Athens.* The royal letter is read, first in the Senate before hundreds, and then in the Assembly before thousands, of hearers, each of whom may, if he can gain the ear of the House, take a part in the debate on its contents. So, when the reading and the debate are over, it is by the sovereign vote of those thousands of hearers that the policy of the commonwealth is finally and directly decided. It is evident that the member of an Assembly invested with such powers as these had the very highest form of political education opened to him. If he did his daily duty, he formed an opinion 1 By the American Constitution the assent of the Senate is necded for the treaties entered into by the President, and the power of declaring war is vested in Congress, But all diplomatic business up to these points is carried on after the forms usual with the Governments of other states. Despatches are not addressed to Congress, nor even to the President, but to a Secretary of State, whose office is not mentioned in the Constitution. According to Athenian prac- tice, the letters of Earl Russell on the affair of the Trent would have been addressed, not to Mr. Seward, but to the House of Congress, and the liberation of the Southern Commissioners would have needed a vote of those bodies, 2 See the Speech of Démosthenés (or rather of Hégésippos) about Halonnésos (Oratores Attici, vol. iv. p. 82). 1 ATHENS THE HIGHEST TYPE OF CITY-COMMONWEALTH 37 of his own upon every question of the day, and that not blindly or rashly, but after hearing all that could be said on either side by the greatest of orators and statesmen. Of course he might blindly follow in the wake of some favourite leader—so might a Venetian Senator, so might an English Peer—but so to do was a clear forsaking of duty. The average Athenian citizen could not shelter himself under those constitutional theories by which, in the case of the average English member, blind party voting is looked upon as a piece of political duty, and an independent judgement is almost considered as a crime. The great advantage then of the system of small city- commonwealths, the system of which the Athenian Demo- cracy was the greatest and most illustrious example, was that it gave the members of the ruling body (whether the whole people or only a part of the people) such a political education as no other political system can give. Nowhere will the average of political knowledge, and indecd of general intelli- gence! of every kind, be so high as in a commonwealth of this sort. Doubtless to take Athens as the type is to look at the system in its most favourable aspect. The Athenian people Athens the seem to have had natural gifts beyond all other people, and the highest circumstances of their republic brought each citizen into daily (Yh, contact with greater political affairs than could have been the system. case with the citizens of an average Greek commonwealth. At Rome, again, the vast numbers of the Assembly and the com- paratively narrow range of its functions must have effectually hindered the Comitia from ever becoming such a school of politics as the Athenian Pnyx. The Roman Tribes elected Magistrates, passed Laws, and declared war; but they did not exercise that constant supervision over affairs which belonged to the Athenian Démos. The ordinary powers, in short, of a Government, as distinguished from a Parliament, were exercised by the Senate and not by the Tribes. It was not every city-commonwealth which could give its citizens such opportunities of improvement 1 General intelligence, not of course general knowledge, which must always depend upon the particular age and country in which the commonwealth is placed. The average Englishman knows far more than the average Athenian knew, because the aggregate of knowledge in the world is incomparably greater than what it was then. But the average Athenian probably knew far more in proportion to the aggregate of knowledge in his own day ; most certainly he had a general quickness, a power of appreciation and judgement, for which we should look in vain in the average Englishman. Oppor- tunity for the deve- lopement of genius. Intensity of patriot- ism in Small States, 38 CHARACTERISTICS OF FEDERAL GOVERNMENT — cmap. as were enjoyed by the citizens of Athens. But, in estimating the tendencies of any political system, they must be estimated by their most perfect manifestations both for good and for evil. And undoubtedly even commonwealths which gavo their citizens far less political education than was to be had at Athens must have given them far more than is to be had in any modern kingdom or republic. We idolize what is called the press,! as the great organ of modern cultivation ; but, after all, for a man to read his newspaper is by no means so elevating a process as it is to listen with his own ears to a great statesman and to give his independent vote for or against his motion. And great statesmen morcover grow far thicker on the ground in common- wealths of this kind than they do in great kingdoms. Many a man who has a high natural capacity for statesmanship is, in a large state, necessarily confined to the narrow range of private or local affairs. Such a man may, under a system of small commonwealths, take his place in the Sovereign Assembly of his own city and at once stand forth among the leaders of men. In a word, it can hardly be doubted that the system of small commonwealths raises the individual citizen to a pitch utterly unknown elsewhere. The average citizen is placed on a far higher level, and the citizen who is above the average has far more favourable opportunities for the display of his special powers. This elevation of the character of the individual citizen is the main advantage of the system of small states. It is their one great gain, and it is an unmixed gain. It does not indeed decide the question in favour of small Commonwealths as against Federations or great Monarchies. These last have their advan- tages which may well be held to outweigh even this advantage ; but it clearly is unmixed gain as far as it goes. Less absolutely unmixed is another result of the system, which is closely connected with both its good and its bad features. A system of small commonwealths raises in each citizen a fervour and intensity of patriotism to which the natives of larger states are quite unaccustomed.? It is impossible, even in a fairly homogeneous country, to feel the same warmth of affection for a large region 1 It is worth notice that the “press” in common language always means newspapers and not books. 2 On the intensity of patriotism in small commonwealths, see Macaulay, Hist. Eng. i. 350 et seqq. II INTENSE PATRIOTISM IN SMALL STATES 39 we -----ἰ -τ --- as for a single city or for a small district. An Englishman is patriotic ; a Dane, as a countryman of a smaller state, is more patriotic still; but neither England nor Denmark can awaken the same glow of patriotic zeal as the great name of Athens.! A man loves his birthplace, he loves his dwelling-place, he has a loyal respect for the seat of his country’s government. But with the great mass of the subjects of a large kingdom these three feelings will severally attach to three different places. With an Athenian or a Florentine they all attached to the city of Athens or of Florence. In a smaller state, like Megara or Imola, the local patriotism might be yet more intense still, for the Athenian citizen might really he a native and resident, not of Athens, but of Marathén or Eleusis. But the inhabitant of the rustic Démos was still an Athenian ; if his birthplace and dwelling-place were not within the city walls, they could hardly be far out of sight of the spear-head of Athéné on the Akropolis. Jn any case the Identifica City was far more to him than the capital of a modern state can tien of all ever be to the great bulk of its inhabitants. To adorn a capital with the at the expense of a.large kingdom is one of the most unjust City. freaks of modern centralization; but in adorning the city of Athens every Athenian was simply adorning his own hearth and home. Walls, temples, theatres, all were his own; there was no spot where he was a stranger, none which he viewed or trod by the sufferance of another. The single city will ever kindle a far more fervid feeling of patriotism than can be felt towards a vast region, large parts of which must always be practically strange. And this intensity of local patriotism is closely connected with all that is noblest and all that is basest in the history of city-commonwealths. Where the single city is all in all, no self-devotion is too great which her welfare demands, no deed of wrong is too black which is likely to promote her interests. The unselfish heroism of Leénidas and Decius sprang from the very same source as the massacre of Mélos and the destruction of Carthage. For that there is a weak and a bad side to this system of Bad side separate city-commonwealths is as obvious as that there is a great of the and noble one. First of all, the greatness of such commonwealths ae ° is seldom so enduring as that of larger states. A democratic city, common- above all, if it would preserve at once freedom at home and a Wwealths. high position abroad, has need of a certain high-strung fervour 1 Thue. vii. 64 τὸ μέγα ὄνομα τῶν ᾿Αθηνῶν. Greatness of small states less permanent than that of greater ones, B.c. 508- 405. Common fallacy as to the weakness of small statcs, 40 CHARACTERISTICS OF FEDERAL GOVERNMENT © cual of patriotism which is not likely to endure through many genera tions. This Mr. Grote has remarked in the case of Athens when he compares the feeble resistance offered by the contempor aries of Démosthenés to the growing power of Macedonia wit! the vigour displayed by their fathers in the Persian and Pelopor nesian wars.! A state again whose political franchise depend wholly on the hereditary burghership of a single city cannot s easily strengthen itself by fresh blood from other quarters, a can be done by a great nation. A conquest destroys a city; i not uncommonly regenerates a nation. Of all city-commonwealth none ever had so long a day of greatness as Rome. One mai cause doubtless was because the Roman People was less of purely civic body than any other city-commonwealth, and becaus no other city-commonwealth was ever so liberal of its franchisc Rome thus grew from a city into an empire; other cities, aristc cratic and democratic alike, have often seen their day of greatnes succeeded by a long and dishonoured old age. Nothing coul well be more miserable than the latter days of democratic Athen and of oligarchic Venice. During the period of Grecian histor: with which we shall chiefly have to deal, the once prow Democracy of Athens sinks into the most contemptible state i Greece. And surely the dregs of a close body like the Venetia patriciate afford the very lowest spectacle which political histor can produce. Here then lies the real cause of the inherent weakness o these small commonwealths. Nothing can be so glorious as th life of one of them while it does live. The one century o Athenian greatness, from the expulsion of the Tyrants to th defeat of Aigospotamos, is worth millenniums of the life of Egyp or Assyria. But it is a greatness almost too glorious to last ; 1 carries with it the seeds of its own destruction. This kind o weakness, at all events this want of permanency, is inherent 1] the system itself. But another kind of weakness, with whicl the ancient commonwealths are often reproached by superficia observers, is not inherent, or rather it has no existence at all Men who look only at the surface are tempted to despise Athen. and Achaia, because of the supposed insignificance of what ar< called ‘‘ petty states” in modern Europe. There are men who when they look at the colossal size of despotic France or Russia are led to despise the free Confederation of Switzerland and the 1 Grote, iv. 240. II SUPPOSED WEAKNESS OF SMALL STATES 41 free Monarchy of Norway. How utterly contemptible then must commonwealths have been, beside which even Switzerland and Norway would seem empires of vast extent. Such a view as this involves the fallacy of being wholly physical and forgetting all the higher parts of man’s nature. France and Muscovy have indeed incomparably greater physical strength than Switzerland or Norway, but the Swiss or the Norwegian isa being of a higher political order than the Frenchman or the Muscovite. And this view also involves another fallacy. It goes on a mistaken analogy between small states, when they are surrounded by greater ones of equal material civilization, and small states, when small states constituted the whole of the civilized world. There is a certain sense in which the interests of Switzerland are smaller than the interests of France, but there was no possible sense in which the interests of Athens were smaller than the interests of Persia. The small states of modern Europe exist by the suffer- ance, by the mutual jealousy, possibly to some extent by the right feeling, of their greater neighbours.1 But the small commonwealths of old Greece were actually stronger than the contemporary empires; they were less than those empires only in the sense in which Great Britain is less than China. The few free cities now left in Europe are mere exceptions and anomalies ; they could not resist a determined attack on the part of one even of the smaller monarchies. Cracow could have been wiped out of the map of Europe at a less expenditure of force than the combined energies of three of the Great Powers. If Germany and Europe chose to look on, Denmark could Moubtless annex Hamburg, and Bavaria annex Frankfort. So it must ever be when Free Cities are merely exceptions among surrounding Kingdoms, when every Kingdom maintains a standing army, when a city can be laid in ashes in a day, and when the reduc- tion of the strongest fortress has become simply a question of time. But when we discuss the merits of a system of Free Cities, we do not suppose those Free Cities to be mere exceptions to a 1 Just at this moment Federal Government in general has acquired a certain amount of popular discredit from some of the acts of the power to which a momentary caprice has specially attached the name. It therefore cannot be out of place to point out the admirable union of dignity and modesty, the unswerving assertion of right combined with ,the absence of all unseemly bravado, which has distinguished all the acts of the Swiss Federal Government during the recent aggressions of Louis Napoleon Buonaparte, both in the annexation of Savoy and in the more recent violation of Swiss territory in the Dappenthal. (February, 1862. ) Different position of smal] states where they are merely exceptions, A.D. 1846, and where they are the general rule. Free cities in the Middle Ages, Constant warfare among Free Cities. Force of antipathy between neighbour- ing towns. 42 CHARACTERISTICS OF FEDERAL GOVERNMENT — crap, general state of things, mere relics of a political system which has passed away ; we suppose a state of things like that of old Greece, in which the independence of every city is the universal, or at least the predominant, rule of the civilized world. And even in much later times, in those centuries of the middle ages when Free Cities, though not predominant, were still numerous, a city surrounded by strong walls and defended by valiant citizens might successfully resist the resources of a great empire. Feudal levies could not be kept to constant service, and, before the invention of gunpowder, the art of attacking fortified places lagged far behind the art of defending them. A single city nowadays is weak as compared with a small kingdom, just as a small kingdom is weak as compared with a great kingdom. The fact that no state can resist a power which is physically stronger than itself proves nothing as to the merits of particular forms of government. Aristocratic Rhodes, democratic Athens, federal Achaia, and kingly Macedonia were all alike, as their several turns came round, swallowed up by the universal power of Rome. But there is a far greater evil inherent in a system of separate Free Cities, an evil which becomes only more intense as they attain a higher degree of greatness and glory. This is the constant statc of war which is almost sure to be the result. When each town is perfectly independent and sovereign, acknowledging no superior upon earth, multitudes of disputes which, in a great monarchy or a Federal republic, may be decided by peaceful tribunals, can be settled by nothing but an appeal to the sword. The thousand causes which involve large neigh- bouring states in warfare all exist, and all are endowed with tenfold force, in the case of independent city-commonwealths. Border disputes, commercial jealousies, wrongs done to indi- vidual citizens, the mere vague dislike which turns a neighbour into a natural enemy, all exist, and that in a form condensed and intensified by the very minuteness of the scene on which they have to act. A rival nation is, to all but the inhabitants of a narrow strip of frontier, a mere matter of hearsay; but a rival whose dwelling-place is within sight of the city gates quickly grows into an enemy who can be seen and felt. The highest point which human hatred can reach has commonly been found in the local antipathies between neighbouring cities. The German historian of Frederick Barbarossa speaks with horror of the hate which raged between the several Italian II CONSTANT WARFARE AMONG SMALL STATES 43 towns, far surpassing any feeling of national dislike between Italians and Germans.! In old Greece the amount of hatred between city and city seems to depend almost mathematically upon their distance from one another. Athens and Sparta are commonly rivals, often enemies. But their enmity is not in- consistent with something of international respect and courtesy. When Athens was at last overcome, Sparta at once rejected the 8.0. 404. proposal to raze to the earth a city which, even when con- quered, she still acknowledged as her yoke-fellow.2. That pro- posal came from Thebes, between whom and Athens there reigned an enmity which took the form of settled deadly hostility.- The greatest work that orator or diplomatist ever achieved * was when Démosthenés induced the two cities to 8.0. 389. lay aside their differences, and to join in one common struggle for the defence of Greece against the Macedonian invader. But Examples even Athenian hatred towards Thebes was gentle compared with ™ Steet the torrents of wrath which were poured forth upon unhappy ~~ ae Megara.° So too in Beeotia itself; just as Frederick entrusted the destruction of Milan, not to his own Germans, but to Milan’s a.p. 1162. enemies of Lodi and Cremona,® so Alexander left the fate of Thebes to the decision of his own Greek allies, and the ven- 5.0. 335. geance, not of Macedonia, but of Plataia and Orchomenos, soon swept away the tyrant city from the earth.’ A system of Free Cities therefore involves a state of warfare, and that of warfare carried on with all the bitterness of almost personal hostility. The more fervid the patriotism, the more intense the national life and vigour, the more constant and the more unrelenting will be the conflicts in which a city-commonwealth is sure to find itself engaged with its neighbours. The same causes tend also to produce a greater degree of cruelty in warfare, and a greater severity in the recognized law of war, than is found in struggles between great nations 1 See Radevic of Freising, iii. 89. Cf. National Review, No. XXIII. (January, 1861, p. 52.) 4 Xen. Hell. ii. 2. 19, 20. 3 Circumstances led Athens and Thebes to receive help from one another in the very crisis of their several revolutions (b,c. 408 and 382); but when these exceptional causes had passed by, the old enmity returned. It never was stronger than during the later campaigns of Epameinéndas and during the Sacred War. 4 See Arnold’s Rome, vol. ii. p. 331. 5 This comes out strongly in those scenes in the Acharnians of Aristophanés, in which the Beeotian and the Megarian are severally introduced. 8 Otto Morena, ap. Muratori, vi. 1108. Sire Raul, ib. 1187. 7 Arrian, i. 8. 8; 9. 9. Compari- son be- tween citizen soldiers and pro- fessional soldiers. A.D. 1631. A.D. 1576. B.C. 424, A.D. 1176. 44 CHARACTERISTICS OF FEDERAL GOVERNMENT — cnap. = .----» in civilized ages. An army of citizen soldiers is a very different thing from an army of professional soldiers. Undoubtedly the citizen soldier never sinks to the lowest level of the professional soldier. He never attains that pitch of fiendishness which is reached when the professional soldier degenerates into the mercenary, and when the mercenary degenerates into the brigand. Old Greece was full of wars, of cruel and bloody wars, but she never knew the horrors with which France, Germany, and Belgium were familiar from the wars of Charles of Burgundy to those of Wallenstein and Tilly. Such scenes as the sack of Magdeburg and the Spanish Fury at Antwerp are all but without parallel in Grecian history, they are altogether without a parallel among the deeds of Athenian or Lacedeemonian citizens! But if the citizen soldier docs not degenerate into the wanton brutality of the mere mercenary, yet the very feelings which elevate the spirit of his warfare serve, on the other hand, to render it far more cruel than warfare waged by a civilized army in modern times. The modern professional soldier does as he is bid; he does what is required by professional honour and professional duty ; he is patriotic, no doubt, but his patriotism would scem vague and cold to an Athenian marching to Délion, or to a Milanese going forth to Legnano. In any case the war is none of his own making; he is probably utterly indifferent to its abstract justice, and utterly ignorant of its actual origin. The enemy are nothing to him but something which professional duty requires him to overcome ; they never did him any personal wrong; they never drove away his oxen,’ or carried off his wife. 1 Two events alone in Grecian history at all approach what was almost the normal condition of European warfare in the sixteenth century. One occurs in the Greece of Thucydidés, the other in the Greece of Polybios. But in the earlier instance the guilty parties were not Greeks at all, in the later they were the lowest of Greeks, the professional robbers of Aitolia. In B.c, 413 the little Becotian town of Mykaléssos was fallen upon, and the inhabitants massacred, by Thracian mercenaries in the service of Athens (Thue. vii. 29, 80) Even in the midst of the terrible Peloponnesian war, this deed of blood raised a ery of horror throughout all Greece. The other case is the seizure of Kynaitha by the 4Etolians in B.c. 220 (Pol. iv. 18). They were admitted by treachery ; once admitted, they massacred friend and foe alike, and even put men to the torture to discover their hidden treasures. This last extremity of cruelty is unparalleled in Grecian warfare, and any Greek but an Atolian would have shrunk from it, but it was a matter of every-day business with the Spanish soldiers of the sixteenth century. ΤΠ. A. 154. οὐ yap πώποτ᾽ ἐμὰς βοῦς ἤλασαν, οὐδὲ μὲν ἵππους, οὐδέ ποτ᾽ ἐν Φθίῃ ἐριβώλακι, Bwriavelpy, καρπὸν ἐδηλήσαντ᾽, II CRUELTY OF THE WAR-LAW AMONG SMALL STATES 45 ncn eve - - -- It is another matter when two armies of citizens meet together. The war is their own war ; the general is probably the statesman who proposed the expedition; his army is composed of the citizens who gave their votes in favour of his proposal. The hostile general and the hostile army are not mere machines in the hands of some unseen and distant potentate ; they are the very men who have done the wrong, and on whom the wrong has to be avenged. Defeat will at once involve the bitterest of evils, ravaged lands, plundered houses, friends and kinsfolk led away into hopeless slavery. Men in such a case fight for their own hands; they fight, in very truth and not by a metaphor, for all that is dear to their hearts, παῖδας, γυναῖκας, θεῶν τε πατρῴων ἕδη, θήκας τε προγόνων. War of this sort is habitually carried on with much cruelty. A modern kingdom secks in its warfare the mere humiliation, or at most the political subjugation, of the enemy. The Greek or Italian warrior, as we have seen, not uncommonly sought his destruction. A nation may be subdued, but it cannot well be utterly wiped out; a single city, Milan or Thebes, can be swept away from the face of the earth. The laws of war, under these circumstances, are cruel beyond modern imagination. The life Severity of of the prisoner is not sacred unless the conqueror binds himself mes by special capitulation to preserve 10.235. To kill the men and sell the women and children of a conquered—at all events of a revolted—town was a strong, perhaps unusual, act of severity, but it was a severity which did not sin against the letter of the Greek Law of Nations, and which it was held that particular circumstances might justify. Even when the supposed rights of war were not pushed to such fearful extremes, the selling of prisoners as slaves was a matter of daily occurrence.’ In such 1 Asch. Pers. 396. * See Thue. i. 30 et passim. 3 The familiarity of this practice comes out strongly in an incidental notice in Polybios (v. 95). Certain tolians were taken prisoners by the Achaians ; among them was one Kleonikos who had formerly been the πρόξενος or public friend of the Achaian State. On account of this personal claim on the regard of his captors he was not sold (διὰ τὸ πρόξενος ὑπάρχειν τῶν ᾿Αχαιῶν παραυτὰ μὲν οὐκ ἐπράθη), but after a while released without ransom. The sale of the prisoners who had no such claims is assumed as a matter of course. The same author elsewhere (ii. 58) distinctly asserts that the sale of the inhabitants of a conquered city, even when no special provocation had been given, was according to the laws of war, ἀλλὰ τοῦτέ γε [μετὰ τέκνων καὶ γυναικῶν πραθῆναι] καὶ τοῖς μηδὲν ἀσεβὲς ἐπιτελεσαμένοις κατὰ τοὺς τοῦ πολέμου ὑπόκειται παθεῖν. Βισ, 291. Increased bitterness of faction in small states. 46 CHARACTERISTICS OF FEDERAL GOVERNMENT — cnap. a state of things we can even understand the most fearful spectacle of all, the cold-blooded slaughter of the captive leaders at a Roman triumph. One shudders at the thought that Caius Pontius was !—that Hannibal might have been—led in chains, scourged, and beheaded in a Roman prison. But we should remember that Hannibal had been to every Roman a deadly personal foe such as no hostile general has ever been to us. In our wars, the hostile sovereign, Philip or Lewis or Napoleon, has at most threatencd at a distance what Hannibal had himself inflicted on the Roman at his own hearth and home. The received war-law then was one of terrible cruelty; but the soldier was still a citizen soldier; arms were only occasionally in his hands ; warfare was not his trade; his heart was not hardened nor his conscience seared by a constant life of butchery and plinder. Hence, if one sort of cruelty was more rife, we find much less of another and a viler kind. We may believe that Charles the Fifth, or even his son, would have shrunk from _pro- nouncing in cold blood such a judicial sentence as the Athenian Démos pronounced upon the people of Mityléné, Mélos, and Skidné.2 But then no Athenian army would ever have been guilty of the long horrors of plunder, outrage, torture, and wanton mockery which were the daily occupation of the soldiers of Bourbon and of Alva. The citizen soldier is a man, stern, revengeful, it may be even needlessly cruel, but he never utterly casts off humanity, like the mercenary soldicr in his worst form. Again, as the system of small commonwealths tends at once to make wars more frequent and to aggravate the severity of the laws of war, so it has a similar result in aggravating the bitter- ness of internal faction. In saying this, I do not refer to any extreme or monstrous cases. The bloody seditions of Korkyra ° 1 See Arnold’s Rome, ii. 365. - I know of no modern parallel to these judicial massacres of a whole people. The massacre at Limoges by the Black Prince in 1371 (see Froissart, i. cap, 289, vol. i. p. 401, ed. Lyons, 1559) was the result of a vow, and was carried out by the Prince personally ; still, as being done in a stormed town, the case is not exactly the same. In much earlier times a nearer parallel is found in the execution of 4000 Saxon prisoners or rebels by Charles the Great in 782. Egin- hard, who does not scruple to blame his hero on occasion (Vit. c, 20; cf. Ann. 792), records it without remark (Ann. 782) just as Thucydidés (v. 116) does the massacre of Mélos. 3 Képxupa and not Κέρκυρα is the correct local form used on the coins of the island. It is always so written in Latin, as well as by Pausanias and Strabo. II BITTERNESS OF INTERNAL FACTION 47 no more represent the normal state of things ina Greek republic than the horrors of the great French Revolution represent the normal state of things in an European monarchy. Such scenes of blood as either point to some circumstances of position or national character, independent of particular forms of govern- ment. Civil conflicts have been, in all ages, far more bloody in France than in England.’ So all Greek democracies were not like the democracy of Korkyra; all Greek aristocracies were not like those selfish oligarchs who took the fearful oath to be evil- minded to the people. But on the other hand all Greek demo- Athens cracies were not like the democracy of Athens; all Greek aristo- 4 Kor- . . . . kyra ex- cracies were not like the wise senates which bore rule at Rhodes home and Chios. Athens, in its general obedience to law, in its strict cases for observance of public faith’, in its civil contests carried on, with good and sharpness and bitterness indeed, but still within the known hmits of a defined parliamentary law, stands doubtless at the very head of all Greek commonwealths. ‘The brutal mob of Korkyra doubtless stands no less pre-eminently at the bottom of the scale. Some unusually bad elements in the national character, some monstrous provocation on the part of their former rulers, can alone account for the equally monstrous excesses of the reaction. The normal state of an independent city-commonwealth doubt- Normal less lies somewhere between the peaceful debates of Athens and ‘tte of ἃ r . . . . , city-com- the bloody warfare of Korkyra. It is a state of things in which neawealth something 1 'The French Revolution at the close of the last century, as being the most inter- recent and the most permanent in its results, is naturally the best known event mediate, of the kind; but it is only one among several similar events in the history of | France. The civil broils of France in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries read exactly like similar scenes in the eighteenth. In all cases we have refined and elaborate constitutional theories which in practice take the form of indiscriminate massacre. Our civil wars, again, in the seventeenth, the fifteenth, or even the thirteenth century, seem child’s play beside the brutal strife of Burgundians and Armagnacs, and the long catalogue of internal warfare which may be almost said to form the civil history of France from Lewis the Eleventh to Lewis the Four- teenth. Philip of Comines, who had seen both lands with his own eyes, bears witness (Mémoires, liv. iii. c. 5) to the comparative mildness of English civil warfare. Englishmen killed nobody except in fair fighting ; even in battle, as far as might be, they smote the leaders and spared the Commons, So the deeds of 1572, of 1792, of 1851, have no parallel in the worst times of English history ; Strafford and Cromwell alike, one might rather say any Englishman of any sort since the days of Stephen, would have shrunk from the crimes of Guise, or Robespierre, or Louis Napoleon Buonaparte. 2 Tots ὅρκοις ἐμμένει ὁ δῆμος (Xen. Hell, ii. 4, 43) is the witness of an enemy to the good faith of the Athenian Democracy under the most trying circum- stances, Thuc. viii. 97 ; Grote, viii. 122. Local dis- putes more bitter than general ones. Enmities more per- manent in small common- wealtlis. General balance of gain and loss in small states. 48 CHARACTERISTICS OF FEDERAL GOVERNMENT ~ cnap. political enmity, though not reaching the fearful extremes of Korkyraian atrocity, will yet be far bitterer than it is in any modern constitutional kingdom. It will perhaps occasionally break out into deeds of open violence ; it will still more frequently lead to unjust judicial sentences, and to no less unjust legisla- tive enactments. Actual massacres will perhaps be unknown, and single judicial murders will not be very common ; but the general expulsion of the leaders of a defeated faction will be, if not so common as the resignation of a defeated ministry is with us, yet certainly more common than the extremer measure of impeachment has become in modern times. Doubtless the com- parison is hard to make, because we have to compare city-common- wealths of one age with kingdoms and federations of another, the Athens and Florence of a past time with the England and America of our own day. But, on the whole, the experience of ancient Greece, of medieval Italy, of states hke Geneva down to our own time, certainly seems to show that the bitterness of political enmity is greatly heightened in these small common- wealths. In such a commonwealth men of all sorts, men of whom but few are kept in restraint by the checks of personal character and position, are brought together face to face, with the most precious interests of both sides directly depending on the result. A great addition to the fierceness of the civil struggle can hardly fail to follow. We see that it is so among ourselves. Far greater bitterness, at any rate far greater outward expres- sion of bitterness, accompanies an election or a local controversy of any kind than is ever to be scen among political leaders within the walls of Parliament. For the same reasons which make political differences in city-commonwealths more bitter, they are also more apt to become hereditary, to be made a point of family honour, at last to sink into mere watchwords of dislike without any rational political meaning. Even among ourselves it is not always easy to distinguish the Conservative from the Liberal or the Liberal from the Conservative ; but who can point out the real political difference between a Guelf and a Ghibelin at the end of the fifteenth century ? We may then thus sum up the balance of gain and loss in a small city-commonwealth, as compared with a greater state. A small republic developes all the faculties of individual citizens to the highest pitch; the average citizen of such a state is a superior being to the average subject of a large kingdom; he ranks, not II BALANCE OF GAIN AND LOSS IN SMALL STATES 49 with its average subjects, but, at the very least, with its average legislators. It kindles the highest and most ennobling feelings of patriotism ; it calls forth every power and every emotion of man’s nature ; it gives the fullest scope to human genius of every kind ; it produces an Aischylus and a Démosthenés, a Dante and a Macchiavelli. But, on the other hand, the glory of such a state 15 seldom lasting ; it 15 tempted to constant warfare, and to warfare in some respects of a crnel kind; it is tempted to ambition and acquisition of territory at least as constantly as a larger state; and annexation by a city-commonwealth com- monly brings with it more evils than annexation by a kingdom. Again, civil strife is intensified, and party hatred becomes at once more bitter and more enduring. And we may add that city-commonwealths cannot really flourish save when they cither have the whole field to themselves or else have a marked ad- vantage in civilization over the surrounding monarchies. The former was the case in old Greece, the latter in medieval Italy. In medieval Germany and Flanders the superiority of the cities was less marked ; their freedom therefore was less complete, and their career was less glorious. As the surrounding monarchies advance in power, as they become more settled and civilized— above all, when they take to the employment of standing armies —the city-commonwealths gradually vanish, or exist only by the contemptuous toleration of the neighbouring potentates. Be the powers which surround them despotisms, constitutional kingdoms, or even consolidated republics, the tendencies of an age of large states are equally opposed to the retention of any practical independence by single unconfederated cities. I have dwelt the longer on the nature of these independent city-commonwealths, because the subject, as one remote from our own political experience, is especially liable to be misunderstood, and because a clear and full grasp of it is absolutely necessary to understand the characteristics of that old Greek Federalism which was a modification of the system of independent cities. On the system of large states with which we are all familiar I System of need not dwell at the same length. I will only point out one or ge two of its direct political consequences, and then compare this” system with that of independent cities and balance their com- parative loss and gain. And I would again remark that among large states I reckon not only great kingdoms, but all states Tt Definition of large states, irrespec- tive of their forms of govern- ment. Two im- mediate results ; smaller import- ance of the Capital ; repre- sentative character CHARACTERISTICS OF FEDERAL GOVERNMENT — cmap. 50 which are too large to allow all their citizens habitually to meet in one place. And 1 include alike republics, constitutional monarchies, and despotisms of the modern European kind. In a modern European despotism, though the sovereign may be the sole legislator, yet there is such a thing as Law, and, in matters which do not touch the sovereign’s interest, the administration may be as good as in a free state. But I exclude mere Kastern despotisms, in which Law and Government, in the true sense of those words, can hardly be said to exist at all. Two consequences immediately follow from the difference between a city-commonwealth and a large state as above defined. First, whatever be the form of government of a large state, there will be no such preponderating influence in any single city as exists under the other system. Secondly, if the state he free, whether as a republic or as a constitutional monarchy, its national assembly must assume the representative form. These two differences are direct, one might say physical, results from of National the increased size of the state. Assem- blies. Position of the Capital in a large - State, First then, as to the position of the capital. I assume that in the large state there will be an equal freedom or an equal bondage spread over the whole land. States lke Rome, Carthage, Venice, or Bern, where a single city bears rule over a large territory, do not come within our present consideration. They are not legitimate large states, but a corrupted form of the city-commonwealth. In the large modern state there is no such overwhelming preponderance in the Capital. Indeed, the very use of the word Capital shows it. The Capital—the Muptstadt —implies the existence of other cities, with which it may be compared, and among which it has the pre-eminence. In a pure city-government there is strictly no Capital, because there is but one City, and that City is co-extensive with the State. In a state like Carthage or Venice, ¢he ruling City is something more than a mere Capital; it is absolute mistress over other cities. But the smallest European monarchy contains several cities, none of which is subject to any other, but of which one will be the Capital, the seat of Government, the official dwelling-place of the Sovereign. Still, that Capital is only the first among many equal cities; the national life is not inseparably bound up with it; it is the seat of government, simply because the seat of government must be somewhere, because the requirements of modern politics do not allow the Sovereign.and his Councillors Il POSITION OF THE CAPITAL IN LARGE STATES 51 to wander at large over the whole realm, like an old Teutonic King. The Capital will be the centre of politics, society, and literature ; its inhabitants will perhaps affect to look down upon the rest of their fellow-countrymen ; they may, especially when the Government is of a centralized kind, obtain an undue and dangerous political weight, but they will have no direct legal privileges above the rest of their fellow-subjects. The influence of a Capital in a large state is almost sure to be for evil, because it must be either indirect or violent. Even in the best regulated states, an undue attention will often be given to the local interests of the Capital, and advances from the national treasury will be more freely made in its behalf, than in behalf of other parts of the kingdom. But this is simply because they are more prominent and better understood, because they foree themselves upon the notice of the Sovereign and the Legislature in a way in which the interests of other towns and districts cannot do. In a despotic state, where the Sovereign does what he pleases, where he is in no way controlled by the representatives of other parts of the country, money will be still more recklessly and un- justly squandered in adorning one town at the expense of a whole kingdom. The other form of the influence of a Capital is that by which we have so often scen a Parisian riot accepted as a French Revolution. A government is violently upset and another installed—it may be by the mere mob of the town, it may be by a perfidious magistrate who has a military force at his command ; in either case the people of the whole land, who have never been consulted about the matter, submit without resistance to the King, Republic, or ten-years’ President thus provided for them. In the one case the influence of the Capital is indirect, in the other it is violent; in cither case it is illegiti- mate. The only legal weight of London or Paris consists in the representatives which those towns, 4n common with other towns, send to the common Legislature of the whole country. In a modern European kingdom, the Capital and the rest of the country are legally placed on perfectly equal terms. In a free state they are equally free ; in a despotism the yoke will not, avowedly at least, press more heavily upon one town or district than upon another. This state of things, where political rights and political wrongs are evenly spread over the whole extent of a large country, differs equally from the state of things in which the Capital bears rule over the whole land, and from that in Indirect and violent influence of Capitals in large states. Necessity of repre- sentative institution in a free state of large size. Represen- tative Govern- ment not necessarily Cabinet Govern- ment. 52 CHARACTERISTICS OF FEDERAL GOVERNMENT πὰρ, which the franchise of the Capital is extended over the whole land. An inhabitant of Eleusis was a citizen of Athens; an in- habitant of Lausanne was a subject of Bern; but an inhabitant of any English town or county is neither a citizen of London nor a subject of London; he is a member of a great commonwealth of which the capital and his own dwelling-place are alike integral and equal portions. ~The second direct result from the increased largeness of territory is that, if the state be constitutional, its constitution must necessarily take the representative form. The people, or that portion of the people which is invested with political rights, will not exercise those rights in their own persons, but through chosen persons commissioned to act in their behalf. ‘The private citizen will have no direct voice in government or Iegislation ; his functions will be confined to giving his vote in the election of those who have. This is the great distinction between free states of the modern type, whether kingly or republican, and the city- commonwealths of old Greece. It is the great political invention of Teutonic Europe, the one form of political life to which neither Thucydidés, Aristotle, nor Polybios ever saw more than the faintest approach. In Grecce it was hardly needed, but in Italy a representative system would have delivered Rome from the fearful choice which she had to make between anarchy and despotism. By Representative or Parliamentary Government I would not be understood as speaking only of that pecnhar form of it which has grown up by the force of circumstances in our own country. A Cabinet Government, where the real power is vested in Ministers indirectly chosen hy the House of Commons —that is, chosen by the King out of the party which has the majority in the House of Commons—is only one out of many forms of Representative Government. It suits us, because it is, like our other institutions, the growth of our own soil; it by no means follows that it can be successfully transplanted whole into other countries, or even into our own colonies! By a Repre- sentative constitution [ mean any constitution in which the people, or the enfranchised portion of them, exercise their political rights, whatever be the extent of those rights, not directly, but through chosen deputics. Such a Representative 1 On this subject the eighth chapter of Earl Grey’s Essay on Parliamentary Government (London, 1858) is well worth reading ; but of course there is another side, or rather several other sides, to the question. il INDBUBOSLLY VP DOP NDDOBNLALLIVUIN TIN LANUL SLAIES vd constitution is consistent with the full personal action of the Sovercign within the legal limits of his powers; it is consistent with any extent, or any limitation, of the elective franchise. I include the constitutions of medizval England and Spain, of modern Sweden and Norway, the constitutions of the United States and of the several States, even the old theoretical con- stitution of France in the days of the States-General. All these are strictly representative constitutions, though some of them differ widely enough from what a modern Englishman generally understands by the words Constitutional Government. A Repre- sentative constitution may be monarchic or republican, 1t may be aristocratic or democratic. The Representative system would be as needful in the case of a franchise vested in a large noble class scattered over the whole country, as it is in the case of a franchise vested in every adult male. But if political rights were confined to a hereditary body so small that its members could habitually meet together, say if our House of Lords possessed the whole powers of the state, the government would probably assume another form. The ruling aristocracy would almost unavoidably be led to take up their chief residence in the capital. The constitution would, in fact, become a city-aris- tocracy, like that of Bern or Venice, bearing rule over a subject district. The necessity of the Representative system in a large state is so universally accepted as the result of all European and American experience, that I need not stop to argue the point at any length. But it may be necessary to speak a few words on two or three Excep- real or apparent exceptions, in which political power is, or has been, #9" ἴο directly exercised by the people, or the qualified part of them, secutive. directly exercised by the people, or the qualified part of them, sentative in Jarge modern states. The exceptions which occur to me are: system in First, the way of electing the Kings of Poland under the old mewn . . op monarchy ; Secondly, the new-fangled Napoleonic fashion of sna" electing “/mperors,” approving constitutions, annexing provinces, America. by what is called ‘“ Universal Suffrage ;”! Thirdly, the practical 1 The Florentine Parliaments and the Venetian Great Council are not real exceptions, as being found in the constitutions of single cities. The latter was a part of the ordinary system of government in an aristocratic state. But the Florentine Parliament, which I have already once mentioned (p. 31), may be well referred to again, as it is so strikingly analogous to the Napoleonic Universal Suffrage. The whole Florentine people, perhaps once in a generation, met together in the square and presently entrusted absolute power to some Commission, some- times to some Tyrant. lection Σ the olish ings. ‘ature of ie Polish obility. 54 CHARACTERISTICS OF FEDERAL GOVERNMENT — cnap, (not the constitutional) aspect of the election of the President of the United States. In all these cases the people, or the qualified portion of them, takes a more direct share than usual in political action. But even in these cases the representative system, as the means of ordinary legislation and government, is not disturbed. The old Kingdom of Poland called itself at once a Kingdom and a Republic. In fact its constitution ingeniously united the evils of Monarchy, Aristocracy, and Democracy, without the redeeming features of any of the three. The political franchise was vested in a nobility so numerous, and many so poor, that, while they formed a close aristocracy as regarded the rest of the people, they formed a wild democracy among themselves. Such a nobility, it need not be said, has absolutely nothing in common with the British Peerage. The Polish nobles were not so much a nobility in any common sense of the word, as a people, like the Spartans or the Ottomans, bearing rule over a subject race.! Such a very numerous nobility differs from the electoral body of a constitutional state as a Greek aristocracy differed from a Greek timocracy. Inthe one case the political franchise can be obtained only by hereditary succession, and, when once obtained, it cannot be lost. In the other case, it is attached to the possession of a certain amount of property, and may be gained and lost many times by the same person, if his property, at different times of his life, rises above, or sinks below, the necessary qualification. The difference is analogous to that between the hereditary burghership of a town and a municipal franchise attached to ownership or occupation. According to all ordinary political notions, the Polish nobility was a body which could not possibly meet together ; it was as much under the necessity of delegating its powers to representatives as the electoral bodies of England or America. And for most purposes it did so delegate them. The common functions of a legislature were entrusted to an elective Diet, a body which had some strange peculiaritics of its own,” which do not bear on our present subject. But, once in each reign, the whole body met to elect a King; they met 1 Tdo not mean to imply that the Polish nobility was historically an aristo- cracy of conquest. Aristocracies which have grown up gradually, like that of Venice, often become narrower than those which really owe their origin to conquest. 2 The best known is the requirement of unanimity, which gave every member of the Diet a veto upon all its acts. See Calhoun, 1. 711, He really does not seem wholly to disapprove of the practice. II NAPOLEONIC UNIVERSAL SUFFRAGE 55 armed ; and, in theory at least, the assent of every elector present was required to make a valid election. It is not wonderful if election by such a body, like election by the Roman People in their worst days, often took the form of a pitched battle. That this mode of electing a King, or of discharging national business of any kind, was an absurd and mischievous anomaly few probably will dispute. It was in fact merely an innovation of the latest and worst days of the Polish Republic! And it was felt to be an evil by all wise and patriotic Poles. The constitution of 1791, by which Poland, in her last moments, tried to assimilate herself to other European nations, abolished election altogether, and instituted a hereditary monarchy. The Napoleonic Universal Suffrage, which has destroyed Napo- freedom in France and has reduced Savoy and Nizza to the same ponte level of bondage, is simply a palpable cheat, which, had its results guarace - been less grave, would have been the mere laughing-stock of its delu-’ Europe. It isa mere device to entrapa whole people into giving sive an assent to proposals which would not be assented to by their” lawful representatives. Hitherto it has been in every case a mere sham. There has been no free choice, no fair alternative between two or more proposals or between two or more candi- dates. The people have only been asked to say Yea or Nay to something which has been already established by military force. The election of a Polish King was a real clection, a real choice between candidates ; the pretended election of Louis Napoleon Buonaparte to the pseudo-Imperial Crown of France was no elec- tion at all. But supposing a vote of this kind ever offered a fair alternative, the system would be no less pernicious. A people cannot be fit to exercise direct political power, unless they are habitually trained to exercise it. Ina great kingdom they cannot be so habitually trained. They may )e perfectly fit to choose legislators ;? they cannot be fit to lr ἴο themsclves. Least 1 Till the extinction of the House of “72, Poland followed the common law of early European Kine > ' royal family, out of which alone Kings were chosen, but 1ecessarily pass to the next in succession. The peculiari’ that, in an age when other kingdoms had become purel« le their Crown purely elective. The practice of choos’ 0 descent and by the voice of the whole nobility da? f Henry of Anjou in 1573. 2 It must be remembered t¢ ‘uffrage ” has nothing in common with the use of " English political controversy. Nobody has "1 vote in the English and Ame- rican ways of attain- ing the same ob- ject. Election of the American President practically another exception, 56 CHARACTERISTICS OF FEDERAL GOVERNMENT onap. of all can they be fit to legislate now and then on the most im- portant of all questions, the choice of a dynasty or a constitution. Such an occasional and, so to speak, spasmodic exercise of power must be utterly worthless. Undoubtedly a great exceptional power of this kind may well be entrusted, not to the ordinary Legislature, but to a body specially chosen for the purpose. In the United States the meeting of such extraordinary Conventions under certain circumstances is specially provided for both in the Federal Constitution and in the Constitutions of the several States. In our own country it would doubtless be thought right by all parties that the introduction of any great constitutional change should he preceded by a Dissolution of Parhament. The election of the new Parliament in such a case would practically come to the same thing as the choice of a Convention in America. The whole body of electors would have, rightly and fairly, a special opportunity given them for considering the subject ; but the final voice of the nation would speak through its lawful representatives, and not through the mockery of “ Universal Suffrage.” The English and the American practice both give full scope to the popular will in a way consonant with the received principles of all modern constitutional states. The Imperial invention is simply a blind ; it is the device of a despot to deceive people by promising them something freer than freedom. The election of the American President is, not indeed formally, but practically, another exception to the rule by which, in all modern free states, the political powers of the people are exer- cised solely by their representatives. Formally, it is not such an exception. The President is not chosen by the people at large, but by special electors chosen for the purpose! But as those electors exercise no real choice, as it 1s known before the election making of laws, but only in th hoosing of lawgivers. Whether this is desirable is a separate question, quite eted by the results of the Napoleonic device. ~ An impartial thinker will vy that those, whether many or few, who are fit to use votes, ought tr that it is desirable that the whole people should be fit to use thi possibly in the New England States, it would be hard to fi 2 whole people are fit to use them, See Tocqueville, Dem. 1 How those elect« by the Federal Constitution (Art. ii. § 1, 2) to be settlec State. Originally, in most of the States, the Legisl: : but, in all the States, except South Carolina, this > sferred to the people at large. There are some goc haffner’s War in America, p. 187 et seqq. The Conf the old provisions, II ELECTION OF THE AMERICAN PRESIDENT 57 how every candidate will vote if elected, this election of electors practically comes to much the same as a direct popular election of the President. There can be no doubt that this is one of the weak points in the American system; it is the point in which the calculations of the illustrious men who framed the American Constitution have most signally failed! Still, the popular elec- tion of the President has several points of advantage over the Napoleonic Universal Suffrage. First, the mere form of electing Its dif- electors pays a certain outward homage to the representative erence My as . from Na- system, while it is openly trampled under foot by the Napoleonic poleonic device. Secondly, the indirect mode of election, even as it is, Universal has at least this result, that the President who is elected need 5¥4rage. not have a numerical majority of the people in his favour. This alone is no inconsiderable check on the tyranny of mere numbers. Thirdly, regarding the election of the President as really placed in the hands of the people, still it is a very different matter from electing “Emperors” and voting the annexation of provinces. The election of a President is not an irregular, occasional business like saying “Oui” or “Non” to the perpetrator of a successful conspiracy ; 1t comes regularly at stated intervals, about as often as our Parhamentary elections. There is therefore no reason why the American people may not be as well trained to elect Presidents as the English people are trained to elect Members of Parliament. Still, the election of the President, as it is now practically conducted, though by no means such an evil as the Napoleonic Universal Suffrage or the election of the Polish Kings by the whole body of the nobles, is certainly a deviation from the representative principle, and is so far an anomaly in the practice of modern free states. We will then assume these two immediate results of the increased size of territory, the legal equality of all parts of the General country, and the necessity for representative institutions, if the view of # a ee νὸς . system οἱ state be constitutional. Let us then pass, in imagination or in large reality, through such a large state, through any kingdom, in States. short, of modern Europe. Its mere divisions, its Counties or 1 See Hamilton in the Federalist, No. 68. He remarks that ‘‘the mode of appointment of the chief magistrate of the United States, is almost the only part of the system, of any consequence, which has escaped without severe censure, or which has received the slightest mark of approbation from its opponents, ” Even when Tocqueville wrote, this particular evil had hardly manifested itself. Cf. Calhoun, i. 369, 385. One such State answers to many City- Common- wealths. A.D. 1859. Extent of local di- versity in large States, 58 CHARACTERISTICS OF FEDERAL GOVERNMENT — cap, Departments, may well be equal in size to the territories of several independent cities of old Greece or of medieval Italy. A glance at the map of modern Italy or modern Grecce at once sets forth this difference. We look on the Kingdom of Greece as one of the pettiest states in Europe; its weight in European politics is hardly so great as that of one of its smallest cities might have been in the days of Athens and Sparta. But a province of the Greek Kingdom is made up of what was once the domain of several Greek commonwealths. Corinth, Sikyén, Pelléné, Phlious, are all found in a single department ; Orcho- menos, Mantincia, 'Tegea, and Megalopolis are all subordinate to the modern local capital of Tripolitza. So too the portion of Lombardy which free Italy has lately wrung from the Austrian Tyrant contains some ten or twelve cities, which once appeared as free republics, fighting for or against the Swabian Emperor. So again not a few cities, which once were free commonwealths under the suzerainty of the Empire, have been swallowed up during the six hundred years’ aggression of the Kings and Tyrants of Paris against the old realms of Germany and Bur- gundy. We find then, in traversing a modern kingdom, that an extent of territory which, on the other system, would be cut up into countless independent commonwealths, is governed by a single Sovercign and is, in most cases, administered according to a single code of laws. If the state be despotic, the despot is equally master of the whole kingdom; if the state be constitu- tional, the highest power in the land will be an assembly in which the whole kingdom is represented. But within these limits the amount of local freedom and of local diversity may vary infinitely. In one kingdom everything may be squared out accord- ing to the most approved modern cut-and-dried system. No man may be allowed to move hand or foot without licence from some officer of the Crown; local liberties, local bye-laws, magistrates or public officers of any sort locally elected, may be something unknown and proscribed. In another kingdom all this may be reversed ; local and historical rights may be carefully respected ; the assemblies of towns and districts may retain extensive powers 1 The whole kingdom, not necessarily all the dominions of the sovereign. Every integral part of the United Kingdom is represented in the British Parlia- ment—the disfranchisement of a County would not be thought of for a moment— but the Colonies and dependencies are not represented, not being parts of the kingdom. 11 DIFFERENCE BETWEEN MUNICIPALITY AND FEDERALISM 59 of local legislation ; magistrates and public officers may be elected by the districts which they are to govern, or, if they are ap- pointed by the Crown, they may be appointed according to a principle which gives them nothing of the character of Govern- ment functionaries.! These two opposing systems, of Centraliza- Opposite tion and of Local Freedom, do not at all necessarily depend upon Systems of : . . Centraliza- the constitution of the central Government. Local freedom is tion and quite possible under an absolute monarchy ; local bondage is of Local quite possible under a representative Democracy. A wise despot ἢ reedom . . . . e . 1η1.0- will humour his people by allowing them local liberties which pendent of will not affect his real power, and which, by acting as a safety- the form valve, may really stave off revolution for many years. On the οἵ me . centra other hand many states nominally free have had no idea of free- φόνον. dom beyond giving cach citizen that degree of influence in the ment. general Government which is implied in the possession of an electoral vote. That general Government may be one which he helps to choose, and yet he may be left, in regard to all those things which most directly concern him, as helpless a machine in the hands of an official hierarchy as if that hierarchy derived its commission from a despot. But, in any case, whether the local Difference Government be centralized or municipal, its character is wholly de- between Municipal pendent on the general Law of the Land. Wherever there are ang ote. rights which are beyond the powers of King and Parliament, we ral rights ; have passed the bounds of strict municipality and are approaching the borderland of Federalism.? We might easily conceive the Municipal municipal principle carried much farther than it is in England ; "shts de- pendent ᾿ . . ᾿ . ι on the 1 An English County is an aristocratic republic ; the magistrates, though General Cc formally appointed by Royal Commission, are practically co-extensive with the Legisla- local aristocracy. An English borough, as regards its administration, is a repre- 1 ature « sentative democracy, tempered in some degree by the indirect election of the me Mayor and Aldermen, The borough magistrates, appointed by the Crown from among the chief inhabitants, introduce a slight aristocratic element into the judicial department. Rut neither Town-Councillors, nor Aldermen, nor County and Borough Magistrates, have the least analogy with the administrative hierarchies of foreign states. 2 England and Wales, though local bodies retain much local freedom, form a perfectly consolidated Kingdom. But the relations between England and Scot- land, where certain points are reserved under the terms of a Treaty between two independent kingdoms, make a slight approach to the Federal idea, The rela- tions between the United Kingdom and the Colonies approach more closely to a Federal connexion, but they differ essentially from it. The Colony, as we have seen above (see p. 20), may have the same internal independence as the Canton, but it differs in having no voice in the general concerns of the Empire. The relation therefore of the Colony to the mother-country is not a Federal but a dependent relation. See Lewis, Government of Dependencies, caps. ii. iv. Federal rights in- dependent of it. General character- istic of large States, 60 CHARACTERISTICS OF FEDERAL GOVERNMENT — cuap. one might conceive towns and counties at home, no less than Colonies abroad, possessing nearly the same internal powers as a Swiss Canton or an American State. But such towns and counties would still possess their powers, not of inherent right, but merely by positive law. Their rights, however extensive, would be delegated and not independent ; they would still remain mere municipalities, and would not become Sovereign States. That portion of sovereignty which 15 vested in the State or the Canton cannot, without an unconstitutional usurpation, be in any way touched by the Federal power. But the most extensive rights of a mere municipality are the mere creation of Common or Statute Law; they may be legally altcred or abolished without the consent of the municipality itself being asked. A vote of the national Legislature in a free country, a Royal Decree in a despotic country, can legally found, modify, or destroy all merely municipal institutions, just as it seems best to the sovereign power. A single Act of Parliament might at once cut down all English local rights to the level of French or Russian centraliza- tion. An Imperial Ukase might at once invest Russian towns and counties with all the rights enjoyed by those of England, or with rights more extensive still. The one measure wouid in no way deprive the English elector of that portion of influence over public affairs which he at present enjoys. The other measure would in no way infringe upon the sole legislative authority of the Autocrat. In any consolidated kingdom or republic, what-~ ever be the extent of local freedom, the variety of local Jaw and custom, it exists purely on sufferance; it emanates from, and may be altered by, a central power external to itself. The local badges, in most cases, strictly confined to local affairs ; 1t has no voice, even by representation,! in the general legislation of the kingdom ; if a local body takes any part in national affairs, its voice is purely consultative ; in most countries indeed it has not even a consultative voice, it can make its wants known to the Sovereign or the Legislature only in the form of a Humble Petition, a process equally open to every human being in the nation. The great state then, whether it be a despotism, a constitu- tional kingdom, or a consolidated republic, confines local action 1 The body holding local authority, the Town Council or the Quarter Sessions, is not represented, as such, in Parliament. The county or borough members represent the inhabitants of the county or borough, not the municipal govern- ment. . ΤΙ ADVANTAGES OF GREAT STATES 61 -----ὄ-.-ὄ........-...» to purely local matters, and vests all general power in the national sovereign or the national legislature. That sovereign and that legislature may indeed derive their powers from the popular will, but in the exercise of those powers neither indi- viduals nor local bodies can have more than an indirect influence. Rights are equal throughout the whole land; the capital has no legal privilege beyond any other city ; the constitution, where there is a constitution, is of the representative kind. From these characteristics of large states at once follows a chain of gains and losses which are the exact opposites of the gains and losses Balance of which attend on the system of city-commonwealths. ain and 1088. First and foremost, the blessing of internal peace 1s at once Advan- secured to a large country. This alone is an advantage so great tases of that it must be a very bad central government indeed, under en which this one gain docs not outweigh every loss. A large modern kingdom will contain perhaps hundreds of cities, whose Peace districts, under the old Greek system, might continually be the secured to scene of a desolating border-warfare. All of these will, under country. the modern European system, repose safely under the protection of one common authority, which has power peaceably to decide any differences which may arise among them. And the same causc which hinders local quarrels, when they do arise, from growing into local wars, will also go very far to prevent local Lessening quarrels from arising at all. Towns and districts may indeed οἵ socal often retain irrational local prejudices, and the clashing of com-?™™ mercial interests may often arouse local jealousies which are not irrational. But when, as in the best regulated modern king- doms, the inhabitants of every town and county are ibizens of a common country, when the inhabitants of one district may, without losing any civil or political rights, transfer their abode to any other, there can never be any very scrious local differences between fellow-subjects of the same race and language. Even when such differences of race and language exist as may be found within the limits of France or of Great Britain, provincial diver- sities may now and then afford a subject for pseudo-patriotic talk, but it is in talk that they are sure to evaporate.t Indeed, it 1 Jt has been gravely declared at a Welsh Eisteddfod that Her Majesty is properly Queen of Wales with the province of England annexed. However this be, the province and the kingdom have shown no tendencies towards separation for several centuries. Lessening of the evils of War. 62 CHARACTERISTICS OF FEDERAL GOVERNMENT — cnar. often happens that the country which fancies itself to be subject and degraded is, in very truth, a favoured district. Such a country often has its full share of the advantages of the common government, while it keeps its own local advantages to itself. When differences of race and specch assume a really serious character, it shows that they are real national diversities, and that the two countries ought to be under separate govern- ments. But mere local jealousies between town and town, between county and county, become of no political importance whatever. ‘Towns which, in old Greece or in medieval Italy, would have sent armies against one another, towns which would either have lived in constant warfare, or the stronger of which would have reduced the weaker to dependence, have, in a large modern kingdom, hardly any disputes which require the inter- ference of the Legislature or the Law Courts. Under a good central government, which gives perfectly equal rights to all its subjects, peace and good brotherhood will reign throughout the whole realm. And a really good central government will not attempt to push union too far. It will not seek to extinguish that moderate amount of local distinction, local feeling, and local independence, which is both a moral and a political gain. The utter wiping out of local distinctions goes far to reduce the whole realm to that state of subjection to a single dominant city which, whether under a monarchy or a republic, is the worst political condition of all. The same system, again, which tends to take away all causes of dispute between different portions of the same nation, tends equally to diminish the horrors of external war between different nations. We have already seen that the recognized war-law between contending kingdoms is much less severe than it is between contending cities. The severity of its actual cxercise between the disciplined armies of two civilized states is lessened in an almost greater proportion. But take war between great states in its worst form, take such a war as might be waged between Alva on one side, and Suwarrow on the other. Even such a war as this will inflict, m proportion to its scale, a far Tn Gaul matters seem to be different; the existence of the Breton Archo- logical Society, which one would have thought was a harmless body enough, has been found inconsistent with the safety of the “Imperial” throne of Paris. 1 Scotchmen are eligible to the highest offices in England, and they constantly fill them without any Englishman feeling the least jealousy. Englishmen are, I suppose, equally eligible to offices in Scotland, but they hardly ever fill them, II LESSENING OF THE EVILS OF WAR 63 less amount of human misery than a really milder conflict between two rival cities. It will not recur so often; wars indeed, when begun, may last longer, but the intervals of peace will be proportionally longer still. And when war does come, it will be, so to speak, localized. A happily situated, especially an insular, nation may wage war after war, and spend nothing except its treasures and the blood of the soldiers actually engaged. To an Englishman war has long meant only in- creased taxation and the occasional death, what he deems the happy and glorious death, of some friend or kinsman. It is quite another sort of thing to endure all this, and at the same time to have your lands ravaged by Archidamos or your city sacked by Charles the Bold. But there is one very important difference between the warfare of Archidamos and the warfare even of Charles the Bold. Archidamos could ravage every corner of Attica, Charles the Bold could ravage only a very small part of France. While Charles lay before Beauvais, the inhabitants of Bourdeaux might sleep, as far as Charles was con- cerned, in perfect safety and tranquillity. Even of an invaded territory it is only a very small portion which directly feels the horrors of invasion. Besides, the Great Powers have not un- commonly agreed upon the ingenious plan of sparing each other’s territories altogether, and fighting out their quarrels on neutral ground. ‘Thus, for a century or two, whenever there was a war between France and Austria, it was generally carried on by common consent on the convenient battle-ground of Flanders or Lombardy. The worst war of modern Europe, the War of the The Thirty Thirty Years, derives its peculiar horror from its having less Yes’ than usual the character of a war between two great nations. 1¢18_48, _France, Sweden, and other powers, took a share in it, but it was primarily a civil war of religion. As such, it combined, in a great degree, the horrors of a war waged between small states with the scale of a war waged between great ones. The wars which we can ourselves remember, the Russian War of 1854-6 and the Lombard campaign of 1859, have been mere child’s play compared with the great internal wars either of Greece or of Germany. The scale of the powers engaged of course caused a tremendous loss of life among actual combatants, but the general amount of misery inflicted on the world was trifling in proportion to what was caused either by the Peloponnesian War or by the War of Thirty Years. Cases of special cruelty a! 472. Lessening of party strife. Disadvan- tage of large states. Inferior political education. Ignorance and cor- ' ruption of many electors. 64 CHARACTERISTICS OF FEDERAL GOVERNMENT © cnap, or perfidy in modern warfare have been almost wholly confined to local and civil conflicts, and those most commonly among the less civilized nations of Europe. On the whole, the substitution of large kingdoms for city-commonwealths has immeasurably softened the horrors of war.! And as the system of large states abolishes local warfare and diminishes the severity of national warfare, so we have seen by implication that it very seriously diminishes the bitterness of political strife. These advantages form a great, indeed an over- whelming, balance of gain on the side of the large state. But it must ποῦ be forgotten “that there is a reverse to ‘this picture also. We have seen that the great advantage of the city-common- wealth is the political education which it gives, the high standard which it tends to keep up among individual citizens. This is the natural result of a franchise, like that of the city-common- wealth, which makes it at once the right and the duty of every man to exercise direct deliberation and judgement on public affairs. This education a city-democracy gives to all the citi- zens ; even an aristocracy or timocracy” at all liberally consti- tuted gives it to a large portion of them. But in a large state the only way in which the mass of the citizens can have any share in the government is by choosing their representatives in the Parliament or other National Assembly. It is plain that such a franchise as this, indirect in itself and rarely exercised, cannot supply the same sort of political teaching as a seat in the Athenian Assembly. A large number of the electors will always remain ignorant and careless of public affairs to a degree that we cannot believe that any citizen of Athens ever was. Under any conceivable electoral system, many votes will be given blindly, recklessly, and corruptly. Men who are careless about political differences, 1f well to do in the world and not devoid of a con- science, will not vote at all; if they are at once poor and unprincipled, they will sell their votes. Many again who are not corrupted will be deceived ; a hustings speech has become almost a proverb for insincerity. This ignorance, carelessness, 1 See however, on the other side, an eloquent description in Sismondi, Répub. Ital. ii. 448, 2 In Greek political language a Timocrucy (τιμοκρατία) is a government where the franchise depends on a property qualification, distinguished from the Demo- eracy, which is common to all citizens, and from the Aristoctacy, which is in the hands of a hereditary class. II DISADVANTAGES OF GREAT STATES 65 and corruption among the electors appears to be the inherent vice of representative government on a large scale. There is probably no form of government under which bribery can be wholly prevented. It is a vice which occurs everywhere in some shape or other, but which varies its shapes infinitely. If bribery appears in a despotism or in a city-commonwealth, it commonly takes the form of bribery of the rulers; in a repre- sentative government, it takes the form, the really worse form, of bribery of the clectors. The ministers of despotic Kings, the chief citizens of aristocratic republics, have been open to bribes in all ages. The chief citizens of democracies lic equally under the same slur. At Athens we hear constant complaints of bribery ; but it is always bribery of that particular kind which ig unknown among ourselves. We hear of demagogues and generals being bribed to follow this or that line of policy. The Different charge was probably in many cases unfounded, for charges of jorms of corruption are easy to bring and hard to disprove. But the penned at fact that it was so often brought and so readily believed shows and in at least that it was felt not to be improbable. It is certain that England. any citizen who was known to be above corruption obtained, on that account, a degree of public confidence which sometimes, as in the cases of Nikias and Phokidn, was above his general desert. But of bribery in the popular courts of justice we hear very little, and of bribery m the Assembly itself we hear absolutely nothing. That Assembly doubtless passed many foolish, hasty, and passionate votes, but we may be quite sure that it never passed a corrupt vote. But we may believe that Kledn or Hyperbolos often had his reward for the motion which he made to the People, and to which the People assented in good faith. Among ourselves the vice manifests itself in an exactly opposite shape. Kledn was accused of receiving bribes himself, but never of bribing others. No recent English statesman has ever been suspected of receiving bribes, but few perhaps are altogether innocent of giving them. It is long indeed since any great English Minister has made a fortune by corruption of any kind. But in the last century Members of Parliament were bought with hard cash ; in the present century the representatives are no longer bribed themselves, but they do not scruple to bribe the electors. The example of Rome might possibly be quoted on the other side. Rome was a city-commonwealth, and yet, in the later and corrupt days of the republic, bribery at elections F These vices in- herent in the sys- tem, 66 CHARACTERISTICS OF FEDERAL GOVERNMENT — cHap. was as common at Rome as it is among ourselves. But this was evidently for the same reason which makes it common among ourselves. The Tribes were open to bribery, because they had, in those days, become little more than an electoral body ; their legislative power had long been hardly more than a shadow. There are then two forms of corruption, each the natural growth of a particular state of things, and each of which has its peculiar evils. The corruption of a single great Minister may do greater immediate harm to the state than the wholesale corruption of half the boroughs in England. But when electors generally come to look on a vote as a commodity to be sold instead of a duty to be discharged, when they look on a seat in Parhament as a favour to be paid for instead of a trust to be conferred, more damage is done to the political and moral instincts of the people than if a corrupt Minister took hostile gold to betray an army to defeat or to conduct a negociation to dishonour. These vices of ignorance and corruption in the electoral body seem to be the inherent evil of modern representative govern- ment. There is no panacea, whether of conservative or of democratic reform, which can wholly remove them. Vote by Ballot would probably do a good deal to lessen intimidation and something to lessen corruption ; but there is no reason to think that it would entirely wipe out the stain. Nor can corruption be got rid of by limiting the franchise to some considerable property-qualification. Actual bribery may be got rid of, but not corruption in all its forms. Those whose social position sets them above being bribed with hard cash will easily find out ways of repaying themselves for their votes by appointments in the public service or by jobs at the public expense.t And the vices of ignorance and prejudice are beyond the reach of Reform Bills. Ignorance and prejudice are the monopoly of no particular social class and of no particular political party. Really wise men and good citizens are to be found scattered up and down among all classes and all partics. No system has yet been found which will make them, and none but them, the sole possessors of political power. No class has any real right to despise any other class, whether above or below it in the social scale. In 1 Tocqueville (Dém, en Am, ii. 88) says that in the reign or Louis Philip the bribery of an elector was almost unknown in France. This was doubtless because the high qualification at which the franchise was fixed engendered forms of corruption different from those which are rife in our own boroughs. II GENERAL BALANCE IN FAVOUR OF LARGE STATES 67 times of any widespread political delusion, a Papal Aggression, for instance, or a Russian War, the madness seizes upon all ranks and all parties indiscriminately. The few who still hearken to the voice of reason are a small minority made up out of all classes and all parties. Very little then is gained by mere legislative restrictions of the franchise. The vices of electoral ignorance and corruption are inherent in the system. They are the weak side of European Parliamentary Government, just as Athenian Democracy and American Federalism have also their weak sides of other kinds. But though the evil can never be overcome, much may be done to alleviate it. 1 well informed men will make it their business to diffuse sound political know- ledge among the people; if they will deal with the people as men to be reasoned with, not as brutes to be chained or as fools to be cajoled ; if as large a portion of the people as possible has some direct share in local matters however trifling ; much may be done to raise the character of the electoral body. But it is In vain to hope that the average standard of the electoral body of a large state will ever stand so high as the average standard of the popular Assembly of a small one. We must not dream of ever seeing the every-day Englishman attain the same political and intellectual position as was held by the every-day Athenian. On the whole comparison, there can be little doubt that the balance of advantage lies in favour of the modern system of large states. The small republic indeed developes its individual citizens to a pitch which in the large kingdom is utterly im- possible. But it so developes them at the cost of bitter political strife within, and almost constant warfare without. It may even be doubted whether the highest form of the city-common- wealth does not require slavery as the condition of its most perfect developement. The days of glory of such a common- wealth are indeed glorious beyond comparison; but it is a glory which is too brilliant to last, and in proportion to the short splendour of its prime is too often the unutterable wretchedness of its long old age. The republics of Greece seem to have been shown to the world for a moment, like some model of glorified humanity, from which all may draw the highest of lessons, but which none can hope to reproduce in its perfection. As the literature of Greece is the ground- They may be allevi- ated but not wholly removed, Balance of advantage in favour of large states, 68 CHARACTERISTICS OF FEDERAL GOVERNMENT cuHap. work of all later literature, as the art of Greece is the ground- work of all later art, so in the great Democracy of Athens we recognize the parent state of law and justice and freedom, the wonder and the example of every later age. But it is an example which we can no more reproduce than we can call back again the inspiration of the Homeric singer, the more than human skill of Pheidias, or the untaught and inborn wisdom of Thucydidés. We can never be like them, if only because they have gone before. They all belong to that glorious vision of the world’s youth which has passed away for ever. The subject of a great modern state leads a life less exciting and less brilliant, but a life no less useful, and more orderly and peaceful, than the citizen of an ancient commonwealth. But never could we have been as we are, if those ancient commonwealths had not gone before us. While human nature remains what it has been for two thousand years, so long will the eternal lessons of the great Possession for all Time,! the lessons which Periklés has written with his life and Thucydidés with his pen, the lessons expanded by the more enlarged experience of Aristotle and Polybios, the lessons which breathe a higher note of warning still as Démosthenés lives the champion of freedom and dies its martyr—so long will lessons such as these never cease to speak with the same truth and the same freshness even to countless generations. The continent which gave birth to Kleisthenés and Cains Licinius and Simon of Montfort may indeed be doomed te be trampled under foot by an Empire based on Universal Suffrage; but no pseudo- democratic despot, no Cxesar or Dionysios ruling by the national will of half-a-million of bayonets, will ever quite bring back Europe to the state of a land of Pharaohs and Nabuchodonosors, until the History of Thucydidés, the Politics of Aristotle, and the Orations of Démosthenés, are wholly forgotten among men. We have thus compared together the two systems of govern- ment which form, as it were, the poles of our inquiry. We have contrasted the city-commonwealth, which sacrifices every- thing else to the full developement of the individual citizen, and the great modern kingdom, which sacrifices everything else to the peace, order, and general well-being of an extensive territory. Each, if it be a really good example of its own class, 1 Κτῆμα és del. Thue. i, 22, II FEDERALISM AN INTERMEDIATE FORM 69 attains its own object perfectly ; but each leaves much that is highly desirable unattained. May there not be a third system, intermediate between the two, borrowing something from each of them, and possessing many both of the merits and of the faults inherent in a compromise? May there not be a system ΒΈΡΕΠΑΙ, which aims at both the objects which are aimed at singly by HOV ERS the other two systems, a system which will probably attain system in- neither object in the perfection in which it is attained by the termediate system which aims at it singly, but which may at least claim ctween. the merit of uniting the two in a very considerable degree 1 small δ Such a third system, such_a compromise, is to be found in that States. form of government which is the special object. of our present inquiry, that namely of the Federal Republic. A Federal It com- Government does not secure peace and equal rights to its whole bines, | territory so perfectly as a modern Constitutional Kingdom. [0 though in an inferior does not develope the political life of every single citizen so degree, the perfectly as an ancient city-commonwealth. But it secures a Speci’ ad- far higher amount of general peace than the system of in- pion dependent cities; it gives its average citizens a higher political systems. education than is within the reach of the average subjects of extensive monarchies. This form of government is a more delicate and artificial structure than either of the others ; its perfect form is a late growth of a very high state of political culture; it is, even more than other forms of government, essentially the creation of circumstances, and it will even less than other forms bear thoughtlessly transplanting to soils where circumstances have not prepared the ground for it. For all these reasons there is no political system which affords a more curious political study at any time. And, at this present moment, the strength and the weakness which it is displaying before our eyes make its origin and its probable destiny the most interesting of all political problems. I have said that Federalism is essentially a compromise,! an Federal artificial product of an advanced state of political culture. Near Hover approaches to it may be found in very early stages of society, Compro- and yet it is clearly not a system which would present itself mise, ut the very beginnings of political life. It is probable that both the great kingdom and the independent city existed before the system of Federations was thought of. It is quite certain that both great kingdoms and independent cities had 1 See Bernard’s Lectures, p. 73. 70 CHARACTERISTICS OF FEDERAL GOVERNMENT ~— cuHap. enema ow reached a high degree of splendour and of political importance before Federal Governments played any remarkable part in the only suited history of the world. Federalism is a form of government which to certain positions, Popular prejudice on the subject. is likely to arise only under certain peculiar circumstances,’ and its warmest admirers could hardly wish to propagate it, irrespec- tive of circumstances, throughout the world in general. No one could wish that Athens, in the days of her glory, should have stooped to a Federal union with other Grecian citics. No one could wish to cut up our Umted Kingdom into a Federation, to invest English Counties with the rights of American States, or even to restore Scotland and Ireland to the quasi-lederal position which they held before their respective Unions. A Federal Union, to be of any value, must arise by the establish- ment of a closer tie between elements which were before distinct, not by the division of members which have been hitherto more closely united. All that I here claim for Federal Government —though, to be sure, no more can be claimed for any other sort of government—1is that it may be looked upon as one possible form of government among others, having its own advantages and its own disadvantages, suited for some times and places and not suited for others, and which, like all other forms of government, may be good or bad, strong or weak, wise or foolish, just as may happen. At this moment there is un- reasonable prejudice abroad against Federal Government in general. This is partly because we hold ourselves, and that quite justly, to have lately suffered a wrong at the hands of one particular Federal Government,’ partly because it is thought by many that the disruption of the greatest Federal Government that the world ever saw proves that no Federal Government can possibly hold together. A moment’s thought will show the fallacy of any such inferences. They are exactly the sort of hasty conclusions which a knowledge of general history dispels. 1 The circumstances under which a Federation is possible and desirable are discussed by M. de Tocqueville (Dem, en Am. i. 269 et seqq) and by Mr. Mill (Rep. Gov. p. 298). It is curious to see the different aspects in which the matter is looked at by two such able writers. ‘There is no contradiction between them, but each supplies something which is wanting in the other. 2 January, 1862. These errors are fostered by the strange habit which the newspapers have of calling the Government at Washington, ‘‘ the Federal Government,” as if it were the only one in the world, or as if the Government of the Confederate States were not equally a Federal Government. It would be about as reasonable to call any kingdom with which we had a dispute “the Royal Government,” and to make inferences unfavourable to monarchy. II NO CASE AGAINST FEDERALISM IN GENERAL 71 — All that these facts prove is the indisputable truth that a Federal constitution is not necessarily a perfect constitution, that the Federal form of Government enjoys no immunity from the various weaknesses and dangers which beset all forms of government. They undoubtedly prove the existence of mis- management in the conduct of the American Republic; they probably prove that circumstances have rendered it undesirable that the whole Union should remain united by a single Federal bond. But they prove no more against Federalism in the No general abstract than the misgovernment of particular Kings and the dequctons occasional disruption of their kingdoms prove against Monarchy from in the abstract. At this stage of my work I desire to keep recent myself as clear as possible from the tangled maze of recent American American politics. I postpone to a later stage any definite ον judgement on questions which have as yet hardly become matters of history. I am not now concerned to judge between North and South, to act as the accuser or the champion either of President Lincoln or of President Davis. I have to deal only with such mistaken inferences from recent events as affect the general question of Federal Government. I am not concerned to defend either Mr. Lincoln or Mr. Davis; but I am concerned to answer any inferences which reflect on the wisdom either of Markos and Aratos or of Washington and Hamilton. The South has seceded from the North, whether rightly or wrongly I do not here pronounce. There can be no doubt that, to say the least, a plausible case can be made out on behalf of Secession on the ground of expediency.! It is quite possible that there may not have been that degree of mutual sympathy 2 between the States without which a Federal Government cannot be successfully carried on. It is quite possible that the Union, as it stood, was too large to be properly governed as one Federal commonwealth, perhaps as one commonwealth of any kind. All these admissions would prove nothing, either against Federal Government in the abstract, or against the wisdom of 1 Mr. Spence’s arguments (American Union, p. 198) to show the constitutional right of Secession carry no conviction to my mind, but his arguments on the ground of expediency deserve, to say the least, the most careful answer that the North can give them. Professor Bernard’s Lectures on the constitutional question seem to me to maintain a very just mean between the extreme views of Mr. Spence on the one side and Mr. Motley on the other. 3 See Mill, Representative Government, p. 298. Similar disrup- tions in the case of Mon- archies. No case against Federalism in general, 72 CHARACTERISTICS OF FEDERAL GOVERNMENT — crap. the founders of the particular Federal Government of the United States. Let it be granted that the continuance of the American Union was undesirable, that it was expedient and just for the Southern States to separate. This proves no morc than is proved by similar disruptions in the case of monarchies. In different ages of European history, Sicily has seceded from Naples, Portugal has seceded from Spain, Greece has seceded from Turkey, Belgium has seceded from Holland, Hungary, we all trust, is about to secede from Austria. These examples are not generally looked upon as proving the inherent weakness and absurdity of Monarchy. The secession of South Carolina and her sisters goes exactly as far and no further to prove the inherent weakness and absurdity of Federalism. What all these instances prove is merely this, that, both under Monarchies and under Federations, States are sometimes joined together which had better be separated. So far from the disruption proving anything against Federalism in the abstract, it does not even prove anything against the American Union as it came forth from nor against the hands of its founders. ‘Those founders, when they legislated the ori- ginal American Union. Testimony of the Southern States to the Federal ‘Principle. 1861. Parallel of Belgium and Hol- land. for thirteen States on the Atlantic border, could not foresee the enormous extension of the Republic from Ocean to Ocean. Nor could they foresee those vast diversitics of interest and feeling which have, since their time, arisen between the different sections of the original Union. The opposition between slaveholding and non-slaveholding States, between agricultural and manu- facturing States, is an opposition which has arisen since the establishment of the Federal Constitution. Could they have foreseen all that has happened since their day, Washington and his colleagues would have been, not merely the wise but fallible men which they undoubtedly were, but unerring prophets, a character to which they laid no claim. And, after all, the Southern States have, in their very secession, paid the highest tribute that could be paid to the general principle of Federalism. They have seceded from one Federal Government only to set up another. Their first act has been to re-enact the old Federal Constitution, with only such changes in detail as the experience of seventy years had shown to be needful! That Belgium, in separating from the Dutch Monarchy, still remained a kingdom, proves far more in favour of Monarchy than its separation proves 1 See the Confederate Constitution in Ellison’s Slavery and Secession (London, 1861), p. 312. II QUESTION OF A LARGE NON-FEDERAL REPUBLIC 73 against it. So the fact that the Southern States, in separating from the old Federal Union, forthwith set up a new Federal Union of their own, proves far more in favour of Federalism in the abstract than their separation proves against it. I abstain at present not only from entering on the details of the recent Secession, but even from entering on the details of. the Federal Constitution itself. 1 refer to them here only to answer popular objections, to show that recent events in America prove absolutely nothing against Federalism in the abstract, and that we ought to be able to discuss the comparative merits and defects of Federalism and other forms of government as dispassionatcly in 1862 as we could have done in 1860. I have several times, when speaking of Federal Governments, assumed incidentally that their constitution will be republican, just as I have also sometimes assumed incidentally that the constitu- tion of a large consolidated state will be monarchical. I have done so simply because, up to this time, experience has shown that they commonly are so. There is indeed no absurdity in supposing that the government of a large country might per- manently assume the form of an Indivisible or Consolidated tepublic. There is no reason in the nature of things why a A large large state, with an Assembly representing the whole nation, vate ey might not intrust executive functions, not to a hereditary King public “ directed by Ministers approved by the Assembly, but to an without avowedly elective Council of State or to a President chosen for peing ἃ ἣν term of years. The attempts hitherto made to establish such πομοος a government have been so few that their failure by no means proves that some future attempt may not be successful. They have commonly been made under much less favonrable circum- stances, and under much less worthy leaders, than the Federal Constitution of the United States. Some Cromwell or Buonaparte has commonly soon appeared to convert the Republic into a Tyranny. No one can mourn over the extinction of the Rump No argu- in England. The republican constitution was in no sense the ment to be ᾿ . drawn work of the nation; the mockery of a representative body which from ordained it was in truth an oligarchy in no whit better than the failures in royal despotism which it succeeded or the Tyranny by which it ingiand was followed. The last French Republic fell because of the prance. twofold madnoss of placing a born conspirator at the head of a free state and of entrusting a republican President with the A Federa- tion may consist of mon- archies. Approach to kingly Federalism in the Feudal system. 74 CHARACTERISTICS OF FEDERAL GOVERNMENT — cnar. command of an cnormous army. Instances like these certainly do not show that the Consolidated Republic is at all an impossible form of government for a large country. But since, as a matter of fact, all the greatest states of the world are, and commonly have been, monarchically governed, I have, for convenience, in my comparison of the great state with the small commonwealth, assumed that the great state would be a monarchy. So, on the other hand, there is no abstract absurdity in supposing that a league of monarchies, especially constitutional monarchies, might assume the true Federal form. But, as a matter of fact, all the greatest and most perfect Federations, past and present, have always been Republics. I have therefore, in like manner often assumed, in contrasting Federal states with others, that the Federal state would be a Republic.! The question of the possibility of a Federal Monarchy is one which it may be worth while to follow out a little further. The relation of lord and vassal between sovereign princes, if strictly carried out, would produce something very like a kingly Federa- tion.” The vassal prince is sovereign in his internal administra- tion, but his foreign policy must be directed by that of his suzerain. He must never wage war against him, and he must follow his standard against other enemies. But in truth this 15 an ideal which has never been fully carried out, and, if it were carried out, it would not produce a perfect Federal Government. It has never been carried out, because the harmonious relation of lord and vassal which it supposes has never permanently existed. Sometimes a too powerful suzerain has reduced his vassals from the estate of vassals to that of subjects. Sometimes too powerful vassals have thrown off vassalage altogether, and The theory have grown into independent sovereigns. The one process took never fully carried out, place in France and the other in Germany. By annexing the dominions of their vassal princes, the Kings of Paris extended their territories to the sea, the Rhone, and the Pyrenees.? In Germany the vassal princes and commonwealths gradually grew into practical independence of their nominal King the Emperor. The very name of the German Kingdom died out in popular 1 See Archdeacon Denison’s Prize Essay on Federal Government (Oxford, 1829), p. 33. 2 See the Federalist, No. 17, p. 90. 8 The Rhone and the Pyrenees, not the Rhine and the Alps, which have been reached by another process. See above, p. 24, note 2, II QUESTION OF FEDERAL MONARCHIES 75 thought and popular Janguage.! The old Germanic body is often spoken of as a Confederation, and it may fairly claim to rank among Confederations of the looser kind. But it was a Con- federation only so far as it had ceased to be a monarchy. Its modern successor, the so-called German Confederation, has but little of the true Federal character about it, and, so far as it is Federal, it is not monarchic. Some of its members are even now Republics, and it has not, like the old Empire, any acknowledged monarchic head. And, even if the feudal theory had ever been and, if harmoniously carried out, the relation of vassal principalities to tied ᾿ . out, would an Imperial head would not of itself amount to the true Federal κοι pro. relation. It would rather resemble the relation of dependent duce a true alliance in which Chios and Mityléné stood to Athens. To Federa- produce anything like true Federalism, all national affairs should Hon. be ordered in a National Assembly, an Institution which in feudal France was never attempted, and to which the Imperial Diet of Germany presented only a very feeble approach. It is indeed Scheme ‘possible in theory that the powers of the American President, as Ἢ ἃ ὑπ they stand, might be vested in a hereditary or elective King, and Monarchy ; that the functions of the Governors of the States, as they stand, might be vested in hereditary or elective Dukes. Such an Union would be a true Monarchic Federation. The connexion would be strictly Federal, and Kings and Dukes would be invested with really higher powers than were held by a King of Poland or a Duke of Venice. But such a constitution has never existed ; it unlikely would be a political machine even more delicate and hard to ἴ0 last. work than a Federation of Republics. We may safely say that it could not last through a single generation. But kingly states have sometimes made a nearer approach to Other ap- true Federalism than anything that could practically grow out Proven: of the relation of lord and vassal. We may pass by instances in Monarchy. remote ages and barbarous countries, of whose details we have no record. Such may, or may not, have been the Twelve Kings of Eeypt? and the Five Lords of the Philistines? We may pass by the abortive scheme of a Confederation of Italian Princes with a.p. 1859. the Pope at their head, which was put forth by Louis Napoleon Buonaparte only to.become the laughing-stock of Europe. A far 1 The name however remained down to the last. The formal titles, even of Francis the Second, were “ Erwiihlter Rémischer Kaiser, Konig in Germanien und Jerusalem.” These he laid aside, and, dissatisfied with his hereditary rank of Archduke, assumed the portentous title of ‘‘ Emperor of Austria.” * Herod. ii. c. 147. 3-1 Sam. vi. 4. Two or more Kingdoms under one King. A.D. 1608 - 1707. A.D. 1782- 1800. A.D. 1814-- 1862. Spain ; The “Ἢ Austrian Empire ;” Great Bri- tain and Ireland ; Sweden and Norway. 76 CHARACTERISTICS OF FEDERAL GOVERNMENT ~ cnar. nearer approach may be found in the case of the union of two or more kingdoms under one King.!. The kingdoms so joined may form one state in all their relations with other powers, while they may retain the most perfect independence in all internal matters; they may keep thcir own laws, their own constitu- tions, and a distinct administration of the ordinary government. Such were England and Scotland during the century between the Union of the Crowns and the Union of the Kingdoms; such were Great Britain and Ireland during the last eighteen years of the last century ; such have been Sweden and Norway for nearly fifty years past. But such unions have been few in number, and they have commonly been the result of accident. A Kingdom has been conquered or inherited by the King of another Kingdom ; it has received the stranger as its sovercign, but it has retained its own constitution and laws. When many states have been so united, as by the Dukes of Burgundy, the Kings of Castile, and the so-called “Emperors” of Austria, had they been governed with any regard to right and justice, something like a Federal Monarchy might have been the result. But in Spain, the rights of independent kingdoms first sank into mere provincial liberties, and then were absorbed by the general despotism of the common Sovereign. Spain has risen again, not indeed as a Confederation, but as a constitutional kingdom, which lacks nothing except rulers worthy of the nation. In the case of the “ Austrian Kmpire,” long years of tyranny and faithlessness have produced a hatred of the central power which separation alone can satisfy. But, were this otherwise, it may be doubted whether a union of such utterly incongruous nations, even on the mildest and justest terms, could ever satisfy the conditions necessary for a Federa- tion of any kind. Where only two crowns have been thus united, a tendency to more perfect union has commonly arisen. This, in its best form, has taken the form of an equal fusion of the two kingdoms ; in its worst form it has degenerated into an absorption of the weaker kingdom by the stronger. In our own country, Scotland has first been united with England, and then Ireland has been united with Great Britain. Of cases where such more perfect union has not followed, the most permanent and beneficial has been the union of Sweden and Norway. That is to say, the terms of union preserved to Norway liberties which otherwise she might have lost. The union was a desirable mean 1 Mill, Representative Government, p. 303. 1Π ACTUAL APPROACHES TO FEDERAL MONARCHY 77 between mere absorption by Sweden, and an attempt at perfect independence which would probably have been fruitless. The union has worked well, through the indomitable love of freedom which reigns in the noble Norwegian nation. But it is hardly a system which a patriotic Norwegian would have hit upon as desirable for its own sake. On the whole the general tendency of history is to show that, though a Monarchic Federation is by no means theoretically impossible, yet a Republican Federation is far more likely to exist as a permanent and flourishing system. We may therefore, in the general course of our comparison, practically assume that a Federal state will be also a Republican state. When 1 speak of the Federal system as one intermediate between the systems of large and of small states, 10 may he ob- jected that the states which compose a Federation may be either large or small states, according to the definitions of large and small states which I have already given. It is undoubtedly true that Members the members of a Confederation may be either single cities or οἵ ἃ Fede- . . r : ration may states of a considerable size. The Achaian League was a League jo either of Cities, the United States are a League of countries, many of Cities or which exceed in size the smaller kingdoms of Europe. It there- States of . . consider- fore naturally follows, that in Achaia the internal governments apje size. of the several cities resembled those of any other Greek democracy, while the internal governments of the several American States follow the common type of modern European constitutions. That is to say, the Achaian cities had primary, the American States have representative Assembles. It is clear that a great commonwealth, like the State of New York, is as much obliged to adopt representative institutions as England or Italy.! But though the component parts of a Federation may be as large on the map as some European kingdoms, they are not likely to be states which really occupy the same position. This great size of 1 Switzerland exhibits an intermediate state of things. Some Cantons have primary, others have representative Assemblies. It is only in one or two of the largest Cantons that representation can have been absolutely necessary on geographical grounds. It must have been introduced elsewhere by the influence of the common type of European freedom. A Canton like Geneva, consisting of a large town with a very small surrounding territory, would have seemed the place of all others to revive a Democracy of the Athenian kind. But the constitu- tion of Geneva, though democratic, is representative ; Dénios, in his purity, is to be found only in some of the small rural Cantons which contain no important town, Difference of scale in Europe and Ame- rica to be con- sidered. 78 CHARACTERISTICS OF FEDERAL GOVERNMENT (ἨΔΡ. the States is peculiar to the American Union, and we must take into account the difference of scale between America and Kurope. In a newly-settled continent, a country which covers as much ground as France or Spain may, in population, in everything in short except mere extent, be only on a level with a small Swiss Canton or German Duchy. The difference may be seen not only between Europe and America, but between the older and newer parts of the American Union itself. The area of Texas is hetween three and four times as great as the area of all the New England States ; the population of Texas, bond and free, is less than half the population of the one State of Massachusetts.! Though several of the States are of the size of kingdoms, it 1s only one or two in which it would not be perfect madness to set up as wholly independent powers. A Federal connexion with other states is just as necessary to most of them as it was to the Achaian cities, or as it now is to the Swiss Cantons. Still it undoubtedly makes a great difference in the character of a Federation, whether its members are single cities or states of such a size as to require Representative Assemblies. That is to say, while Federations, as a class, occupy a position intermediate between the two other systems, some particular Federations will approach nearer to one extreme, and others to the other. A League of the Achaian sort will share many of the merits and the defects of a system of independent city-commonwealths. ° unwilling 1 Of course the question of geographical possibility is here of great importance. members. If Kentucky or Tennessee liad seceded all by itself, without the support of any other State, the thing would have been as ridiculous as a secession of North- amptonshire, and the nuisance would have been abated by the combined forces of the whole Union. But the secession of Maine or of Florida would not have so clearly touched the interests of other parts of the Federation. 2 July, 1862. 3 This is forcibly put in Mr. Spence’s Seventh Chapter. 4 The Dutch War of Independence began in 1568 ; the Thirteen Years’ Truce was concluded in 1609, but the independence of the United Provinces was not formally recognized by Spain till 1648. Our own American War lasted eight years, 1775-83. Example of Switzer- land. 92 CHARACTERISTICS OF FEDERAL GOVERNMENT © cup. be compelled at the point of the bayonet to recognize their conquerors as brethren, and to send, under the penalties of treason, unwilling Senators and Representatives to Washing- ton? Either alternative is utterly repugnant to the first principles of a Federal Union. Surely the remedy is worse than the disease. The revolted State, as a foreign power, may become a friendly neighbour; as an unwilling Con- federate, it will simply be a source of internal dissension and confusion. A State will hardly think of Secession as long as it is its manifest interest to remain in the Union. When it ceases to be its manifest interest to remain, there may at least be grave doubts as to either the justice or the expediency of retaining it by force. The Achaian League was weakened, indeed we may say that it finally perished, by nothing so much as by the attempt to retain members in the Confederation against their will. The truth is that the disruption of the United States has been mainly owing to their unparalleled prosperity. In that boundless continent, with no neighbour at once able and willing to contend with them on equal terms, Secession has been pos- sible. No despot stands at either end of the Union ready to swallow up each seceding State as soon as it loses the protection of its neighbours. Federalism cannot be said to have been found wanting, where it has not been really tried. What a Federal union really can do when it is tried is best seen by another example. From America Ict us turn our eyes to Switzerland. The territory of the Swiss Confederation is, both in a military and a political point of view, one of the most important in Kurope. Lying between the two great despotisms of France and Austria, It is above all things needful that it should be held by a free and an united people. But disunion scems stamped upon the soil by the very hand of nature, no less than on the soil of Hellas itself. Every valley seems to ask for its own separate commonwealth. The land, small as it is, is inhabited by men of different races, different languages, different religions, different stages of society. Four languages are spoken within the narrow compass of the League. Religious and political dis- sensions have been so strong as more than once to have led to civil war. How are such a people to be kept united among themselves, so as to guard their mountains and valleys against all invaders? I need hardly stop to show that the citadel of II EXAMPLE OF SWITZERLAND 93 -. ο..... em ee ee ee Europe could not be safely entrusted to twenty-two wholly inde- Perfect pendent Republics or to twenty-two wholly independent princes. separation But would consolidation answer the purpose? Shall we give them ane on: the stereotyped blessing of a hereditary King, a responsible solidation Ministry, an elected and a nominated House of Parliament ? slike im- Or shall we, by way of variety, give them some neatly planned possible. scheme of a Republic one and indivisible? Such a Kingdom, such a Republic, would but present, on a smaller scale, much such a spectacle as the Empires of Austria and Turkey. The Burgundian and the Italian provinces would rebel against a dominant German government, and would fly for support to their neighbours of kindred speech beyond the lhmits of the Kingdom. France would soon become to Vaud what Piedmont has been to the Italian provinces of Austria, what Russia has been to the Slavonic provinces of Turkey. The Federal relation has solved the problem. Under the Federal system, the Catholic The and the Protestant, the aristocrat and the democrat, the citizen probien of Bern and the mountaineer of Uri,—the Swabian of Ziirich, δ Pederel the Lombard of Ticino, the Burgundian of Geneva, the speakers Constitu- of the unknown tongues of the Rhetian valleys—all can meet #- sile by side as free and equal Confederates. They can retain their local independence, their local diversities, nay, if they will, their local jealousies and hatreds, and yet they can stand forth, in all external matters, as one united nation, all of whose mem- bers are at once ready to man their mountain rampart the moment that the slightest foreign aggression 1s committed on any one of their brethren. The Federal system, in short, has here, out of the most discordant ethnological, political, and re- ligious elements, raised up an artificial nation, full of as true and heroic national feeling as ever animated any people of the most unmixed blood. An American State can secede, if it pleases: no Swiss Canton will ever desert the protection of its brethren, because it knows that Secession, instead of meaning increased independence, would mean only immediate annexation by the nearest despot. If any one is tempted to draw shallow infer- ences against Federalism in general from mistaken views of one single example, he may at once correct his error by looking at that nearer Federation which has weathered so many internal and external storms. No part of my task will be more delightful or more instructive than to trace the history of that glorious League, from the day when the Austrian a.p. 1815. A.D. 1860, Recapitu- lation. 94 CHARACTERISTICS OF FEDERAL GOVERNMENT cuape. ΤΙ invader first felt the might of freedom at Morgarten to the day when a baser and more treacherous despotism still, in defiance of plighted faith and of the public Law of Europe, planted the vultures of Paris upon the neutral shores of the Lake of Geneva. I have thus gone through the comparison which I designed between the two opposite poles of political being, and that ingenious and nicely-balanced system which is intermediate between the two. I have compared the small City-Common- wealth, the great Monarchy or Consolidated Republic, and the Federal Union, whether of single Citics or of considerable States. I have pointed out the inherent advantages and disadvantages of the three systems, and the circumstances under which each is preferable to the others. I now draw near to my main subject, to show the practical working of the Federal principle as it is exemplified in the history of the Federal Governments of the Ancient, the Medieval, and the Modern world. CHAPTER I] OF THE AMPHIKTYONIC COUNCIL BEFORE entering on that great developement of the Federal principle which marks the last age of independent Greece, it will be well to speak somewhat more briefly of certain less perfect approaches to a Federal system, which may be seen in the earlier days of Grecian history, and of which the noble work of Aratos was doubtless ina great measure a conscious improvement. And, first of all, it will he needful to say a few words as to an error which is now pretty well exploded, but which was of early date and which once had a wide currency. Many philosophical speculators on government have been led into great mistakes by the idea that Greece itself, as a whole, and not merely particular Grecian states, ought to be ranked as an Instance of Federal union. The body which has been often mistaken for a Federal ‘The Am- Council of Greece is the famous Council of the Amphiktyons phiktyonic at Delphi. Probabl e capable of writing upon the Come! elphi. ably no one capé ¢ up Conn ie subject can have been so wholly ignorant of the whole bearing Federal of Grecian history as to take the Amphiktyonic League for a uovern- perfect Federal union after the Achaian or American pattern. το But it is easy to understand how such a body as the Amphiktyons may have been mistaken for a Federal Diet of the looser kind. It is certain that Dionysios,! pretty clear that Strabo,? not unlikely that Cicero,? supposed the Amphiktyonic Council to 1 iv. 25. He goes on, in his usual style, to say how Servius Tullius founded the Latin League in imitation of the Amphiktyons. Now the Latin League, though probably not a perfect Federal Government, has a fair right to be classed among close approaches to the Federal idea. δ ix. 3,7. Strabo speaks of the League as consisting of πόλεις, Pausanias, (x. 8. 2) more accurately of γένη. Strabo’s expressions, περὶ τῶν κοινῶν βουλευσόμενον and δίκας Scat πόλεσι πρὸς πόλεις εἰσί, go far beyond the facts of the case. 3 The often quoted expression of Cicero, ‘‘ Amphictyones, id est, commune Origin of the Error, Opinions of Modern Writers. 96 OF THE AMPHIKTYONIC COUNCIL CHAP. have been invested with far more extensive powers than it ever possessed, at all events during the best days of Greece. The error on their part was natural: the later history of in- dependent Greece was conspicuously a history of Federalism ; and it was easy to carry back the political ideas of the times with which they were most familiar into days in which those ideas were most certainly unknown. And indeed there seems some reason to believe that the Amphiktyonic body had, in the aye of Strabo, really put on something more like the out- ward shape of a true Federal body than it had ever worn in the age of Démosthenés. From the later Greek and Latin writers the error naturally spread to modern scholars. In days when all “the classics” were held to be of equal value and authority, and when it was hardly yet discerned that all “the classics” were not contemporary with each other, men did not see how little the descriptions of Strabo and Pausanias, even though backed by an incidental allusion of Cicero, were really worth, when weighed against the emphatic silence of Thucydidés, Aristotle, and Polybios. And in truth modern scholars, writing under the influence of political and historical theories, have often pressed the words of Strabo, Pausanias, and Cicero, far beyond anything that Strabo, Pausanias, or Cicero ever meant. The writers of the last century seem to have looked upon the Amphiktyonic League as a real political union of the Greek nation, and they sometimes highly extol the political wisdom of the authors of so wise a system.' In a like spirit, the accidental and fluctuating supremacy of ἃ single Bretwalda over the several Old-English kingdoms was, by writers of the same age, often supposed to be the deliberate result of calculations no less far-searching than those which are attributed to Amphi- ktyén the son of Deukalién.2 The true nature of the Amphi- ktyonic League was, as far as I know, first clearly sct forth by Gracie Concilium ’—an expression, by the way, which in a certain sense, is quite defensible—is a mere obiter dictum (De Inv. Rhet. ii. 23), and may or may not express Cicero’s deliberate judgement, From Cicero’s words, Raleigh doubtless got his phrase, ‘‘the Council of the Amphyctiones, or the General Estates of Greece.” Hist. of the World, Part 1, Book 4, Cap. i. § 4. 1 Compare the first two Chapters of Montesquieu, Esprit des Lois, Book ix. He mentions the Aimphiktyons but once, but he clearly has them in his mind throughout. On the other hand see the strictures on the supposed constitution of the League in the ‘‘ Federalist,” No. xviii. p. 91. 2 Rapin (Hist. d’Ang. i. 139) gravely discusses the Bretwaldadom at some length, and compares the Bretwalda to the Dutch Stadtholder. II THE AMPHIKTYONS NOT A FEDERAL GOVERNMENT 97 Sainte Croix, in his, for the time, really valuable work on old Greek Federalism.!| The work of Tittmann on the Amphiktyonic League 2. is somewhat retrograde after that of Sainte Croix. It is needless to say that in the works of our own great country- men, in the histories of Thirlwall and of Grote, no traces of the error can be discerned. The old notions as to the nature of the Amphiktyonic Council and the relations of the Greek states to one another may now be set down as an exploded mistake,’ a mistake arising partly from ignorance of the true nature of Federal Government, partly from inability to distinguish between the different degrees of authority to be allowed to different Greek and Latin writers. The Amphiktyonic Council then, there can be no doubt, was The in no wise an instance of Federal Government, even in the very Council a wae ~ oe Religious, laxest sense of the word. It was not a political, but a religious 3 ; body. If it had any claim to the title of a General Council ὁ of Political Greece, it was wholly in the sense in which we speak of General Body- 1 Des Anciens Gouvernemens Fedcratifs. Paris, an vii. 2 Ueber den Bund der Amphiktyonen. Berlin, 1812. 3 No scholar of frecent times has attempted to revive it, except Colonel Mure, in a pamphlet (National Criticism in 1858, p. 22) which that distinguished scholar probably regretted before he died. It is no disrespect to Colonel Mure, whose studies, most valuable in their own line, did not lie in a strictly historical direction, to say that he clearly had no idea what a Federal Government really is. Some of the particular arguments are very weak, and the Colonel does not seem to have seen how far the silence of Thucydidés outweighs the speech of a thousand Plutarchs or Dionysii. He refers us to the description of the Amphi- ktyons by Tacitus (Ann. iv. 14) as ‘¢ quis precipnum fuit rerum omnium judicium, qua tempestate τοὶ, conditis per Asiam urbibus, ore maris potiebantur.”’ Undoubtedly Tacitus, as Colonel Mure says, is ‘an author not accustomed to speak at random,” but his obtter dictum is really not decisive as to the mythical ages of Greece. Colonel Mure goes on to say that the Amphiktyons erased the boastful inscription of Pausanias, This is on the authority of an oration attributed to Démosthenés, but generally looked on as spurious (c. Neer. § 128), while Thucydidés (i. 182) makes the erasure the act of the Lacedemonians them- selves. That Themistoklés (Plut. Them. 20) opposed the proposal to deprive the medizing Greeks of their Amphiktyonic franchise, is very probable, but it does not go the least way towards showing that the Amphiktyons were, in any seuse, a Federal Government. 4 Mschinés (Ktes. ὃ 58) has the expressions κοινοῦ συνεδρίου τῶν Ἑλλήνων and afterwards ᾿Ελληνικοῦ cuvedplov. The latter phrase, as it stands in the context, referring to Philip’s admission to the Amphiktyonic body, certainly proves nothing. Nor does the former, which is quoted by Tittmann (p. 62), prove very much. ‘Tittmann also quotes the Amphiktyonic decree in Démosthenés (De Cor. § 198) where the Amphiktyons call themselves τὸ κοινὸν τῶν Ἑλλήνων συνέδριον. Of these expressions one comes from Aischinés, who is well disposed to magnify Amphiktyonic rights, and whose language is never imitated by Π The Delphic Amphi- ktyony 98 OF THE AMPHIKTYONIC COUNCIL CHAP. Councils in Modern Europe. The Amphiktyonic Council re- presented Greece as an Ecclesiastical Synod represented Western Christendom, not as a Swiss Diet or an American Congress represents the Federation of which it is the common legislature. Its primary business was to regulate the concerns of the temple of Apollo at Delphi. And the Amphiktyonic Council which met at Delphi and at Thermopyle was in truth only the most only one of famous of several bodies of the same kind. An Amphiktyonic, several, Incidental Political Functions of the Council. or, more correctly, an Amphiktionic,! body was an Assembly of the tribes who dwelt around any famous temple gathered together to manage the affairs of that temple. There were other Amphi- ktyonic Assemblies in Greece, amongst which that of the isle of Kalaureia,* off the coast of Argolis, was a body of some celebrity. The Amphiktyons of Delphi obtained greater im- portance than any other Amphiktyons only because of the greater importance of the Delphic sanctuary, and because it incidentally happened that the greater part of the Greek nation had some kind of representation among them. But that body could not be looked upon as a perfect representation of the Greek nation which, to postpone other objections to its constitution, found no place for so large a fraction of the Hellenic body as the Arkadians, Still the Amphiktyons of Delphi undoubtedly came nearer than any other existing body to the character of a general representation of all Greece. It is therefore easy to understand how the religious functions of such a body might incidentally assume a political character. Thus the old Amphi- ktyonic oath® forbade certain extreme measures of hostility against any city sharing in the common Amphiktyonie worship. Here we get on that mixed ground between spiritual and Démosthenés, who so profanely talks of 7 ἐν Δελφοῖς σκιά, The other comes from the Amphiktyons themselves, who certainly never had more occasion to magnify their office, than in the decree by which they invited Philip into Greece. Yet even they directly afterwards qualify the strong expression by the words oi “Ἕλληνες οἱ μετέχοντες τοῦ συνεδρίου τῶν ᾿Αμφικτυόνων. All those expressions, like those of Herodotos to be presently quoted, hardly amount to more than the name ᾿Ελληνοτάμιαι, as applied to certain officers, not of a Hellenic Federation, but of the Athenian Confederacy. 1 The derivation from ἀμφικτίονες, quoted by Pausanias (x. 8) from Androtidn, is now generally received. Indeed the spelling AMPIKTIONE® occurs on the Amphiktyonic coinage at Delphi. 2 Strabo, lib. viii. c. 6,14. "Hv δὲ καὶ ᾿Αμφικτυονία τις περὶ τὸ ἱερὸν τοῦτο, ἑπτὰ πόλεων, αἱ μετεῖχον τῆς θυσίας, κατιλ, This gives the original idea of an Amphiktyony. 3 Asch. Fals. Leg. § 115. III ITS INCIDENTAI, POLITICAL ACTION 99 ewer eee -ς -ο.---- temporal things on which Ecclesiastical Councils have often appeared with more honour to themselves than in matters more strictly within their own competence. The Amphiktyonic Council forbade any Amphiktyonic city to be razed or its water to be cut off, with as good an intention, and with about as much effect, as Christian Synods instituted the Truce of God, and forbade tournaments! and the use of the cross-bow. But, more than this, the Amphiktyonic Council was the only delibera- tive body in which members from most parts of Greece habitually met together. On the few occasions when it was needed that Greece should speak with a common voice, the Amphiktyonic Council was the natural, indeed the only possible, mouth-piece of the nation. Once or twice then, in the course of Grecian history, we do find the Amphiktyonice body acting with real dignity in the name of Umited Greece. We naturally find this more distinctly the case immediately after the repulse of the Persians, when a common Greek national feeling existed for the moment in greater strength than either before or afterwards, Then it was that the Amphiktyonic Council, evidently acting in the name of all Greece, set a price upon the head of the Greek who had betrayed the defenders of Thermopyle to the Barbarians.” But, in setting a price on the head of Ephialtés, the Amphiktyonic Council, as head of Greece, hardly did more than was done by the Athenian Assembly, if not as the head of Greece, yet as its worthicst representative, when it proscribed Arthmios of Zeleia for bringing barbaric bribes into Hellas.® Sometimes again we find, naturally cnongh, this great religious Synod, like religions Synods in later times, preaching Crusades against ungodly and sacrilegious cities, against violators of the holy ground or of the peaceful worshippers of Apollo. And, Instances of Am- phiktyonic action. B.c. 479. Amphi- ktyonic Crusades. whatever we may think of the pious zeal of Auschinés against 8.0. 340. the Lokrians of Amphissa,* we may at least fairly believe that the first sacred war under Solén® was a real Crusade, carried 8.0. 595. 1 As at the Second Lateran Council, See Roger of Wendover, ii. 400, Eng. Hist. Ed. * Herod. vii. 214 (so 218), Οἱ τῶν Ἑλλήνων ἸΠυλαγόροι ἐπεκήρυξαν .. . ἀργύριον. Professor Rawlinson, in his Translation of Herodotos, strangely strengthens the words of the historian into the “ deputies of the Greeks, the Pylagore.”’ 3 Aisch. Ktes, ὃ 258. It is a favourite common-place with the orators. 4 Asch. Ktes. § 118 et seqq. Thirlwall, vi. 80. 5 Plut. Sol. 11, Asch. Ktes. § 108. In later times (n.c. 281) we find a Crusade against Atolia led by the Spartan King Areus (Justin, xxiv. 1) on the same ground as this of Solén, namely the sacrilegious cultivation of the plain of The Council becomes the tool of particular States. No inhe- rent force in its Decrees. B.C. 3/71. B.C, 382, 100 OF THE AMPHIKTYONIC COUNCIL CHAP. on with as distinct a sense of religious duty as ever sent forth Godfrey or Saint Lewis or our own glorious Edward. At other times the Amphiktyonic Council, just like other religious Councils, does not escape the danger of being perverted to purely temporal purposes. Nothing is easier than to see that the Amphiktyonic Council, in the days of Philip, had sunk into a mere political tool in the hands first of Thebes, then of Macedonia.t And in all cases, whether the sentences of the Council were just or unjust, whether they were dictated by religious faith or by political subserviency, the Amphiktyonic body had no constitu- tional means at its command for carrying them into execution. The spiritual tribunal had no temporal power; culprits had to be delivered to the secular arm, and the secular arm had to be looked for wherever it might be found. If no pious city lke Thebes, no pious prince like Philip, undertook to act as the minister and champion of the Council, an Amphiktyonic judge- ment had no more inherent force than the judgement of a modern Ecclesiastical Synod. Sparta, the most devout wor- shipper of Apollo, took no heed to the Amphiktyonie fine which Theban influence procured as the punishment of the treacherous seizure of the Kadmeia by Phoibidas.2 So did Philomélos and his successors in Phokis resist both anathemas and armies, till Kirrha. But I do not see the evidence for asserting, as is done by Droysen (Hellenismus, i. 645) and by Mr. P. Smith (Dict. Biog. art. Areus) that this was in consequence of a formal Ainmphiktyonic decree. Cf. Thirlwall, viii. 53. There is an intermediate Sacred War (n.c. 449. See Thue. i, 112) in which the Amphiktyons are not spoken of at all. 1 There seems however no ground for believing that the Amphiktyons took upon themselves to elect Alexander as chief of Greece against Persia. The statement of Diodoros to that effect (xvii. 4) is, 1 suspect, a confusion, most characteristic of Diodoros, with Philip’s appointment as chief of the Amphiktyonic Crusades. Both Philip and Alexander were chosen, so far as they were chosen at all, by the Congress of the Confederate Greeks at Corinth (Arrian, i. 1. Diod. us.) Dioddros is however followed by Mr. Whiston in the Dictionary of Antiquities, p. 81, and even by Mr. Grote (xii. 15). But Droysen seems to me to see the state of the case much more clearly. ‘ Aber so durftig war diess einzige Analogon einer verfassungsmassigen Nationaleinigung [the Delphic Amphiktyony] dass Philipp selbst die nene Form eines Bundes in Korinth versucht hatte, die Nation oder die nichsten Kreise derselben zu einigen.” Hellenismus, ii. 508. Droysen’s strong Macedonian bias must however be guarded against, just like the strong anti- Macedonian bias of Mr. Grote. * On this see the remarks of Mr. Grote, x. 275 et seqq. It marks the progress of vagueness and misconception that Dioddros, in recording the Theban accusa- tion of Sparta (xvi. 23, 29), mercly uses the words.és’Augixriovas ἐν ᾿Αμφικτυόσι, which in Justin (viii. 1) have grown into “commune Grecie concilium ’+—the phrase of Cicero without his explanation. ΠῚ ITS INDIRECT IMPORTANCE IN FEDERAL HISTORY 101 the clear eye and strong hand of Philip saw and grasped his opportunity at once to avenge Apollo and to make his kingdom Greck and himself the leader of Greece. Otherwise a bull from Delphi or Thermopyle could have done as little to stay the 8.σ, 357- march of Onomarchos as bulls from the Vatican, unsupported 34° by the arm of the French invader, could do in our own day to stay the march of the first chosen King of Italy. But though the Amphiktyonic Council was in no sense a Federal Government, its importance in a History of Federal (sovernment is of a high order. The negative hearings of the Indirect existence of such a body can hardly be overrated. Nothing '™port- . ance of the proves so completcly how dear to the Greek mind was the Qouncil system of distinct and independent cities ; nothing shows more in the clearly how little the minds of carly Greck statesmen turned History of . . ederal- towards a Federal Union of the whole or of any large portion ;.. of Greece ; nothing therefore shows more clearly how great was the work which was accomplished by the Greek statesmen of a later age. If the thought of a Federal Union of Greece had ever occurred, if the need of such an Union had ever been felt, the Amphiktyonic Council afforded materials out of which it might readily have been developed. As we find the ancient commonwealths coming to the very edge of a representative system, and yet never really establishing one, so we _ here Close find Greece coming to the very edge of a Federal system, and *Ppreach . ~ . . ΟΥ̓ the yet never crossing the limit. A body of Greeks, including council to members from nearly al] parts of Greece, habitually met to a Federal debate on matters interesting to the whole Greek nation, and System. to put forth decrees which, within their proper sphere, the whole Greek nation respected. The wonder is that, with such a body existing, the idea of a Federal Union never presented itself ; that no one ever thought of investing the Amphiktyonic body with much more extensive powers to be exercised for the common good of Greece. No more speaking witness can be Why it found to the love of town-autonomy inherent in the Greek ito 4 aan mind than the fact that no such developement of the Amphikty- Federal onic body was, as far as we know, ever thought of. Perhaps, Union. besides the love of town-autonomy, the constitution of the Council, so eminently unfair as a representation of historical Greece, may have had something to do with the fact that its proper functions were always kept within such narrow limits. But one difficulty which modern parallels may perhaps suggest The Council an Eccle- siastical, but not a Clerical body, Special Objections to the develope- ment of a Federal System out of the Council. 102 OF THE AMPHIKTYONIC COUNCIL CHAP. “πο would not have occurred in this hypothetical transformation of the Delphic Amphiktyony into a real Federal Diet of Greece. The Amphiktyonic Council undoubtedly answers in its functions to the Ecclesiastical Synods of modern times; but to have made the Amphiktyonic Council the sovereign Assembly of Greece would have been quite a different process from investing the Convocation of Canterbury with the immediate sovereignty of England or an Cécumenical Council of the Church with the Federal sovereignty of Europe. We must always remember that in the ancient world the distinction of Clergy and Laity did not exist. There were spiritual offices and there were temporal offices, but there was no distinct spiritual order of men. ‘The Amphiktyons were a religious body, but they were not a clerical body. The Council, after the manner of Greck Councils, had a larger Assembly attached to it, and this Assembly was of the most popular, not to say the most tumultuous, kind, consisting indiscriminately of all Greeks who might happen to be at Delphi to sacrifice or to consult the Oracle! But even the members of the Council itself, the Hieromnémones and the Pylagoroi, possessed no permanent spiritual character. They appeared at Delphi and at Pyle as the servants of Apollo; clsewhere they appeared as statesmen, soldiers, or private citizens. They were therefore: just as competent or incompetent as any other body of Greeks to undertake the management of the general affairs of Grecce. Their immediate functions as Amphiktyons were not secular but religious ; but those occasional functions In no way implied that their holders were personally or permanently isolated from common temporal affairs. But besides the general indisposition of the Greek mind to permanent union of any kind, there were some special causes why the Amphiktyonic Council was never developed into a Federal Union. It is true that deputies from most parts of Greece were in the habit of meeting together and of discussing questions, often perhaps trifling in themselves, but still questions in which the whole of Greece was interested. Here was indeed the raw material for constructing a Federal Union, had any Greek felt the want of one. But the constitution of the Council was such that, before it could have been safely invested with the smallest political power, the most sweeping of Reform Bills 1 Esch. Ktes. § 124. ΠῚ CONSTITUTION OF THE COUNCIL 103 would have been needed for its reconstruction. Its composition was of a kind which made it a most unfair representation of historical Greece. Historical Greece was, above all things, a system of Cities. The Amphiktyonic Union was an Union not Its con- of Cities but of Tribes. This alone, as Mr. Grote remarks,! stitution to shows the immense antiquity of the institution. Any League jistorical which had arisen, we might almost say from the time of Homer Greece. onwards, could hardly fail to have been a League of Cities. Any institution which had arisen since the time of the Dorian Migration could hardly fail in some way to represent the results of that great event. But though the list of members of the Council is given with some slight variations * by different authors, all agree in making the constituent members of the Union Tribes and not Cities. The representatives of the Ionic and Doric A Union races sat and voted as single members, side by side with οὗ ees the representatives of petty “peoples like the Magnésians and ΩΝ Phthidtic Achaians. When the Council was first founded, Dorians and Jonians were doubtless mere tribes of Northern Greece, of no more account than their fellows, and the pro- digious developement of the Doric and Ionic races in after times made no difference in its constitution. How the vote of each race was determined is an obscure point of Greek archeology * which hardly bears on our immediate subject. What is im- portant for our present point of view is that Sparta and Athens, as such, were not members of the Amphiktyonic body. They were simply portions respectively of the Doric and Ionic aggre- gates, and they had legally 10 more weight than the smallest Doric or Ionic city.* | The wish of the whole Doric race, the wish of the whole Ionic race, nay, the common wish, if we can conceive such a thing, of Sparta and Athens and their respective followings of Allies, might be at any moment set Unfair dis- aside by the:votes of three or four petty tribes, some of which tpation 1 Hist. of Greece, vol. ii, p. 325, 7. Votes. * The several lists are discussed at some length by Tittmann (p. 35), whose conclusions are followed by Mr. Grote (ii. 325). They differ chiefly in the enumeration of the insignificant tribes of Northern Greece. The omission by Pausanias of the Beeotians, a people so specially mentioned by Adschinés (Fals. Leg. § 122), must be an error. 3 Cf. Grote, us. Strabo (ix. 3. 7) says that Akrisios settled the vote of each city, ψῆφον ἑκάστῃ δοῦναι, τῇ μὲν καθ᾽ αὑτὴν, τῇ δὲ μεθ᾽ ἑτέρας, ἣ μετὰ πλειόνων. We shall presently come to reasons for thinking that this system of Contributory Boroughs belonged only to the latest form of the institution. + Aisch. Fals. Leg. § 122. Analogy of the Unre- formed Parlia- ment. Incon- gruities less felt in a Religious body. 104 OF THE AMPHIKTYONIC COUNCIL CHAP. were not even independent political communities. Perrhaibians, Magnésians, Phthidtic Achaians, had ceased to be independent states before the beginning of the historical days of Greece. They had sunk into mere subjects of the Thessalians, and their deputies in the Council must have voted as their Thessalian masters bade them. Viewed as a political representation of historic Greece, the Amphiktyonic Council was something even more anomalous than was the British Parliament in its un- reformed state, when viewed as a representation of the British people. The presence of Gatton and Old Sarum, the absence of Manchester and Birmingham, the two votes of Liverpool and the four votes of Kast and West Looe, all had their perfect precedents in the constitution of the venerable body which met at Delphi and Thermopyle. Or rather the defects of the Amphiktyonic system must have been practically by far the greater of the two. English rotten boroughs have at least often been the means of introducing into Parliament some of its most distinguished members, but it could only have been the deputies of these little insignificant tribes who gained for the whole body the contemptuous description given of it by Démosthenés.1 But ina purely religious Assembly these in- congruities were probably not found so intolerable as they assuredly would have been found in an Assembly exercising real political power. The very anomalies were consecrated by the traditional reverence of centuries. The very points in the constitution of the Council which made it so unfit for political action, made it only more venerable when looked at as a holy representative of past ages. What if certain tribes had sunk from independence to bondage? Statesmen might indecd, in their earthly policy, regard such merely political changes, but misfortune, without guilt, could not degrade any faithful worshipper of Apollo in the presence of his patron God. The zeal and piety of Athens and Sparta were not more fervent, doubtless they were far less fervent, than the zeal and piety of the little communities around the Temple, whose whole 1 Dem. Cor. ὃ 190. ᾿Ανθρώπους ἀπείρους λόγων καὶ τὸ μέλλον οὐ mpoopw- μένους, τοὺς ἱερομνήμονας. Or are we to infer that the Hieromnémones were an inferior body to the Pylagoroi? As Aschinés was one of the latter, we may infer that the greater members of the Amphiktyony sent deputies, in that capacity at least, who would not deserve the description. But in any case, the majority of both orders would come from the petty tribes, and would doubtless be what Démosthenés describes, ΠῚ ITS UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION OF VOTES 105 L importance was derived from their share in its management. The God of Delphi was no respecter of persons; he looked with equal favour on the devotion of the weakest and of the most powerful worshipper. A change in the constitution of the Council would probably have been looked upon by the mass of Greeks as a heinous sacrilege. But, while such a constitution existed, the Council was unfit for political power, and, whenever it did meddle with political matters, its inter- ference was invariably mischievous. Any power which could command the votes of the little tribes about Mount Oita could procure whatever decisions it chose in the Amphiktyonic body. Philip, the common foe of Greece, was welcomed by the Amphiktyons as a deliverer, a true servant of Apollo, a pious B.c. 352. Crusader against the usurping and sacrilegious Phékian. [0 Amphi- is not improbable that’ many of the smaller Greek cities may ctyouie . we . . : ampion- really have shared, from shortsighted political motives, in this snip of ill-timed goodwill to the Macedonian. But this only shows Philip. the more clearly the utter unfitness of the Council to act in any way as a political mouth-piece of Greece. When Démos- thenés had united Thebes and Athens in one common cause, the union of those two great cities did not command a single integral vote in the Amphiktyonic Council. It is certainly very remarkable that, long after the Council had ceased to be of any importance whatever, many of the defects in its constitution should have been reformed. Pausanias ? describes the Council as it stood in his time, when, under the Roman dominion, the debates of the Amphiktyons must have been of considerably less moment than the debates of an English Convocation. Some at least of the changes which he mentions Reforms he attributes to the legislative mind of Augustus Cesar. The under ' Council, in this its later form, became at last, in a great degree, p31... a representation of Cities, when Greece had no more independent a.p. 14. Cities to represent. An attempt too was made, after the happy precedent set by the wise confederation of Lykia,? to do what in modern political language is called apportioning members to population. In the old state of things the Dolopians, Magnésians, Ainians, and Phthidtic Achaians had formed a large proportion 1 Edinburgh Review, vol. ev. p. 319 (April, 1857). 2 x. 8, 5. 3 The ‘Lykian League will be described in the next chapter. B.c. 346. New ar- rangement of votes in the Council. 106 OF THE AMPHIKTYONIC COUNCIL CHAP, of the Council. Now they lost their separate Amphiktyonic being; the Dolopians indeed had ceased to exist altogether ;1 the other tribes were made what we may call Contr ibutory Bor oughs to Thessaly. ‘T'he votes thus saved were divided among several new and several restored members. The Phdkians had, at the end of the Sacred War, lost their Amphiktyonic votes, which were transferred to Macedonia, as the due reward of Philip’s Crusade in the canse of Apollo. In the new constitution Augustus found room both for Phékians and Macedonians, as well as for the inhabitants of his own new city of Nikopolis, Delphi, Athens, Euboia, now appear as substantive members. The two Lokrian votes were divided between the two divisions of the Lokrian nation. The Dorian votes, in like sort, were divided between the original Dorians of the North and the Dorians of Peloponnésos, that is to say those of Corinth, Sikyén, Argos, and Megara; for Sparta, which shared in the exclusion of Phékis, does not seem to have shared in its restoration. The whole number of votes was raised to thirty, and, instead of each constituency, as before, possessing two votes, the votes were now distributed among the members of the League in various pro- portions ranging from one to six.» Three of the members, Nikopolis, Athens, and Delphi, were single cities, and these, it 1s expressly said,® sent representatives to every meeting. The other constituencies were still not cities but races ; their Amphiktyonic 1 Paus. u.s. Οὐ γὰρ ἔτι ἣν Δολόπων γένος. 2 The whole scheme is as follows :— Nikopolis . . . . . . . 6 votes. Macedonia Thessaly (with Malians, Ainians, Magné sians, and Phthidtic Achaians) Beeotia . Phokis Delphi Northern Doris Ozolian Lokrians Epiknémidian Lokrians Kuboia . Argos, Sikyon, Corinth, and Megara . Athens . . [LS] ee Ree DNOE 3 Paus. u.s, Αἱ μὲν δὴ πόλεις ᾿Αθῆναι καὶ Δελφοὶ καὶ ἡ Νικόπολις, αὗται μὲν ἀποστέλλουσι συνεδρεύσοντας ἐς ἀμφικτυονίαν πᾶσαν" ἀπὸ δὲ ἔθνων τῶν κατειλεγ- μένων ἑκάστῃ πόλει ἀνὰ μέρος ἐς ᾿Αμφικτύονας καὶ ἐν χρόνου περιόδῳ συντελεῖν ἔστιν. ΠῚ REFORM UNDER AUGUSTUS 107 representatives were to be chosen by the several cities of the race inturn. Thus the vote of the Peloponnesian Dorians would be given in successive years by a Corinthian, a Sikydnian, a Megarian, and an Argive,' while every mecting contained one member for Athens, two for Delphi, and six for Nikopolis. Most of the cities in short were in the same position as the counties of Nairn and Cromarty 3 before the Reform Bill, when they sent ᾧ member between them who was elected in alternate Parlia- ments by Nairn and by Cromarty. This account of Pausanias is well worth studying, as setting before us a very curious piece of amateur constitution-making, Had the Amphiktyonic body in the days of Augustus still retained any practical functions to discharge, its constitution, as settled by the Impcrial reformer, would seem to be by no means unhappily put together. The Council was not indeed a representation of the whole of Greece, but neither had it ever been so in earher times. It still gave an undue advantage to the North over the South ; but something might be said for this in the case of a confederacy founded to manage the concerns of a Northern temple. We must also remember how completely Athens and Sparta had fallen from the position which they held in the days with which most of us are almost exclusively familiar. The weakest points of the Augustan charter are the enormous number of votes given to the new city of Nikopolis and the very scanty amount of repre- sentatives allowed to the Dorians of Peloponnésos. Still, after all allowances, the new constitution of the Council was certainly ἃ great improvement upon the old one. But possibly it was only because of the utter nullity of the Amphiktyonic body that any such constitution was bestowed upon it. The founder of the Empire could well allow so harmless a safety-valve to carry off the last feeble cbullitions of Hellenic freedom. While the firm 1 It would seem that disputes sometimes arose among the contributory cities about their Amphiktyonic rights. At least in an inscription in Boeckh’s Collee- tion, No. 1121 (vol. i. p. 578), a certain Archenoos of Argos is praised for having, among his other good deeds, recovered the Amphiktyonic rights of his native city—pera τὸ ἀνασῶσαι αὐτὸν τὸ δίκαιον τῆς ᾿Αμφικτυονείας τῇ πατρίδι. Another inscription (1124) commemorates an Argeian Amphiktyon named Titus Statilius Timokratés, the son of Lamprios—-a curious illustration of “Greece under the Romans ;”’ Titus being doubtless an Argeian who had obtained Roman citizenship. Another hybrid of the same sort, Caius Curtius Proklos, is commemorated, in another inscription (No. 1058, vol. i. p. 559) as a Megarian Amphiktyon. 2 Besides these, the counties Bute and Caithness (a strangely chosen pair), and Clackmannan and Kinross also elected alternately. Approach to Repre- sentative forms in the Council. The Council not a Govern- ment, but a mere Union for a particular purpose. 108 OF THE AMPHIKTYONIC COUNCIL CHAP, grasp of Roman Governors was pressed tight upon the provinces of Macedonia and Achaia, their inhabitants might safely be per- mitted to play either at Town-Autonomy or at Federal Govern- ment beneath the sacred shadow of the Delphian Temple. It can hardly fail to have been observed that the Amphi- ktyonic Council, both in its earlier and its later forms, makes a far nearer approach to the forms of Representative Govern- ment than anything which we find elsewhere in ancient Greece, whether in the constitutions of Federations or in those of single cities. In every Greck Government, as we cannot too constantly bear in mind, every qualified citizen was entitled to take his personal share and did not delegate his rights to another. No Greek city, no Greek Federation, presents an example of a real Representative Assembly. But the Amphiktyonic Council is strictly a Representative body; in discussing its nature, it is impossible to avoid introducing the language which we familiarly employ in speaking of modern Representative bodies. It may indeed be said that, after all, the Amphiktyonic Council was merely a Senate, and that, in conformity with universal Greek precedent, there was an Amphiktyonic Popular Assembly, in which every worshipper of Apollo had a right to appear. But it is clear that the Amphiktyonic Council filled a much more exalted position in relation to the Amphiktyonic Assembly than the Athenian Senate, for instance, did in relation to the Athenian Assembly. In the Amphiktyonic Constitution it is the Council which is really the important body, and the Council is certainly representative. Buta really representative Senate would be just as great an anomaly in an ordinary Greek constitution as a representative Assembly. The real reason why we find repre- sentative forms in the Amphiktyonic body, while we do not find them in ordinary Greek Governments, is that the Amphiktyonic body was in no sense a Government at all. The Amphiktyonic Council was not exactly a Diplomatic Congress, but it was much more like a Diplomatic Congress than it was like the governing Assembly of any commonwealth, kingdom, or Federation. The Pylagoroi and Hieromnémones were not exactly Ambassadors, but they were much more like Ambassadors than they were like Members of a British Parliament or even an American Congress, The business of the Council was not to govern or to legislate, either for a single state or for a League of states; its duty was IIT REPRESENTATIVE NATURE OF THE COUNCIL 109 simply to manage a single class of affairs, in which a number of independent commonwealths were alike interested, but which did not come within the individual competence of any one of their number. It is manifest that this could only be done by deputies from the several states interested, that is by repre- sentatives. The nearest approach to the Amphiktyonic Council in modern times would be if the College of Cardinals were to consist of members chosen by the several homan Catholic nations of Europe and America. Such a body would be entrusted with business in which every Roman Catholic country is interested, but it would not form a Federal or even necessarily a local Government. The Amphiktyons were the guardians of the Delphic Temple, but they no more formed a local Government for the city of Delphi than they formed a Federal Government for the whole of Greece. The Council was repr esentative, just The Am- because it was not a Government, though again we may, 11 we phixtyonie please, wonder that the employment of representative forms in representa the Council did not suggest the employment of representative tive, be- forms in the Federal, if not in the City, Governments of Greece. °"s¢ ; In like manner it would be a very interesting subject of inquiry Govern. whether, from a similar set of causes, representative forms, or a ment. close approach to them, did not exist in Ecclesiastical Synods much earlier than they did in Secular Parliaments, and whether the founders of the representative system in modern Europe may not, consciously or unconsciously, have had ideas suggested to them by the constitution of the Assemblies of the Church. It belongs rather to a historian of Greece than to a historian of Federal Government to run through the whole evidence which so conspicuously shows the political nullity of the Amphiktyonic body during the best days of Greece. This has been amply done, to say nothing of the earlier work of Sainte Croix, both by Bishop Thirlwall and Mr. Grote. The Amphiktyonic Council Political is of no moment in the world of Thucydidés, it is of no moment are! in the world of Xenophon, it is of no moment in the world of ¢ Council Polybios. Its short and mischievous importance belongs wholly during the to the days of Démosthen¢és and Philip. Thucydidés never once steater . . . . - _ part of mentions it, though he has often occasion to mention the Delphian G@-ecian Temple, to record stipulations for its management, and at least History. one war for its possession.! It is clear that, in his time, the 1 The Sacred War in B.c. 449. Thue. i, 112. See above, p. 99. 110 OF THE AMPHIKTYONIC COUNCIL OHAP. Council so far from holding any Federal authority over the general affairs of Greece, was not even independent in its own proper sphere of religious duty. And if we find it playing an Important part in the days of Démosthenés and Philip, the difference is simply becuse Sparta and Athens, in the previous century, had not thought it worthy of any notice at all, while now first Thebes and then Plilip found that even the Shadow at Delphi was capable of being made useful asa political tool. The Politics of Aristotle contain no mention of it. Polybios speaks of it twice,’ neither time in a way implying any sort of Federal power. The mistake of looking at the Amphiktyonic body as a Federal union of Grecce arose only in times when freedom in all its forms, Federal or otherwise, had utterly passed away from the soil of Greece. Yet the Amphiktyonic Council is an institu- tion of no small importance in a gencral history of Federal Government. What it was and what it was not, shows more speakingly than anything else how utterly alien to the Greek mind, in the days before Macedonian domination, was anything like a Federal Union of the whole nation or even the most remote approach to it.* 1 The first time (iv. 25) the Amphiktyous are simply mentioned in their proper character as guardians of the Delphic Temple. In this duty they had been inter- fered with by the Aitolians, and Macedonia, Achaia, and the other allied powers, agree to effect their restoration. The second passage (xl. 6) is very curious indeed ; it seems to set the Amphiktyons before us, not as a political, but as a literary body, a view which certainly did not occur to Démnosthenés. Aulus Postumius wrote a book in Greek, and asked to be excused if, being a foreigner, he made mistakes in language. Cato tells him that if the Amphil.tyonic Council had set him to write in Greek (εἰ μὲν yap αὐτῷ τὸ τῶν ᾿Αμφικτυόνων συνέδριον συνέταττε γράφειν ἱστορίαν), his excuse would have been a good one; but as nobody obliged him to write in Greek or to write at all, he-had no excuse if he wrote badly. This story is also told by Plutarch, Cato Maj. 12. It reminds one of Jeffrey’s criticism on Byron: “‘If any suit could be brought against Lord Byron, for the purpose of compelling him to put into court a certain quantity of poetry,” ete. Edin, Rev. Jan. 1808. 2 On this subject of the Amphiktyonic Council, the eighteenth number of the ‘* Federalist”? should by all means be read. It is clear that the authors, Madi- son and Hamilton, had not the least notion of the true nature of the institution, but it is most curious to see the strong political sagacity of the authors struggling with their utter ignorance of facts, They were politicians enough to see the utter political nullity of the Council in Grecian history ; they were not scholars enough to see that it never really pretended to any character from which anything but political nullity could be expected. Some of the particular comments and illus- trations are most ingenious, I shall have again to refer to this curious paper when I come to speak of the remarks of the same writers on the Federal consti- tution of Achaia, M. de Tocqueville also seems to have misunderstood the nature of the Am- II POLITICAL NULLITY OF THE COUNCIL 111 ee re phiktyonic Council. He compares (i. 266) the position of Philip as executor of the Amphiktyonic decrees with the preponderance of the Province of Holland in the Dutch Confederation. Philip’s position was really a great deal more like that of his French namesake when he undertook, by commission from Pope Tnnocent, to wrest the Kingdom of England from the sacrilegious John. ‘T'ocque- ville’s English translator does not point out the error, Still more recently an example of the same sort of union of political shrewd- ness With utter lack of historical knowledge is to be found in Mr. Spence’s work on the American Union, a book not indeed to be compared with the writings of Hamilton or Tocqueville, but abounding in keen observation of facts and in sound inferences from those facts. But Mr. Spence’s remarks on the Amphiktyonic Council and the Achaian League (pp. 7, 8) are merely Hamilton served up again. Of Atolia, Lykia, and even Switzerland, he seems never to have heard. Mr. Spence too is without Flamilton’s excuse ; if he could not read Polyhios, he might at least have read Thirlwall. An ap- proach to Federal Govern- ment not uncommon among the ruder por- tions of the Greek nation. CHAPTER IV OF THE MINOR CONFEDERATIONS OF ANCIENT GREECE S$ 1. Of the Northern Leagues. Phéhis, Akarnama, Epeiros, Thessaly I HAVE already remarked that the greatest and most civilized states of Greece were precisely those which clave most strenu- ously to the principle of distinct town-autonomy. The approaches to Federal Government which we find in the earlier history of Greece appear only among the more backward portions of the nation ; and, as we know but little of the details of their several constitutions, we can derive from them comparatively little knowledge bearing on our general subject. In fact some sort of approach to a Federal Union must have been rather common than otherwise in those parts of Greece in which the city-system was never fully developed. In a considerable portion of Greece the cities seem to have been of comparatively little consequence ; particular cities and their citizens are seldom mentioned ; we far more commonly hear of the district and its inhabitants as a collec- tive whole. Such seems to have been the case with the Lokrians, the Northern Dorians, and, so far as they can be said to have had any political existence at all, with those other little tribes of which we scarcely hear except as returning so disproportionate a share of members to the Amphiktyonic Council. The whole tribe is spoken of as if it had some sort of political unity ; yet they certainly were not monarchies, and we do not hear of the domination of any single city. There must have been a common power of some kind, and yet it would be hardest of all to believe that whole tribes formed indivisible republics, and that the 1 “ each enjoyed peace at home, Effects on and each might aspire to the general supremacy of Greece. genera Thebes was always too busy in maintaining her local supremacy yistory, to alm at any such ambitious schemes, till the two men arose who were to give her for a moment both a local and a general supremacy such as she had never held before.* 1 See above, p. 22. * How completely Attica became merged in Athens is shown by the fact that one has to form some such unusual word as “ Attican,” to express an inhabitant of Attica other than an Athenian. The difference between ᾿Αθηναῖοι and ᾿Αττικοί was perceptible so late as B.c. 300. See Grote, ii. 307. 3 ‘Ihe Helots several times revolted, the Perioikoi never, and the Perioikoi had as much interest in suppressing a Helot revolt as the Spartans themselves. 4 Drumann, p. 428. Daher konnten Sparta und Athen das Principat tiber alle Griechen zu erringen streben, waéhrend Theben noch dahin bemuht sein musste, die Herrschaft in Béotien zu erlangen. Compare, at this moment, the three great despotisms of Europe. Russia has force enough to keep down all internal enemies ; France (whatever its ruler may Three Periods of Beectian history. B.C, 776- First Period, B.c. 776- 387. Beeotia both an Amphik- tyony and a Political League. B.c. 519 (Clinton), c. 510 (Grote iv. 222). 124 MINOR CONFEDERATIONS OF ANCIENT GREECE — crap. The history of the Boeotian League naturally falls into three periods. The first extends from our earliest historical notices of the country to the first dissolution of the League at the peace of Antalkidas. The second includes the short but brilliant period of Theban greatness, down to the conquest of the city by Philip and its destruction by Alexander. The third includes the history of Bootia from the destruction of Thebes by Alexander and its restoration by Kassander down to the final dissolution of the League by Quintus Marcius Philippus. During the first period we find, as early as we can get at any certain information, the Bcootian cities united by both a religious and a political bond. They formed an Amphiktyony, and they also formed a Federal Government. Of these two, one cannot doubt that the religious association existed before the political League and served as its groundwork. The Bootian Amphiktyony held its solemn festival at the temple of the Iténian Athéné near Kordéneia ;! its title was the Pamboidtia,? a name formed after the same analogy of so many other religious gatherings of the same kind. How soon this Amphiktyonic connexion grew into a political union it is hard to say, but it is clear that the Boeotian League was looked on as an institution of old standing during the Peloponnesian War. [Ὁ must both have existed and have been perverted from its original purpose, before the oppressed Plataians sought for Athenian help. We may fairly belleve that the Federal union of Beotia was as old as Federal institutions in any part of xrecce. The old Beeotian League, as far as its outward forms went, seems to have been fairly entitled to the name of a Federal Government, but in its whole history we trace little more than the gradual advance of Thebes to a practical supremacy over the other cities. This difference between the theory and have) has no internal enemies to keep down; Austria is, like Thebes, helpless from internal dissensions., 1 Paus. ix. 84, 1, Ths ᾿Ιτωνίας ᾿Αθηνᾶς ἐστὶ τὸ ἱερόν' καλεῖται δὲ ἀπὸ Ἰτώνου τοῦ ᾿Αμφικτύονος. This smaller Amphiktyony is ascribed to a son of Amphiktyén, as the great one at Delphi to Amphikty6dn himself, 2 Strabo, ix. 2, 290. Cf. Pol. iv. 8; ix. 84, for the πανήγυρις of the Pamboistians. [The Boidtian Amphictyony used also to meet at Onchéstos. Strabo, ix. 2, 838. ᾿Ογχηστὸς, , . ὅπου τὸ ᾿Αμφικτυονικὸν συνήγετο. | IV EARLY SUPREMACY OF THEBES 125 the practice of the Bootian constitution is curiously illustrated by the ordinary language both of Thucydidés and of Xenophon. Use of Whenever there is anything like a formal mention of the whole the words people, in the description for instance of a battle or a negocia- 7°" tion, the word used is “ Boeotian;” but when the historians ‘Theban” narrate or comment in their own persons on the policy of the by Thucy- League, the word “Theban” is commonly used instead. Thus Xenophon, the whole argument about the fate of Plataia is put by Thucy- didés into the mouths of “ Theban,” not of ‘ Boeotian,” orators,! just as the first treacherous assault on the town is attributed wholly to Theban heads and to Theban hands. But when he comes to describe the battle of Délion,? and the negociations after the Peace of Nikias,* he gives to the armies, ambassadors, and senators their formal title of “ Boeotians.” So Xenophén attributes to “Theban” politicians the proposal? to destroy Athens and the receipt of bribes from the Great King,® but in describing the battles in the Corinthian war,’ he too falls back upon the technical name “ Beotian.” This usage of ordinary language exactly expresses the truth of the case. The League was a Bootian body animated by a Theban soul ; the devices of ‘Theban statesmen were habitually carried out by the hands of Beeotian soldiers.® It is perfectly evident that the Bceotian League had the form of a real Federal Government. It is equally evident that it altogether wanted the truce Federal spirit. The common govern- Constitu- ment was carried on in the name of the whole Boeotian nation. tio» of the Its most important magistrates bore the title of Baeotarchs; their ““°"” exact number, whether eleven or thirteen,® is a disputed point of Greek archxology, or rather of Bocotian geography. For our 1 Thue. iii. 60. Οἱ Θηβαῖοι δείσαντες. . . . ἔλεγον. 2 Thue, ii, 2. Προϊδόντες yap οἱ Θηβαῖοι, κ.τ.λ. 3 ΤῊ, iv. 91. Οἱ δὲ Βοιωτοὶ, . ξυνελέγοντο, κ.τ.λ. ἄν͵ 36 ct seqq. throughout. Xen. Hell. 11. 2.19. ᾿Αντέλεγον Κορίνθιοι μὲν καὶ Θηβαῖοι... σπένδεσθαι ᾿Αθηναίοις ἀλλ᾽ ἐξαιρεῖν. 6 Ib. iii. ὅ, ὃ, Οἱ ἐν ταῖς Θήβαις προεστῶτες. . .. πείθουσι Λοκρούς. 7 Ib, iv. 2, 17 οὖ seqq. 8 Tittmann (p. 696) seems to me to under-rate throughout the practical supremacy of Thebes during our first period. ® Thue. iv. 91. Τῶν ἄλλων βοιωταρχῶν, of εἰσιν ἕνδεκα, οὐ ξυνεπαινούντων μάχεσθαι. . .. ἸΙαγώνδας ὁ Αἰολάδον, βοιωταρχῶν ἐκ Θηβῶν μετ᾽ ᾿Αριανθίδου τοῦ Λυσιμαχίδου, καὶ ἡγεμονίας οὔσης αὐτοῦ, κιτ. Δ. where see Dr. Arnold’s note, and compare Boeckh, vol, i. p. 727, and Mr. Whiston in Dict. of Antt. art. a Subject Districts or Sub- ordinate Leagues. Office of the Bao- tarchs., 126 MINOR CONFEDERATIONS OF ANCIENT GREECE (ΠΑΡ, —— purpose the number is indifferent; the important point for us is that Thebes chose two Bootarchs,! and each of the other cities one.?- The same narrative from which we learn this fact shows also that, besides the citics which were, in name at least, sovereign states, Boeotia, like Switzerland in the old time, con- tained districts which did not enjoy direct Federal rights, but which were connected, in some subordinate way, with some one or other of the sovereign cities.? It may however be doubted whether these dependencies were, strictly speaking, subject districts, like the Italian possessions of Uri, or whether Becotia was not, like the Grisons, a League made up of smaller Leagues. However this may be, the Boeotarchs, as representatives of the several Bovotian cities, were the supreme military commanders of the League,* and, as it would appear, the general adminis- Beeotarches. [The Beeotarchs are mentioned in Herodotos ix. 15. Οἱ γὰρ βοιωτάρχαι μετεπέμψαντο τοὺς προσχώρους τῶν ᾿Ασωπίων.] 1 Boeckh (u.s.) explains the second Theban Bootarch to have been the representative of some town formerly a member of the League, but after- wards merged in Thebes. ‘This is a highly probable explanation of the origin of the custom; practically the double Theban Beeotarchy, like the four members for the City of London, represented the superiority of Thebes to the other cities. 2 Mr. Grote (vi. 523) speaks of the Beotarchs as consisting of ‘‘two chosen from Thebes, the rest in unknown proportions by the other cities.” Certainly Thueydidés does not directly say that there was one Beotarch from each city, but almost every scholar seems to have taken it for granted (see Hermann, Pol. Ant. § 179, Eng. Tr.), and it is hard to imagine any arrangement by which any sovereign city would be left without its Bootarch. This narrative of Thucydidés, and ‘another which will presently be referred to, are, as far as I know, our only authorities for the number and power of the Beeotarchs during this first period of the League. With the Bootarchs of the days of Epameinéndas we have as yet no concern. [With the position of Thebes in the Beotian League, compare that of Davos in the Ten Jurisdictions. See Histoire de la Confedcération Suisse (translated from the History of J. von Miuiller and continued), vol. xii. p. 612. Cf. also the privileged position of Chur in the Gotteshausbund, ib. χα, 356; and the preponderance of the City of Zug in the canton of Zug, ib. xiv. 226, and Bluntschli, Gesch. des schweiz. Bundesrechtes, i. 422. ] 3 Thue. iv. 76. Χαιρώνειαν δὲ, ἣ ἐς “Opyduevov . . . . ξυντελεῖ, where see Arnold’s note. J cannot help thinking that the word ξυντελεῖν implies a greater degree of freedom in these dependent places than Dr. Arnold allows. See also Boeckh, i. 728. 4 Τὸ may be doubted whether the words ἡγεμονίας οὔσης αὐτοῦ, in the passage of Thucydidés (iv. 91) quoted above, imply that the supreme command was always vested in a Theban Beotarch, or whether it was merely the turn of Pagoéndas to command that particular day. It is worth notice that the Beeotian army at that time was not drawn up in any uniform order, but the troops of each city followed their own customs. The Thebans were twenty-five deep, the others in different proportions, Thue, iv. 938. IV CONSTITUTION OF THE BQOTIAN LEAGUE 127 trators of Federal affairs. This is the ordinary position of the military commanders in a Greek state, as we see by the au- thority possessed by the Ten Generals at Athens, and by the ‘Federal General of the Achaian League. The Boeotarchs of course command at Délon, but they also act as administrative magis- trates of the League by hindering Agésilaos from sacrificing at Aulis.1 We see something more of their functions in a narrative of Thucydidés which gives us almost our only glimpse of the internal working of the Bceotian Federal constitution. During nearly the whole of our first period, the Bootian government was oligarchic. Just as in Achaia each city had its local democratic Assembly and the League had its Federal democratic Assembly, so in Bovotia the Federal Government was oligarchic, and we cannot doubt that the government of cach particular city was oligarchic also.2 The supreme power of the League was vested in the Four Senates of the Beeotians.? Of the constitution of these Senates we know absolutely nothing ; but it is most probable that the division was a local one, and that the Four Senates represented four districts. If so, it shows that the Federal bond in Baotia must have been much laxer than it was in Achaia, and the necessity of consulting several Assemblies suggests resemblances between the constitution of Bootia and the constitution of the United Provinces. Still less do we know how four co-ordinate Senates were kept in harmony together; but the only glimpse which we get of 1 Xen. Hell. iii. 4. 4. Οἱ Bowrapyo . . . . πέμψαντες ἱππέας, κ.τ.λ. This has a military sound, but it was doubtless in strictness a measure of police. 2 Mr. Whiston (Dict. of Antt.) is doubtless justified by analogy in supposing that each Botian city had its own βουλή or Senate, and δῆμος or Popular Assembly (see Boeckh, i. 729), but the passage which he quotes from Xenophin hardly proves it (Hell. v. 2. 29). It merely speaks of a Theban βουλή and that during the time (B.c. 382) when the Confederation was in abeyance. Iam not clear about the existence of Popular Assemblies in the Boeotian cities during our first period. There is, as might be expected, abundant evidence for their ex- istence in later times, but I doubt whether any of the many inscriptions in Boeckh, which mention a δῆμος, belong to the days of the old oligarchic League. 3 Thue. v. 88. Tats τέσσαρσι βουλαῖς τῶν Bowrav . . . . αἵπερ ἅπαν τὸ κῦρος ἔχουσιν. ‘Tittmann (p. 695) assumes their representative, and denies their aristocratic, character. The latter at least is clear enough. A Federal δῆμος, like that of the Achaians, is mentioned in later inscriptions (see Boeckh, i. 728); but one can hardly fancy its having even a nominal existence earlier than the revolution of Pelopidas. B.c. 424, B.C. 397. The Four Senates. B.c. 421, Diplo- matic Action of the Senates and the Beeotarchs, Federal and Local Archons. 128 MINOR CONFEDERATIONS OF ANCIENT GREECE — cuar. them scts them before us as submissive and tractable bodies, which commonly did little more than register the edicts of the Beeotarchs.' Their constitutional powers seem to have been something like those of the American Senate; the Bccotarchs propose to them a scheme of a treaty, which it rests with them to accept or to reject. We may even believe that the Senates were, on such matters at least, only authorized to consider proposals made to them by the Beoeotarchs, and that they had no initiative voice of their own.? It is clear that the actual negociation was carried on wholly by the Boeotarchs, just as it would be by an American President and his Ministry. In this particular case the Bwotarchs fully expected that the Senates would have ratified their proposals without examuina- tion or explanation, and they were much surprised at finding the proposed treaty rejected. The whole story gives us a very poor impression of the management of the Beeotian Forcign Oftice. Though the Bwotarchs were, hike the Athenian Generals, practically the most important officers of the state, yet, like the Athenian Generals, they did not stand formally at its head. The nominal chief of the League was a magistrate called the Archon of the Bootians,* whose name seems to have been used as a date even in purely local proceedings in the several cities.” We also find local Archons in the several citics.® Though many of the inscriptions which record the names of these Archons are doubtless later than the Peace of Antalkidas, or even than Kassander’s restoration of Thebes, still the analogy of other states would lead us to believe that the Archons, both of the League and of its several cities, were magistrates of the highest antiquity. . Probably 1 Cf. Grote, vii. 34. They must, as Boeckh (i. 728) remarks, have been assembled in one place. * See Arnold’s note on Thue, v. 38, 3 Thue, 10. Οἰόμενοι τὴν βουλὴν, κἂν μὴ εἴπωσιν, οὐκ ἄλλα ψηφιεῖσθαι ἢ ἃ σφίσι προδιαγνόντες παραινοῦσιν. 4 See the inscription in Boeckh, No, 1594 (vol. i. p. 7716). Mr. Whiston infers from this inscription that the Federal Archon ‘‘was probably always a Theban.” As the inscription specially mentions that the particular Archon commemorated was a Theban, 1 should have inferred the contrary. This inscription is of a later date than the restoration by Kassander. 5 See the inscription in Leake’s Northern Greece, ii. 182. Χαροπίνω ἄρχοντος Βοιωτοῖς, k.7.X. 8 See Rose, Inscriptt. Grecc. 264 et seqq. IV MAGISTRATES OF THE BQOTIAN LEAGUE 129 the Beeotian, like the Athenian, Archon had once been the real ruler of the state, and had been gradually cut down to a routine of small duties, sweetened by the honour of giving his name to the year. Of the particular Archon of Thebes, Theban Plutarch! records an usage, which, though his mention of it Archon belongs to a time later than our present date, must surely have py ocant, been handed down from very early times. The Theban Archon, at least in the interval between the occupation of the Kadmeia by Phoibidas and the delivery of Thebes by Pelopidas, was 5,0, 382- chosen by lot,? and kept a sacred spear of office always by 379. him.? These customs are not likely to have been of recent introduction ; they savour of high antiquity, and point to the Archon as a venerable pageant rather than as a magistrate possessing real authority. He is spoken of, not as a ruler Real power but as a sacred person, and it is clear, from the whole narrative of the Po- of Xenophén and Plutarch, that the main powers of the state l™mrchs. were then in the hands of Polemarchs.‘ Yet, with all this show of good Federal Government, the true Federal spirit could have had no place in a League where every- Power of thing was carried on in the selfish interest of a single city, Thebes What the position of Thebes in the Bwotian League really was Sie is shown by the whole history of the brave and unfortunate city tory of of Plataia. The Plataians set the first recorded example of Plataia. Secession from a Federal Union. But it was most certainly not ene Secession without a cause. The Plataians broke through their from the Federal obligations, they forsook the ancestral laws of all ay B.C. 1 De Genio Socratis, 30. 2 Ib. ὁ κυάμιστος ἄρχων. 3 The sacred spear can hardly fail to have been an institution of the remotest antiquity, and it points to a time when the Theban Archon, like the Athenian Polemarch, had really been a military commander. But his appointment by lot is not likely to have been introduced at Thebes, any more than at Athens, until the office had become a mere pageant. When an office is disposed of by lot, it is, as Mr. Grote shows, a sign that the office is no longer thought to require special qualifications, but is held to be within the compass of an average citizen. The lot is not necessarily democratic ; as the great equalizer, it is just as likely to be introduced into an oligarchic body where the feeling of equality among the members of the ruling order is commonly very strong. Rotation, as practically adopted in the appointment of the Lord Mayor of London and of the Vice-Chancellors of the Universities, goes on the same principle as the lot. It implies that the office requires no special qualifications, but that one member of the class from whom its occupants are taken is as able to fill it as another. 4 See especially Xen. Hell. v. 2,380, Τοῦ νόμου κελεύοντος ἐξεῖναι πολεμάρχῳ λαβεῖν, εἴ ris δοκεῖ ἄξια θανάτου ποιεῖν. 111-186111ρ’ hetween Thebes and other Towns. 5.6. 407. B.C. 429, Thespia. 130 MINOR CONFEDERATIONS OF ANCIENT GREECE «ΠᾺΡ, Beeotia,! but it was because those obligations and those laws had been perverted into mere instruments of Theban domination. They found the Theban yoke too hard to bear, and they sought for aid against the oppressor, first at Sparta and then at Athens.? Even thus early, Secession from the Boeotian League was looked on by impartial spectators as a right to be secured against the overwhelming ascendency of Thebes. The Corinthians, when called in as mediators, determine that Thebes has no right to control any city which does not wish to belong to the Bootian Confederation. It is clear that language like this would never be used of any really equal Confederation in any age. If a mediator were to be called in to settle American differences, the form of his decree would not be that New York should leave the Con- federate States undisturbed. ‘That the example of Plataian secession was not followed by other cities may be partly owing to geographical causes. No other Bicotian city, except 'Tanagra, lay so temptingly near to a powerful protector. And the events of the Peloponnesian War at once tended to beget a bitter feeling between Athens and the Boootians generally and to show how little real help Athens was able to give to a dependency beyond Mount ΑἸ αὶ. But towards the end of the war, we hear in general terms of strong disaffection towards Thebes on the part of the smaller cities,” and in one case, even before the Peace of Nikias, in the very year after the common Bootian victory at Délion, the Thebans destroyed the walls of Thespia, on the ground of the “ Atticism” of the inhabitants. The language of Thneydidés would almost imply that this was a mere act of high-handed Theban violence, without even the form of 1 Thue, iii. 66 et al. Τὰ πάντων Βοιωτῶν πάτρια. I cannot believe in any rivalry between Thebes and Plataia, such as Drumann (437) seems to imply, as if Plataia disputed the first place in the League with Thebes, Drumann also strangely omits all mention of the connexion between Plataia and Athens, 2 Herod. vi. 108. πιεζεύμενοι ὑπὸ Θηβαίων. Thue, iii. 55. ὅτε Θηβαῖοι ἡμᾶς ἐβιάσαντο. 3 Herod. (u.s.) "Hav Θηβαίους Bowrav τοὺς μὴ βουλομένους ἐς Βοιωτοὺς τελέειν. 4 See Grote, iv. 222. 5 Xen. Mem. iii. 5.2. Βοιωτῶν μὲν yap πολλοὶ, πλεονεκτούμενοι ὑπὸ Θηβαίων, δυσμενῶς αὐτοῖς ἔχουσιν" ᾿Αθήνησι δὲ οὐδὲν ὁρῶ τοιοῦτον. The date of this dialogue, which I have already had occasion to quote (see above, p. 22), between Sdkratés and the younger Periklés, is fixed to the year 407 by Perikl¢s being spoken of as a newly-elected General. He was one of the unfortunate com- manders at Arginousai. 6 Thue, iv. 183. Θηβαῖοι Θεσπιέων τεῖχος περιεῖλον, K.7.X. Iv POSITION AND CLAIMS OF THEBES 131 ----------- ee eee legitimate Federal action. He adds that the Thebans had long wished to destroy Thespia, and now found their opportunity. The city could not resist, because the flower of its warriors had fallen in the war with Athens. Such examples as this and that of Plataia might well cause a sullen acquiescence in Theban domination. Against Thebes backed by Sparta, resistance was hopeless. It was not till long after, when Thebes and Sparta oppo. were enemies, that, at last, on a favourable opportunity during menos, the Corinthian war, Orchomenos openly seceded.! The event is 80: 395. recorded by Xenophdn in the form commonly used to express the revolt of a subject or dependent state. But, long before this, in the famous pleadings as to the fate of Plataia, though piataia. the Thebans put prominently forward the general principles of B.c, 427. Bwotian Federalism, still the whole is practically treated as a dispute between Plataia and Thebes. The Plataians ask that they may not be given up to the vengeance of the Thebans ; they pray that Plataia may not be destroyed, and its territory not be annexed to that of Thebes.2 They prayed in vain; the captives were massacred, their city was destroyed, and their territory was confiscated, not to the profit of the Bocotian Union, but to that of the Theban State. Thus the power of Thebes went on increasing, and no doubt the discontent of the smaller cities went on increasing also, down to the time of the Peace of Antalkidas. Then we first find the tyehan Theban claims formally put forth in all their fulness, but only, claims at as it proved, to bring utter dissolution upon the whole Con- me tal. federacy. In the Plataian conference all that the Thebans had kidas, " ventured formally to claim was a primacy, expressed by a word ὅ πιο. 387. familiar to Greek diplomatic language, and not formally incon- sistent with the independence of the smaller towns. Afterwards we have seen the Beotarchs, themselves Federal magistrates, going through at least the form of consulting the Federal Councils. But now the Thebans openly put themselves forward as the representatives, or rather as the sovereigns, of all Bovotia. 1 Xen. Hell. iii. 5.6. Ὁ μὲν Λύσανδρος. . . Ὀρχομενίους ἀπέστησε Θηβαίων. 2 Thue, ili. ὅ8, Ὑμεῖς δὲ εἰ κτενεῖτε ἡμᾶς, καὶ χώραν τὴν ἸΪλαταιίδα Θηβαΐδα ποιήσετε. 3 Ib. 68 (the whole chapter). 4+ Manso, Sparta, iii. 150. Theben begniigte sich nicht die erste, es verlangte die Hauptstadt im bootischen Lande und es in der Art zu seyn, wie in Lakonien Sparta. δ Thue. iii, 61, Οὐκ ἠξίουν οὗτοι, ὥσπερ ἐτάχθη τὸ πρῶτον, ἡγεμονεύεσθαι ὑφ᾽ ἡμῶν. 182 MINOR CONFEDERATIONS OF ANCIENT GREECE — cHap. Antalkidas comes down with his rescript from the Great King, ordering that all Greek cities should be independent.! It suited the policy of Sparta? to construe this independence in the strictest sense everywhere except in Lakonia. When the Peace was to be sworn to, according to the usual Greek custom, by the representatives of every power concerned, Ambassadors from Thebes, not Baotarchs or Ambassadors from the Four Councils, demanded to take the oaths on behalf of all Bwotia.2 The Spartan King Agésilaos refused to receive their oaths, or to admit them to the benefits of the Peace, unless they formally recognized the independence of every Greek city, great and small. The Ambassadors had no such instructions from their xovernment,+ and it required a Lacedwemonian declaration of war to bring Thebes to consent to such terms. They were evidently understood as a formal renunciation of all Theban Dissolu- sttperiority in Bovotia, and apparently as a formal dissolution of tion of the the Boeotian League in any shape. As the Thebans consented league. to the required recognition of independence,’ we may conclude B.C. 387, that every Beeotian city entered into the terms of the treaty as a sovereign commonwealth, and we may thus look upon the old Beotian Federation as formally dissolved. Second The second portion of Bootian history includes the splendid Period, day of Theban greatness under Pelopidas and Epameindéndas. 334 387- As I am not writing a History of Greece, but a History of Federal Government, all that I have to do is to pick out from the general narrative such points as bear directly upon the Federal relations between Thebes and the other Bovotian towns. By the Peace of Antalkidas all Greek cities, great and small, became independent under the guaranty of Sparta. But Sparta seems, throughout Greece, to have interpreted independence The Peace after the same strange fashion as she had interpreted it after carried out the end of the Peloponnesian War. Either at once or, as is in the ° Ὡ interest of more likely, gradually after some interval, the several cities Sparta, 1 Xen. Hell. v. 1. 81. Τὰς δὲ ἄλλας Ἑλληνίδας πόλεις καὶ μικρὰς καὶ μεγάλας B.C. 887-2. _, or αὐτονόμους ἀφεῖναι. 2 Ib. v. 2. 16. Εἰκὸς ὑμᾶς [Λακεδαιμονίους] τῆς μὲν Βοιωτίας ἐπιμεληθῆναι ὅπως μὴ καθ᾽ ἕν εἴη. 8. ΤΌ, v. 1. 82, Οἱ δὲ Θηβαῖοι ἠξίουν ὑπὲρ πάντων Βοιωτῶν ὀμνύναι. 4 Ib. Οἱ δὲ τῶν Θηβαίων πρέσβεις ἔλεγον ὅτι οὐκ ἐπεσταλμένα σφίσι ταῦτ᾽ εἴη. 5 Ib. v. 1. 88. Θηβαῖοι δ᾽ εἰς τὰς σπονδὰς εἰσελθεῖν ἠναγκάσθησαν, αὐτονόμους ἀφέντες τὰς Βοιωτίας πόλεις. 6 On this point see Mr. Grote’s note, x. 46. ΙΝ SECOND PERIOD OF ΒΦΦΟΤΙΑΝ HISTORY 133 were occupied, like Athens under the Thirty, by narrow local oligarchies, supported by a Spartan harmost and garrison.! Jn Spartan the case of Thebes we know how this state of things was garrisons brought about, namely through the treacherous seizure “of the cities, Kadmeia by Phoibidas.? Plataia was restored,® restored as an 8.0, 882. equal and independent city ; its restoration implied not only a restore loss of Theban supremacy, but the actual loss of that portion of Plataia, the existing Theban territory which had formerly formed the 8.0. c. 386. Plataian district. But the independence of Plataia, like that of the other towns, was not thought inconsistent with the presence of a Lacedemonian harmost. Several entirely new elements were thus introduced into the world of Beeotian polities. Hitherto Beeotia had been less affected than most parts of Oligarchic Greece by the struggles of oligarchic and democratic parties. 4 Demo- ᾿ . ΜΝ . . . . - cratic The Beeotian cities had been, from time immemorial, oligarchi- parties. cally governed. Oligarchic government was doubtless, in Theban Weakness eyes, one of the ancestral principles of the Beeotian constitution,’ οὗ the De- . . mocratic hardly less important than the other great principle of Theban element supremacy. Not that a democratic party was altogether wanting in Beotia. in Beeotia, but it was weak, and could do nothing without foreign help. Democracy was introduced by the Athenian 5.0. 467. victory at Oimophyta, but democracy did not flourish on the uncongenial Boeotian soil,> and oligarchy reappeared when 8.6. 449. Beeotia was again detached from the Athenian alliance by the first battle of Kordneia. The invasion which led to the battle of Délion was planned by Athens in concert with a democratic 8.0. 424. party in Bovotia,® but the nutter failure of the scheme doubtless gave a deep and lasting blow to the democratic interest. The histories of Platain and Thespia, as already recorded, leave Thebes, hardly any doubt that this democratic or Athenian party was hitherto the party of the independence of the smaller cities against ere Thebes. But the dissolution of the League, and the Spartan garchy, occupation, for such it was, which followed, must have put matters on quite another footing. Oligarchy no longer meant, either in Thebes or elsewhere, the ascendency of the ancient See Isok. Plat. 20, 21. Cf. Pol. iv. 27. Xen. Hell. .v. 2. 25 et seqq. On this restoration see Grote, x. 43. Ta πάντων Βοιωτῶν πάτρια. See above, p. 130. Arist, Pol. viii. 3. Ἔν Θήβαις μετὰ τὴν ἐν Οἰνοφύτοις μάχην κακῶς πολιτ- ευομένοις ἡ δημοκρατία διεφθάρη. 6 Thue, iv. 76. ot bm 6 τὸ oe becomes, by her Re- volution, [B.c. 379, ] the centre of Demo- cracy. Career of Pelopidas [B.c. 379- 364] and Epanei- nondas (Bc. 379- 362]. Bad re- sults of Theban su- premacy. Nominal revival of the League. New Boo- tarchs. 134 MINOR CONFEDERATIONS OF ANCIENT GREECE cuHap. wy rte a nobles of the Jand, whose rule, in a country where it had been so little interrupted, may well have involved no_ practical oppression.! Oligarchy now meant the domination? of a small number of citizens, whose power rested entirely on the presence of a foreign force. A powerful democratic spirit was naturally called forth, and, above all, at Thebes, hitherto the centre of oligarchy. A democratic revolution delivered Thebes at once from her traitorous citizens and from her foreign garrison, and the new Theban Democracy entered, under Pelopidas and Kpameinéndas, upon its short and glorious career. There is no portion of Grecian history which more thoroughly awakens our sympathies than all that personally concerns those two most illustrious citizens. We hardly know which more to admire, Pelopidas the slayer of the Tyrants, or Epameinéndas who refuses to stain his hands even with Tyrants’ blood. The fight of Leuktra, the invasion of Lakonia, the restoration of Messéné, the foundation of Megalopolis, the deaths of Pelopidas in Thessaly and of Kpameimdéndas at Mantineia, are all among the most spirit-stirring scenes even in the eventful history of Greece. But it is easy to sce that Pelopidas and Epameiméndas were the chiefs of a people utterly unworthy of them; that the momentary greatness of Thebes did but leave Greece yet more disunited,* more ready to become the prey of the Macedonian aggressor ; and that, looking at the matter with the cyes of a historian of Federalism, this second period of Bootian history is yet more disastrous than the first period before the Peace of Antalkidas. The League was nominally revived ; constitutional Federal language was employed im formal documents,* and ''The Platonic Sdkrates (Kriton, c. 15) calls (B.c. 399) Thebes and Megara well governed cities—-evvoxoumévas πόλεις καὶ τῶν ἀνδρῶν τοὺς κοσμιωτάτου----- εὐνομοῦνται yap, K.7T.A. He does not call them εὐνομουμένας simply as being oligarchic, as he goes on to blame the ill government of oligarchiec Thessaly—éxe?t γὰρ δὴ πλείστη ἀταξία καὶ ἀκολασία. “ Xenophon himself uses the strong word δυναστεία, only less strong than τυραννίς, meaning in fact a Tyranny in the hands of several persons instead of one only, “Ev πάσαις γὰρ ταῖς πόλεσι δυναστεῖαι καθειστήκεσαν ὥσπερ ἐν Θήβαις. Hell. v. 4. 46. * Xen. [{0}}. vii. ὅ. 27. ᾿Ακρισία δὲ καὶ ταραχὴ ἔτι πλείων μετὰ τὴν [ἐν Μαντινείᾳ] μάχην ἐγένετο ἢ πρόσθεν ἐν τῇ Ἑλλάδι. Four years afterwards Philip took Amphipolis, 4 The κοινὴ σύνοδος τῶν Βοιωτῶν (Diod. xv. 80) received complaints from Thessaly against Alexander of Pherai {p.c. 364); and, just before Chairéneia (B.c. 338), Philip sent an embassy ἐπὶ τὸ κοινὸν τῶν Βοιωτῶν (Diod. xvi. 85). Cf. above, p. 126, note 4. IV CAREER OF PELOPIDAS AND EPAMEINONDAS 135 Beeotarchs, and not mere local Polemarchs, again appear as the commanders of the Bcotian armies.!. It is also clear that, immediately after the Theban Revolution, the Theban cause 8.c. 378. was popular in the Beeotian cities.2 No doubt the Theban Democracy, like the Athenian Democracy, put itself forward, and that for a while sincerely, as the champion of independence ‘and democratic government everywhere, in opposition alike to Liberal native oligarchies and to Lacedemonian garrisons. But the proves. result soon showed how impossible it was that an overweening Thebes. city like Thebes should ever enter into the true Federal relation with weaker states. Thebes showed more quickly than Athens, or even than Sparta, how easily Presidency may be developed into Empire. It does not indeed prove much that the recovery of the Boeotian cities is spoken of by Xenophdn in terms which are applicable only to a reconquest by force of arms.* To a Lakonian partisan like that renegade Athenian, the expulsion by Theban hands of a Spartan harmost and the oligarchy which he maintained, doubtless seemed to be the high-handed extinction of a legal government by the hands of a for elgn invader. But though the Becotian cities willingly entere ed into a revived Real sub- Beeotian League, they soon found that a Beeotian League was Jection of the lesser now only another name. for bondage to Thebes. A nominally cities to democratic Borotian Assembly, instead of four oligarchic Senates, Thebes, 1 The number now was seven (Paus. ix. 13.6, 7). Ido not know of any dis- tinct evidence whether any of these Bocotarchs were really chosen by the smaller towns or not. 2 See Grote, x. 215, 2638. Xenophon (Hell. v. 4. 46) seems to imply a sort of secession of the Démos froin the smaller cities, ὁ μέντοι δῆμος ἐξ αὐτῶν [τῶν πολέων] els Tas Θήβας ἀπεχώρει. 3 Xen. Hell. ν. 4. 68. Θράσεως δὴ ἐστρατεύοντο οἱ Θηβαῖοι ἐπὶ τὰς περιοικίδας πόλεις [mark the word περιοικίδας] καὶ πάλιν αὐτὰς ἀνελάμβανον. vi. 1.1, Οἱ δὲ Θηβαῖοι, ἐπεὶ κατεστρέψαντο τὰς ἐν τῇ Βοιωτίᾳ πόλεις, ἐστράτευον καὶ εἰς τὴν Φωκίδα. This clearly implies actual warfare, but what follows the first of the two passages as clearly implies that it was a warfare in which the Démos in the cities attacked took the Theban side. Still I cannot understand Mr. Grote’s meaning when he says (x. 188, 184) “that the Thebans .. . revived the Beeotian confederacy, is clearly stated by Xenophin’’—in the two passages just quoted. It is clearly stated that “the Thebans again became presidents of all Beotia’”’ (p. 183), but surely not that they revived a confederacy. Xenophon speaks not of reviving a confederacy, but of Thebes warring against and conquering certain cities. Considering Xenophon’s prejudices, his language is in no way inconsistent with the fact, otherwise sufficiently established, that the restoration of the Federal system was at least professed. But surely his words do not clearly state t. And considering what happened to Plataia and other cities so soon after, I certainly think that the practical aspect of the case is better set forth in the ords “subjugation ” and “submitted ” used by Bishop Thirlwall (v. 71). 136 MINOR CONFEDERATIONS OF ANCIENT GREECE ομάαρ. ---- oe might now sit to register Theban edicts in the name of the League, but the practical nature of the relation between Thebes and the other cities admits of no doubt. It is enough that the language of historians and orators always implies that Thebes had become practically sovereign. The smaller cities are spoken of in language which implies subjection ; ὁ we hear now, not of a Boeotian Confederation, but of a Theban State, into which other cities are compelled to merge themselves against their Destruce- will? Finally we hear, during “this period, of the utter tion of = destruction by Theban hands of no less than four Bosotian Bootian towns. Plataia now paid for the crime of having so long been, of Plataia, first an Athenian and then a Spartan outpost.’ Orchomenos, B.C. 878. once rescued by the personal interference of Kpamcindéndas,! at or 372; of last, during that hero’s absence, became the victim ° alike of its menos, ancient mythical rivalry,® and of its more recent political opposi- 5.0, 368 tion. Thespia, disaffected even before the fight of Leuktra,’ Thespi, of was destroyed soon after, and Kordéneia shared the fate of 5.6, 373 or Orchomenos.®> These events, the destruction of so many 371; and of Hellenic cities, above all of the ancient and renowned Orcho- “ one menos, to which Thebes herself had once been tributary, raised a feeling of profound indignation throughout Greece.’ When the genius of Epameinondas no longer guided her counsels, and 1 Περίοικοι, περιοικέδες πόλεις, 1 have already mentioned this use of the word, 2 See the expressions used in the Plataic Oration of Isokratés 8-10, μὴ πεισθεῖσαν τὴν ἸΪλαταιέων πόλιν ἀλλὰ βιασθεῖσαν Θηβαίοις [not Bowwrots] συντελεῖν----τῆς σφετέρας αὐτῶν πολιτείας οὐδὲν δεομένους κοινωνεῖν ἀναγκάζουσι---συντελεῖν ἐς τὰς Θήβας----προστάττειν ἡμῖν---οὐ τῶν ἄλλων αὐτοῖς ἀρκτέον, κιτ.λ. Something is doubtless to be allowed for angry Plataian (or Isokratic) oratory, something doubtless to the old special hatred between Thebes’ and Plataia ; still the most vehement orator in South Carolina would not use such language with regard to any single Northern State, though he might apply it to the Northern Union in general, 3 The details of the destruction of Plataia are given by Pausanias, ix. 1. 4 et seqq. 4 Diod. xv. 57. Paus. ix. 15. ὃ, Thirlwall, v. 158, 9. Grote, x. 264, 5 Diod. xv. 79. The Plataians were only expelled ; the men of Orchomenos were killed and the women and children sold, like the Mélians and Skidnaians by Athens. According to Pausanias (ix. 15, 14) the Thebans slew or branded such Boeotian exiles as they met with in their Peloponnesian campaign. 8 Tsok. Plat. 11. Οὐ τῶν ἄλλων αὐτοῖς [Θηβαίοις] ἀρκτέον, ἀλλὰ πολὺ μᾶλλον Ὀρχομενίοις φόρον οἰστέον" οὕτω γὰρ εἶχε τὸ παλαιόν. 7 Paus. ix. 18. 8, 14, 1-4, The date of the destruction of Thespia is doubt- ful, see Thirlwall, v. 85. Grote, x. 219. 8 On the date of the destruction of Koréneia, see Grote, x. 427. 9 See Grote, x. 427, xi. 285. IV THEBAN TREATMENT OF THE SMALLER TOWNS 137 even during his lifetime whenever he was not at hand to restrain her passions, Thebes stood forth as a city of coarse and brutal General upstarts, who had suddenly risen to a place in the Hellenic ‘like of Η , “1 Ys . Thebes world for which they were utterly unfit! No Grecian city through- seems ever to have been more thoroughly hated than Thebes out was between the battle of Mantineia and the battle of Chairéncia. arr Athens felt for her a repugnance which she never showed 33g towards either her Spartan rival or her Macedonian conqueror. To overcome this loathing, and to range the warriors of Thebes and Athens side by side against Philip, was the most glorious exploit of the glorious life of Démosthenés.” The dates of these acts of Theban violence towards the smaller Beeotian cities arc In some cases matters of dispute. Most of them occurred after the battle of Leuktra, but that of Plataia took place before. Certain it is that, just before that battle, the Theban Theban claims had risen to their full height. In the negociations veanns the which preceded it we secm to read over again the negociations jattle of which preceded the Peace of Antalkidas.? The Thebans swore Leuktra, to the Peace, or were willing to swear to it, in the name of all 3° 371 Beotia.* Agésilaos, as before, demands a recognition of the independence of the other Boeotian cities, and the admission of 1 Ephoros, quoted by Strabo, ix. 2. 2. Τελευτήσαντος yap ἐκείνου [’ Erapec- νώνδου] τὴν ἡγεμονίαν ἀποβαλεῖν εὐθὺς τοὺς Θηβαίους συνέβη, γευσαμένους αὐτῆς μόνον" αἴτιον δὲ εἷναι, τὸ λόγων καὶ ὁμιλίας τῆς πρὸς ἀνθρώπους ὀλιγωρῆσαι, μόνης δ᾽ ἐπιμεληθῆναι τῆς κατὰ πολεμὸν ἀρετῆς. * See a noble passage in Arnold’s Rome, ii. 331. 3 Pausanias (ix. 13. 2) evidently confounded the two occasions, as he intro- duces Epameinéndas as the Theban orator before the Peace of Antalkidas. 4 It is certainly hard at first sight to reconcile the accounts of this event given by Xenophon (Hell. vi. 3. 19) and by Plutarch (Ages. 28) and Pausanias (see last note). But they do not seem to me quite so contradictory as Mr. Grote thinks them (x. 231, note). In Xenophdn’s story, the Theban Ambassadors first allow Thebes to be set down as having sworn, and on the next day demand (ἐκέλευον) to have the name “Thebans ” struck out, and ‘‘ Beeotians ” substituted. Mr. Grote asks “why should such a man as Epameinéndas (who doubtless was the envoy), consent at first to waive the presidential claims of Thebes, and to swear for her alone? If he did consent, why should he retract the next day 1” Now it strikes me that the proceeding is capable of another explanation, and that there is no “ waiving of presidential claims,” and no “retracting the next day.” It is evident from the language of all the historians and orators, that the supre- macy of Thebes was now far more openly avowed than it had been under the old League, and that the word “Theban ” was now constantly used where “ Beeotian ” would have been used in the preceding century. The Thebans might well swear as “Thebans,” meaning to carry with them the whole of their confederates ; to say “Theban” rather than “ Beotian” might be meant not as any “ waiving of presidential claims,” but rather as the strongest way of asserting them. But Agésilaos might very well choose to take it in a contrary sense ; he would call on Bc. 371. B.C. 369, Gradual growth of the Theban claims. 138 MINOR CONFEDERATIONS OF ANCIENT GREECE ~ cuap, each to swear in its own name! asa sovereign commonwealth. The Thebans again refuse; they are again excluded from the treaty, but this time with very different results. Their former refusal and exclusion had been followed by their submission, by the dissolution of the Beeotian League, at last by the occupation of the Theban Kadmeia by a Lacedemonian garrison. The present refusal and exclusion was indeed followed by a Lacede- monian invasion of Beeotia, but that invasion was crushed at the fight of Leuktra, and soon after repaid by the presence of the Theban invaders in Sparta itself. In this negociation, as in the former one, Thebes formally claims to be regarded as the head of Bootia, the representative of the whole Beotian body towards other powers. She demands to be looked upon as capable of contracting, by her single act, international obligations binding on all the Beeotian cities. In this negociation, as in the former one, the Spartan King refuses to recognize Thebes in any such character. He knows Thebes, only as he knows Orchomenos, as one Boeotian city out of several, capable of contracting for herself alone, and whose obligations are binding on no other Bosotian commonwealth. Here is indeed a change on both sides since the Lacedemonian judges sat to decide between the conflicting arguments of Theban and Plataian orators. Then all that Thebes formally claimed, whatever she practically exercised, was a mere supremacy implying no absolute subjection, and even that she grounded on old Beoeotian custom, and on her own rights as the supposed metropolis? of the other Bootian towns. Then, whatever Thebes claimed, Sparta, as her interest then dictated, was ready to allow. Now Thebes employs, even in her formal claims, the language, no longer of a metro- polis or of a Federal president, but of a sovereign, or rather of a tyrant, city. Now Sparta, in pursuance of what has now become her interest, denies not only the claims lately advanced by Thebes, but the general principle of any kind of Bcotian the other Bwotian cities to swear separately ; the Thebans would then demand to have the doubtful word ‘ Thebans” changed into ‘‘ Bootians ;” that is, to have their oath taken as the oath of all Beeotia. Then would follow the lively dialogue between Epameinéndas and Agésilaos recorded by Plutarch and Pausanias, pre- ceded probably by some such reasoning on the Theban side as Mr. Grote supposes. [Cf. Vischer, Kleine Schriften, i. 559, and see Appendix ili. ] 1 This is more clearly brought out by Pausanias (ix. 18. 2) than by any one else. Thue. iii, 61. Ἡμῶν κτισάντων Πλάταιαν ὕστερον τῆς ἄλλης Βοιωτίας, Κκ.τ.λ. ΙΝ COMPARISON OF THEBES AND SPARTA 139 unity, a principle certainly as old as any other immemorial fact of Grecian politics. But if the claims of Thebes had grown between the siege of Plataia and the Peace of Antalkidas, they had again grown between the Peace of Antalkidas and the nego- clations at Sparta.’ Flere, on her own ground, Spartan pride Parallel received such a home-thrust from the audacious Theban as between 5 . Ν - Thebes in Spartan pride had never before dreamed of. Epameindéndas peotia ventured on a parallel such as assuredly the most daring imagina- and Sparta tion had never ventured on before. Thebes will recognize the ™ Lakonia. independence of the Beotian towns when Sparta recognizes the independence of the Lakonian towns. Thebes will allow Orcho- menos to swear as a separate commonwealth, when Sparta allows Amyklai to swear as a separate commonwealth. Here the claims of Thebes stand plainly before us in the naked form of unalloyed tyranny. We have already more than once scen the Beeotian cities described, in relation to Thebes, by the same name of sub- jection by which the Lakonian cities? are described in relation to Sparta. We now see this parallel in all its fulness formally avowed as a principle of Theban politics. The Bceotian towns are to be mere Perioikoi of Thebes, no longer sovereign members of a Beootian League, of which Thebes was at most a constitu- tional President. The comparison was equally daring in the claims which it made on behalf of Thebes and in the threat which it imphed against Sparta. No such revolutionary words 1 See Xen. Tell. vi. 3. 2. 2 Tsok. Panath. 179. ᾿Ονόμασι μὲν προσαγορευομένους ws πόλεις οἰκοῦντας, τὴν δὲ δύναμιν ἔχοντας ἐλάττω τῶν δήμων τῶν παρ᾽ ἡμῖν. ‘The whole passage is ἃ curious picture of the position of the περίοικοι. Of course an Attic δῆμος, as such, was politically nothing, but its inhabitants severally were Athenian citizens ; a Lakonian πόλις was also politically nothing, while its inhabitants severally were mere helpless subjects of Sparta, The Lakonian πόλεις are mentioned in rather a different way in a curious passage of Herodotos (vii. 284) where Démaratos tells Xerxes of the many Lacedemonian cities, among which he merely speaks of Sparta as the greatest, and inhabited by the bravest among the brave Lacediemonians. Herodotos was not a politician like Thucydidés or Polybios, still less was he a pamphleteer like Isokratés ; such a description was quite enough for his conception of a picturesque dialogue between Xerxes and Démaratos, without bringing in political distinctions which Xerxes would not have understood. But a mere “ English reader” might be led seriously astray as to the political condition of Lakonia by reading this single passage of Herodotos by itself. Yet strange to say, Professor Rawlinson, who discusses at large the population of the city of Sparta, and who adds to the Book a learned dissertation about Alarodians and Orthocorybantes, does not vouchsafe the “English reader” the least information as to the real political condition of Amyklai and Epidauros Liméra,. On these Perioikic πόλεις see Grote, 11. 484 et seqq. B.C. 369. The claims of Thebes exclude all true Fede- ralism in Beeotia. B.c. 998, Restora- tion of the destroyed Towns. 140 MINOR CONFEDERATIONS OF ANCIENT GREECE — cuar. had ever before been heard in any Grecian congress. No Greek had ever yet questioned the absolute rights of Sparta over the Lakonian towns. No Spartan, probably no Greek, had ever before imagined that treaties requiring that every Greek city should be independent might be so construed as to make Amyklai independent of Sparta as well as to make Orchomenos independent of Thebes. Epameinéndas now put forth a principle which at once loosened the very foundations of Spartan dominion, and he lived to carry out his principle in the most practical shape. Before his work was over, he had rent away from Sparta half her territory, and had set up an independent Messéné in opposi- tion to Sparta, as Sparta had set up an independent Plataia in opposition to Thebes. It is impossible not to rejoice even at the mere humiliation of Sparta, and still more so at the restoration of the heroic commonwealth of Messéné.1 But it is clear that the words of Epameinéndas contained a sentence of death against Beeotian Federalism or Beeotian freedom in any shape ;? it is clear that, though he held back his unworthy countrymen from the grosser acts of oppression, yet his life was devoted to the mere aggrandizement of the one city of Thebes, and not to the general good of Beotia or of Hellas. Different as was the general character of our first and our second period of Bosotian history, the terminations of the two were strikingly alike. After the defeat of Chairédneia, Thebes had to receive a Macedonian garrison into the Kadmeia, as she had before had to receive a Spartan garrison. Plataia, Thespia, Orchomenos, and Kordéncia now arose again,® surrounding Thebes 1 The restoration of Messéné however, except as a mere blow to Sparta, proved a failure. The career of the restored Messénians is inglorious, quite unworthy of the countrymen of the half-inythic Aristomenés, or of the gallant exiles of Naupaktos. The glory of Epameinéndas as a founder is to have been the creator of Megalopolis. 2 Mr. Grote thinks that the words of Epameinéndas do not imply that he claimed that ‘‘Thebes was entitled to as much power in Bosotia as Sparta in Laconia” (x. 231, 234) but only that the Federal union of Boaotia under the presidency of Thebes should be looked on as being ‘‘an integral political aggre- gate’ ay much as Lakonia ‘under Sparta,” or as Attica—he does not venture to say “under Athens.”’ Surely there is no analogy between a Federal head of several independent cities, a despot city ruling over several subject cities, and a country where the whole, is so to speak, one city, while the smaller towns are mere parishes. Unless Epameinoéndas meant his parallel between Thebes in Beeotia and Sparta in Lakonia to be exact in all points, it has no force at all, and it is open to an obvious retort. And certainly the position of Sparta in Lakonia was utterly inconsistent with Federalism or with freedom of any kind. 3 Paus. iv. 27. 10; ix. 37. 8. He assigns the restoration to Philip, Arrian (i. 9. 10) to Alexander, IV THIRD PERIOD OF BQLOTIAN HISTORY 141 with allies of Macedonia even more zealous and hostile than they had been in their former character as allies of Sparta. The troops of these cities served heartily with Alexander in his campaign avainst Thebes,! and it was by their voices? that the tyrant city was devoted to the destruction which she had so Destruc- often inflicted upon others. As Thebes had enriched herself tke A with the territory of four of her Bootian sisters, so, now that Alexander, her own day was come, the Macedonian conqueror divided the 5.0. 335. whole Theban territory among his Bootian allies. Thebes now Zealous co- vanishes for a while from among the cities of the earth. As one ope wion of the bulwarks of independent Greece against Macedonia we Beotian may lament her fate; but the special historian of Boeotian Towns. Federalism cannot weep for her. The third period of Boootian history may be more briefly gone through. The part played by Beotia in the later history Thira of Greece is almost always contemptible; and of the few im- Period, B.c. ᾿ . 335-172, portant events in which she was concerned 1 shall speak else- where. Thebes did not long remain a ruin or a sheep-walk, an example of the fate to which she had herself once wished to reduce Athens.? As she had found a Macedonian destroyer, she πιο. 405. now found a Macedonian restorer. Thebes was» restored by Restora- Kassander ;* it would seem with some sort of formal consent ὅ tion of . Thebes by on the part of the other Bocotian towns. They of course were Kaseander deeply interested in a proceeding which might possibly threaten 8.0, 316. them with a mistress, and which, in any case, involved an imme- diate surrender of territory. On the other hand, to say nothing of the power of Kassander and of the gencral feeling of Greece in favour of Theban restoration, it is quite possible that the 1 Arrian, i. 8. 8, Diod. xvii. 18, Arrian mentions also the Phokians. 2 Arr. i. 9.9, Τοῖς δὲ μετασχοῦσι τοῦ ἔργου ξυμμάχοις (ols δὴ καὶ ἐπέστρεψεν ᾿Αλέξανδρος τὰ κατὰ τὰς Θήβας διαθεῖναι) τὴν μὲν Ἰ αδμείαν φρουρᾷ κατέχειν ἔδοξε, τὴν πόλιν δὲ κατασκάψαι εἰς ἔδαφος, καὶ τὴν χώραν διανεῖμαι τοῖς ξυμμάχοις. Cf. Diod. xviii. 11. Dioddros (xvii. 14), with much less probability, makes Alexander assemble and consult τοὺς συνέδρους τῶν Ἑλλήνων, τὸ κοινὸν συνέδριον ; that is, probably, the Corinthian Synod, or possibly, in so blundering a writer, the Delphic Amphiktyons, Compare p. 100, note 1 on the supposed agency of the Corinthian Synod or of the Amphiktyons, and p. 43 on the hatred of the Beeotian towns towards Thebes, 3 Isok. Plat. 81. “Edevro οἱ [Θηβαῖοι] τὴν ψῆφον ws χρὴ τήν τε πόλιν ἐξαν- δραποδίσασθαι καὶ τὴν χώραν ἀνεῖναι μηλόβοτον ὥσπερ τὸ Ἰζρισαῖον πεδίον. Cf. Suidas under μηλόβοτος. See above, p. 125. 4 Paus. iv. 27. 103 ix. 7. 1. 5 Diod. xix. 54. Kdooavdpos ... πείσας τοὺς Βοιωτοὺς, ἀνέστησε τὴν “πόλιν. Restora- tion of the League with a modified Headship in Thebes. Bc. 245. Tusignifi- cance of Beeotia in later Greece. B.c. 201-- 186 or 222-197. MINOR CONFEDERATIONS OF ANCIENT GREECE 142 CHAP. Beeotian cities found that they had really not gained by the destruction of the greatest of their number. Elsewhere the step was highly popular: Athens, the partaker in the later struggles of Thebes, gave zealous help towards her restoration ; gratitude towards the city of Kpameinéndas prompted help no less zealous on the part of Messéné and Megalopolis ; contributions came in from various parts of Greece, and even from the Greck colonies in Italy and Sicily.t Thebes thus rose again, and before long she again became the head of a Boeotian League,? but with powers very inferior to what she had possessed in the days of her might. The date of the reconstitution of the League does not seem certain, but, through the whole range of the history of Polybios, Beeotia 1s always spoken of as a political whole, just like Phékis or Akarnania. But the revived Beeotian League cuts a very poor figure beside the Achaia of Aratos or the Sparta of Kleomenés. The Beeotians once ventured to join with the Achaians against the A‘tolian brigands, but after a single defeat they gave up all share in general Grecian politics.? They seem even to have entered into some relation to the ageressors, in- consistent with perfect independence,’ a relation presently to be exchanged for ἃ yet more servile submission to Macedonia.® Nor did they atone for external insignificance by a vigorous and orderly government at home. The account of the internal state of the country given hy Polybios is ridiculous beyond concep- tion. The Beotians did nothing but eat and drink; they ate more dinners in a month than there were days in it ;® they let the administration of justice sleep throughout the land for twenty-five years.’ Yet these Beotian swine® seem to have 1 Paus. ix. 7.1. Diod. xix. 54. “ Beeotia caput, Liv. xxxi. 1; xlii. 44. 3 Pol. xx. 4. Plut. Ar. 16. 4 Pol. xx. ὅ. ᾿Εἰγκαταλίποντες τοὺς ᾿Αχαιοὺς προσένειμαν Αἰτωλοῖς τὸ ἔθνος, Droysen (ii, 870) takes this to imply actual συμπολιτεία with the Altolians, and undoubtedly the same word, in a slightly different construction, is used to express the annexation of Sikyén to the Achaian League. ii. 43. "Αρατος. .. τὴν πατρίδα... προσένειμε πρὸς THY τῶν ᾿Αχαιῶν πολιτείαν, But this would seem to prove too much, and the words need not imply more than close alliance and slavish subserviency to A‘tolia. 5 Pol. xx. 5. Ὑπέταξαν σφᾶς αὐτοὺς ὁλοσχερῶς Μακεδόσι. 6 Ib. xx. 6. “Ὥστε πολλοὺς εἶναι Βοιωτῶν οἷς ὑπῆρχε δεῖπνα τοῦ μηνὸς πλείω τῶν εἰς τὸν μῆνα διατεταγμένων ἡμερῶν. 7 Τρϊά. Also xxiii. ὦ. Drumann (439) seems rather to misconceive this period. Surely Polybios describes a time of carelessness aud corruption, rather than one of violence (Faustrecht). 8 Pind. Ol. vi, 90. ᾿Αρχαῖον ὄνειδος... . Βωιωτίαν ὗν, Iv CONSTITUTION OF THE REVIVED LEAGUE 148 --.....- re -- ---- -ὄ-.-.- eee ee wee ee ---.-.- oe possessed a Federal constitution to which the models afforded by neighbouring states had given a better form than it had possessed in the days of Isménias or of Epameinéndas. Thebes Constitu- was the head of the League, the place of meeting for the Federal tom of the Assembly, but she no longer enjoyed the same tyrannical power as of old. At the head of the League, as at the head of other Leagues, there was a single General,? who probably stepped into the position originally held by the ancient Federal Archon. There were also Boeotarchs,? whose office now would answer pretty well to that of the Achaian Démiourgoi or Ministers ; and, as in Achaia, there was a Commander of Cavalry.* | There was a Federal Assembly in which we may gather from an ex- pression of Livy,° that each of the confederate cities had a dis- tinct vote. We hear nothing of any oppression on the part of Thebes,® nor very much of dissensions between the several cities. Not that Boeotia, any more than other Greek states, was free from party disputes, but they seem to have arisen almost wholly from questions of foreign policy. There was, in the war of Philip and Flamininus, a Roman and a Macedonian party, and Thebes was the stronghold of the Macedonian interest.’ A strata- gem of Flamininus® compelled the Bovotian League to embrace the Roman side. The factions and crimes by which this change of policy was followed are hardly worth recording. But at least the dissolution of the League was not the work of internal dis- sensions, but wholly of the insidious policy of Rome. To break up Federations and alliances among Grecian cities was always one of the main objects of any power, native or foreign, which aspired to supremacy or illegitimate influence in Greece. Thebes indeed for a moment, while Epameinondas directed her counsels, pursued a nobler policy in Arkadia, but the isolation of the separate cities was an end usually aimed at by all who sought to bring Greece under the yoke. We have seen how success- fully this policy was carried on by Sparta; it was continued by 1 Liv. xxxiit. 1. 2 Pol. xx. 6. ἔνιοι τῶν στρατηγῶν. xxiii. 2. στρατηγοῦντος ‘Immlov. So Livy xlii. 43 talks of the Beotian “ Pretor,” his regular translation of στρατηγός. 3 Pol. xviii. 26, Liv. xxxiii. 27, Plut. Arat. 16. * Pol. xx. 5. 5 Liv. xxxiii, 2. Omnium Beeotie civitatum suffragiis accipitur. 6 The only expression which looks like it (Pol. xxvii. 5) Θηβαίους βαρεῖς ὄντας ἐπικεῖσθαι, refers to the dissensions between the Roman and Macedonian parties just before the dissolution of the League. 7 See Pol. xx. ὅ. Thirlwall, viii. 335 et seqq. 8 Liv. xxxiii. 1. Thirlwall, viii, 336. seague. B.c. 198-7. Dissolu- tion of the League by Quintus Marcius, B.c, 171. 144 MINOR CONFEDERATIONS OF ANCIENT GREECE cmap. the Macedonian Kings; it was finally carried out in its fullest extent by the subtle machinations of Roman diplomacy. The course of the war with Perseus gave the Roman Ambassador Quintus Marcius an opportunity of bringing about the dissolu- tion of the League of Boeotia, which I shall describe more at large in a future chapter. His combined intrigues and violence gradually induced the several cities to desert their Federal Union, and to place themselves, one by one, under Roman protection.1 Thus did the Bocotian League fall asunder,” and I see no reason to infer from a casual expression of a single writer, that the political union between the Bootian towns was restored at any later time.° 1 Pol. xxvii. 1. ἢ. Liv. xii. 48. 44, Thirlwall, viti. 437. 2 Pol. xxvii. 2, Td δὲ τῶν Βοιωτῶν ἔθνος ἐπὶ πολὺν χρόνον συντετηρηκὸς τὴν κοινὴν συμπολιτείαν, καὶ πολλοὺς καὶ ποικίλους καιροὺς διαπεφευγὸς παραδόξως, τότε προπετῶς καὶ ἀλογίστως ἑλόμενον τὰ παρὰ []ερσέως, εἰκῇ καὶ παιδαριωδῶς πτοηθὲν κατελύθη καὶ διεσκορπίσθη κατὰ πόλεις. The difference between ἔθνος and πόλις, in the political langnage of Polybios, is that between a Federal State and a single city. See xx. 3, and many other passages, Livy habitually represents the words by “gens” and ‘“civitas.” He also often uses “populus” in the sense of State or Canton as a member of a League. Mommsen (i. 582) holds that the formal dissolution of the League did not take place till B.c. 146. I do not see how this can be reconciled with the words of Polybios and Livy. A Beeotarch is spoken of in the interval, but he is apparently a purely Theban magistrate — βοιωταρχῶν τηνικαῦτα ἐν Θήβαις. Paus, vii. 14. 6. 3 Pausanias (vii. 16. 9—10), describing the results of the victory of Mummius (p.c. 146) adds, συνέδριά τε κατὰ ἔθνος τὰ ἑκάστων, ᾿Αχαιῶν καὶ τὸ ἐν Φωκεῦσιν ἢ Βοιωτοῖς ἣ ἑτέρωθί που τῆς Ελλάδος, κατελέλυτο ὁμοίως πάντα. ἔτεσι δὲ οὐ πολλοῖς ὕστερον ἐτράποντο ἐς ἔλεον Ῥωμαῖοι τῆς ᾿Ελλάδος, καὶ συνέδριά τε κατὰ ἔθνος ἀποδιδόασιν ἑκάστοις τὰ ἀρχαῖα, κ.τ.λ. From the former part of this passage Mr. Whiston (Dict. of Ant. art. Beeotarches), following Boeckh (i. 727), infers that Mummius found a Beotian League to dissolve in B.c. 146, and therefore that the League must have been ‘‘ partially revived” after its dissolution by Marcius in B.c. 171. But surely Pausanias, especially when using the pluperfect tense, may just as well refer to the dissolution under Marcius, or, as the pious antiquary is not the most infallible authority in strictly historical matters, Pausanias may even have forgotten that the dissolution of the Bceotian League was the work of Marcius and not of Mummius. It seems hardly worth while to extemporize a revival and a second dissolution without better authority. The latter portion of the passage, as referring to a nominal restoration later than B.c. 146, does not bear on the point. On the restoration there spoken of, see Thirlwall, viii. 502; Finlay, Greece under the Romans, 25, All these imaginary Confederations continued to exist, with their whole staff of Generals, Archons, Beotarchs, Senates, etc. down to a surprisingly late period of the Roman Empire. This is abundantly shown by the inscriptions in Boeckh. But it is hardly worth enlarging on such mock constitu- tions in a History of Federalism, except when they either illustrate the institu- tions of earlier times, or when one gets such curious details as Pausanias gives (see above, p. 105) of the Amphiktyonic Council after the Augustan Reform Bill. 1V ATTEMPTS AT FEDERAL UNION 145 § 3. Of vartous uttempts at Federal Systems—LIomia, Olynthos, Arkadia, ete. Besides these Federations of Phékis, Akarnania, Epeiros, and Beeotia, all of which actually existed and flourished, we must not pass by some less successful attempts at the establishment of Unsuccess- Federal Governments in ancient Greece. Several such efforts ful at- were made at various times, which bore no permanent fruit. Still isn dca they are important facts in Grecian history, and, as they serve Govern- to illustrate the history and the growth of the Federal idea, they ™e*s. form a natural portion of our subject. It may be doubtful how far we are entitled to reckon among such attempts the advice which, according to Herodotos,! was Advice ot given to the Jonian Greeks by the philosopher Thalés when they Thalés to > ° . e . Θ were first threatened with Persian invasion. Some degree of yorianc union had always existed among the Jonian colonies in Asia, but n.c. 545. there is no ground for believing that their union was of a kind which at all amounted to a real Federal Government.? They had indeed general meetings at the Panionion,® but those meetings Former were primarily of a religious kind, though undoubtedly they Connection ΜῈ . . between were often taken advantage of for political deliberations among 4, the several cities. Their connexion in short seems to have been Ionian rather closer than that of a mere Amphiktyony, but it is clear Cities. that it came nearer to an Amphiktyony than to a true Federal union. It is a relation of a peculiar kind, a sort of developement of the old Amphiktyonic relation, of which we find some other Their instances, especially among the Greeks of the Asiatic colonies. reat . . . . . . essentia It is a species of union which might naturally arise among settlers 4mphi- in a foreign land, mindful of their old home and of their common ktyonic. origin, but still in no way disposed to sacrifice any portion of their separate political being. Unions like those of the Asiatic Tonians and Aéolians * were in fact Amphiktyonies instituted for 1 Tferod. i. 170. ᾿Εκέλευε ἕν βουλευτήριον Ἴωνας ἐκτῆσθαι, τὸ δὲ εἶναι ἐν Τέῳ" Τέων γὰρ μέσον εἶναι ᾿Ιωνίης᾽ τὰς δὲ ἄλλας πόλιας οἰκεομένας μηδὲν ἧσσον νομίζεσθαι, κατάπερ εἰ δῆμοι εἷεν. 2 Mr. Blakesley, in his edition of Herodotos (vi. 7 et al.), seeins to me greatly to exaggerate the amount of true Federal ideas in Ionia. A much truer picture is given by Bishop Thirlwall (ii. 115. 191), and still more clearly by Mr. Grote (iii. 345). 3 See Herod. i. 142. 148, 4 The Beotian Amphiktyony of Koréneia would be a union of very much the same kind as these unions among the Asiatic Greeks, if we could conceive it exist- ing independently of the political Bceotian union which had its centre at Thebes. Ι, Its differ- ence from the elder Amphi- ktyonies. No true Federal Union, Advice of Thalés ; it meaning. ζ. 146 MINOR CONFEDERATIONS OF ANCIENT GREECE — cuHap. a special, and that partly a political, end. They differed from the Amphiktyonies of Old Greece in this. In an Amphiktyony of the elder kind, the union between the members simply exists for the sake of the temple. The common temple gives its name to a body which, except in reference to that temple, has no common being at all. In these unions among the Asiatic Greeks, this relation is reversed. The union 15 much more religious than political, still it is something more than the mere spiritual brotherhood of fellow-worshippers in a common temple. The union does not exist merely to protect the temple, but the temple, the Panionion, or the like, 1s itself built as the binding and consecrating symbol of an union already recognized as exist- ing. Greeks of the same tribe, settled among barbarian neigh- bours or subjects, wished to recognize one another as kinsmen, and often stood in need of one another’s help as allies. They founded a religious union as the badge of their mutual recogni- tion, and as a means of promoting general harmony and good feeling among them. But they had no idea of carrying either national or religious brotherhood so far as to infringe on the inherent separate sovereignty of every Hellenic city. Indeed, the very isolation of the Ionian cities, and the greatness to which they speedily rose, would tend to make the feeling of town- autonomy, if possible, stronger than it was among the cities of Old Greece. Certain it is, if only from this very advice of Thalés, that the Ionian Greeks had no permanent union, cemented, as in the real Leagues, by a common Senate and Assembly. Thalés proposed to establish a closer union than already existed, but it may be doubted exactly how close he meant that union to be. The words of Herodotos may be construed in two ways,! and in any case his political language is not to be so strictly pressed as the politica] language of Thucydidés or Polybios. And indeed one can hardly suppose that Thalés himself, notwith- standing the evident wisdom of his advice, had attained to the clearness of political vision which distinguishes the two great political historians of Greece. The language of Herodotos, taken strictly, might imply that Thalés meant to recommend such an 1 See Blakesley, Herod. i, 170, Professor Rawlinson, in his notes, passes by this most important passage without notice. In his translation he makes Thalés say: ‘“ Their other cities might still continue to enjoy their own laws, just as if they were independent states (κατάπερ εἰ δῆμοι εἶεν). This is probably historically true, but it is hard to see what process of construing can get it out of the words of Herodotos, IV THE IONIC AMPHIKTYONY 147 eee - - union as that which had fused all the Attic towns into the one commonwealth of Athens. Yet when we think of the greatness of some of the [onian cities, and their distance from one another, it is hardly possible to believe that Thalés wished to merge them so com- pletely into one commonwealth as had been done with the old Attic cities. No one could think of reducing Ephesos, Milétos, and Kolophén to the level of Marathén and Eleusis. No one could think of asking Ephesians, Milésians, and Kolophdénians to cease to be Ephesians, Milésians, and Kolophénians, and to become Teians instead. It is far more probable that Thalés designed each city to He proba. retain its separate being as an independent city, and only wished by intend: to form a Federal Council for common consultation and defence federal against the barbarians. If so, this advice of Thalés would be the Union. earliest instance of a Federal Union being deliberately recom- mended to a group of separate states by a single political thinker. But it does not appear that the advice of Thalés produced the least practical effect. The Iomian Federation remained the mere vision of one philosophical Milésian; in the mind of every other Ionian the Greek instinct of autonomous city-government was too strong for any such scheme even to obtain a hearmg. We have here in short a striking comment on what has heen already said as to the 1m- portant bearing on our subject of the history of the Delphic Amphiktyony. The Delphic Amphiktyony is important in a history of Federal Government, just because it was not a Federal Government. So the advice of Thalés is important in the same history, just because it remained advice and was never carried out into action. The Delphic Amphiktyony came near cnough His advice to a Federal Union of all Greece to have suggested such a ite rejee. Federal Union, had the Greck mind in general felt any necd of tion a any union of the kind. That no such Union ever arose out striking of it is the surest proof how little such an Union was in harmony Hee with Greek political feeling. Still more easily might the Ionic Greek poli- Amphiktyony have grown into an Ionic League, had the Jonians tical ideas. in general felt any need of an Ionic League. That they rejected the scheme when it was proposed to them shows more clearly than anything else how little progress true Federal ideas had made among them. To the philosophic mind of Thalés the 1 But for the marvellous translation of Professor Rawlinson, one would hardly have stopped to notice anything so obvious as that the word used by Herodotos is δῆμοι, or that δῆμοι here means (not “independent states,’ but) the local divisions of Attica. Even the antiquated translation of Beloe shows that its author understood at least thus much, 148 MINOR CONFEDERATIONS OF ANCIENT GREECE — cnar. — transition from an [onic Amphiktyony to an Ionic League doubtless seemed easy enough. His countrymen from the various cities were in the habit of assembling for periodical religious meetings, and even of using these religious mectings, when occasion served, for real political conferences.! ΤῸ improve these irregular conferences into a permanent Congress, with authority in all foreign affairs, would seem to him to be only a natural developement of a state of things to which every Ionian was already fully accustomed. But Thalés scems to have been the only [onian to whom any such idea occurred. When he proposed to fix the seat of his Central Government at Teds, he doubtless thought that he was providing for the liberties of his proposed League, that he was guarding against the very evils which had doubtless already begun to show themselves in Beotia.2 But Milésian and Ephesian pride would not consent to surrender an atom of Milésian or Ephesian Sovereignty to a Federal Council sitting at Teds. This advice of Thalés, and its fate, also illustrates another remark which I have already made. It was precisely the greatest and most illustrious cities of Greece which clung the most pertinaciously to their separate town- autonomy. Sparta, Athens, and we may fairly add Thebes, were willing enough to bear rule over other cities; they were willing enough to be the chicfs of a body of allies more or less dependent upon them ; Athens at least was once willing to incorporate other cities as it were into her own person ; but neither Sparta, Athens, nor Thebes ever consented to unite with other cities in a free and equal Federal bond. It was only among the ruder and less advanced tribes of Greece that the true Federal principle had, in the days of Thalés, made any visible progress. We cannot doubt that necessity had already drawn the towns of Phékis and Akarnania into those Federal unions which we find existing among them throughout the whole duration of Grecian history. But the Ionic cities were, in the days of Thalés, among the foremost cities of the Hellenic name. They were as little likely 1 As, for instance, when the common revolt against Persia obliged an unusual amount of common action. Then we find (Herod. vi. 7) πρόβουλοι from the different cities meeting at Teds, and we even find the words (ib. v. 109) τὸ κοινὸν τῶν ᾿Ιώνων. We may well doubt whether such a formula was commonly used. 2 Blakesley on Herod. vi. 7. ‘‘ He would have selected Teds somewhat on the principle on which the site of Washington was selected for the capital of the United States of America. Teds could never become formidable to the inde- pendence of the members of the Confederation.” IV PROJECTED LEAGUE OF OLYNTHOS 149 as Sparta or Athens to follow Phékian or Akarnanian precedents of union ; they were rather as fully disposed as Sparta or Athens could be to cleave to the full possession of all those sovereign rights which the Hellenic mind held to be inherent in every sovereign Hellenic commonwealth. Far more important in Grecian history is the attempt made Projected by Olynthos, shortly after the Peace of Antalkidas, to organize Gagne of . OO NTHOS a general confederacy of the Greek and Macedonian cities in [g.¢, 389), her own neighbourhood. Sparta, as the interpreter and executor of the Peace, made it her business to hinder any union, whether it took the form of Federation or of subjection, no less among the Chalkidic, than among the Bceotian, towns. Later again, in the war between Agis and Antipater, all Arkadia 8.0. 330. except Megalopolis took the patriotic side; Meyalopolis stood a siege in the interest of Macedonia,® and its losses were repaid by ἃ pecuniary compensation levied on the vanquished cities.’ Opposition to Sparta would naturally drive Megalopolis into alliance with Macedonia, and it may well be believed that, in the days of Macedonian domination, selfish interests may have made the position of a powerful city in close alliance with Macedonia appear preferable to that of a Federal capital of Arkadia. Certain it is that, from this time forward, the Macedonian interest was very strong in Megalopolis, and equally certain that no general Arkadian League existed when the Achaian League began to be organised. The great scheme of Lykomédés, the most promising that any Grecian statesmen had yet designed, had altogether fallen asunder. And yet his labours were far 1 Dem. F. Τὰ 220. 2 See ib. 10, 11. 3 In the oration ὑπὲρ Μεγαλοπολιτῶν. + See Thirlwall, v. 8367—70. 5 Thirlwall, v. 368. 8 Asch. Ktes. 165. 7 Q. Curt. vi. 1. 21. Pretended scheme of Federal Union in KUBOIA. B.c. 351. 162 MINOR CONFEDERATIONS OF ANCIENT GREECE μάν. from being wholly fruitless) He had given a model for the statesmen of later generations to follow, and he had founded the city which was to give birth to the most illustrious Greeks of the last age of Grecian independence. After this Arkadian Confederacy, which, if it had a poor ending, at all events had a grand beginning, it may seem almost ludicrous to quote a mere abortive scheme, or pretence at a scheme, our whole knowledge of which is contained in a single sentence of a hostile orator. Kallias, the Tyrant of Chalkis, he who was defeated by Phokidn at Tamynai, veiled, if we may Schemes of believe A‘schinés, his schemes of ambition under the pretext of Kallias of Chalkis. A.D. 1859. Evidence of the growth of Federal ideas in Greece. The LYKIAN League ; its excel- lent Con- stitution. founding a general Kuboian Council or Assembly in his own city! Nota detail is given us, but the words employed seem to show that a pretence at true Federalism was the bait. A Federal scheme proceeding from such a source would probably have borne more likeness to the abortive scheme of an Italian League put forth by Louis Napoleon Buonaparte, than to the noble works of Aratos and Washington. But in either case the bait of a Federal Constitution was an instance of the homage which vice pays to virtue. WhenaGreek Tyrant hit upon such a device to cover his schemes of aggrandizement, it is clear that the Federal principle was now gradually working its way to that influence over the Greek mind which it certainly did not possess in the preceding century, and which it emphatically did possess in the century which followed. $4. Of the Lykian League I will end this chapter with a notice of one Federation more, one not within the limits of Greece, and whose citizens were not Greek by race, but which was so clearly formed after Greek models that it may, in a political history, fairly claim a place in the list of Greek Federal Governments. I mean the wise and well-balanced Confederation of Lykia, whose constitution has won the highest praise from Montesquieu“ in the last century, 1 Aisch. Ktes, 89. Καλλίας ὁ Χαλκιδεὺς, μικρὸν διαλιπὼν χρόνον, πάλιν ἧκε φερόμενος εἰς τὴν ἑαντοῦ φύσιν, Εὐβοϊκὸν μὲν τῷ λόγῳ συνέδριον ἐς Χαλκίδα συνάγων, ἰσχυρὰν δὲ τὴν Ἑὔβοιαν ἐφ᾽ ὑμᾶς ἔργῳ παρασκευάζων, ἐξαίρετον δ᾽ αὑτῷ τυραννίδα προσποιούμενος. Cf. Dict. Biog. art. Callias. * Esprit des Lois, ix.3. ‘‘S’il falloit donner un modéle d’une belle république fédérative. ie prendrois la republique de Lycie.” IV THE LYKIAN LEAGUE 163 and from Bishop Thirlwall! in the present. The antiquities and the language of Lykia have lately attracted the atten- tion of scholars in no small measure. To the political inquirer the country is no less interesting, as possessing what was probably the best constructed Federal Government that the ancient world beheld. The account given by Strabo, our sole authority, is so full, clear, and brief, that I cannot do better than translate it. The ‘ancestral constitution of the Lykian League,”? is described by the great geographer in these words :— “There are three and twenty cities which have a share in the suffrage, and they come together from each city in the Strabo's common Federal Assembly,® choosing for their place of meeting scone οὗ any city which they think best. And, among the cities, the Gea greatest are possessed * of three votes apiece, the middle ones of tion. two, and the rest of one; and in the same proportion they pay taxes,” and take their share of other public burthens. And the six greatest cities? according to Artemiddéros, are Xanthos, Patara, Pinara, Olympos, Myra, Tlés, which lies in the direction of Kibyra. And, in the Federal Assembly,’ first the Lykiarch is chosen and then the other Magistrates of the League,® and bodies of Federal Judges are appointed ;9 and formerly they used to consult about war, and peace, and alliance ; this now, of course, they cannot do, but these things must needs rest with the Romans, unless such action be allowed by them, or be found useful on their behalf; and in like manner also judges and 1 ij, 116. ‘‘The Lycians set an example of the manner in which the advan- tages of a close federal union might be combined with mutual independence. . . . Had the Greeks on the western coast of Asia adopted similar institutions, their history, and even that of the mother-country, might have been very different from what it became.” 2 Strabo, xiv. 8. 2. Ἢ πάτριος διοίκησις rod Λυκιακοῦ συστήματος. Σύστημα (Pol. ii. 41) is one of the technical names for a Federation. The Lykians also used the more formal designation Λυκίων τὸ κοινὸν (Ὁ, I. 4279) and the equally familiar ἔθνος (C. I. 4239 et al.) 3 Strabo, xiv. 3. 3. Συνέρχονται δὲ ἐξ ἑκάστης πόλεως els κοινὸν συνέδριον. [For a list of the Lykian cities see Appendix 11.] 4 70, Τριῶν ψήφων ἐστὶν ἑκάστη κυρία. 5 Ib. Πὰς εἰσφορὰς εἰσφέρουσι καὶ τὰς ἄλλας λειτουργίας. 8 It would be worth inquiring whether all of these six great cities rejoiced in the title of λαμπροτάτη μητρόπολις τοῦ Λυκίων ἔθνους. It was certainly borne by Tlés, Xanthos, and Patara. See C. 1, 4240c, 4276, 4280 et al. 7 Strabo, us, "Ev τῷ συνεδρίῳ. On the word συνέδριον, see p. 263. 8 Ib, άλλαι ἀρχαὶ al τοῦ συστήματος. 9 Th Aivarrhad re ἀπροδείνυνΙ! KOLVY His testi- mony to its practical working. B.c. 29- A.D. 18. Merits of the Lykian Constitu- tion ; No Capital; The As- sembly Primary not Repre- sentative. 164 MINOR CONFEDERATIONS OF ANCIENT GREECE — cmap. -.......... - --- ee πῶς magistrates! are appointed from each city, in proportion to the number of its votes. On the practical working of this constitution Strabo bestows the highest praise. Lykia was, in his day, a Roman dependency, but it retained its own laws and internal government, which he himself beheld in as high a state of efficiency as was consistent with the dependent condition of the commonwealth in its external relations. The merits of this Lykian constitution are obvious. [Ὁ avoids nearly every error into which other Confederations had fallen. There is no capital, no Thebes, not even a Megalopolis : the Federal Assembly meets wherever it finds it convenient to do so. At the same time, it avoids the opposite evil, from which we shall find that even the Achaian League was not free, that of giving the greatest city no more weight in the Federal Assembly than the smallest. A League of citics must always find it very dificult to steer clear of both these opposite dangers. The Lykians seem to have done so very successfully. There can, I think, be no doubt that the Lykian Assembly, like the Achaian and other Assemblies of the kind, was a primary and not a representative body. I cannot believe that it was composed merely of deputies from the several cities.2, The words of Strabo seem to me to imply, not that each city sent one, two, or three representatives, but that each city had one, two, or three votes. A small confederation (σύστημα), consisting of Kibyra and three other towns, in which Kibyra had two votes and the other towns one each, was probably a humble imitation of the Lykian League. Strabo, xiii. 4.17. [Cf. the small con- federation of Zug; see the French Continuation of J. von Miiller’s History of the Swiss Confederation, xiv. 226.] As Kibyra was always under Tyrants, though well disposed Tyrants (ἐτυραννεῖτο δ᾽ ἀεί" σωφρόνως δ᾽ ὅμως), one would like to know how the Monarchic and the Federal elements were reconciled. The mere use of the word 7'yrant, and not Aing, implies republican forms. Even the Gauls in Asia (Strabo, xii. 5. 1) seem to have made some rude approach to Federal ideas; but these utterly obscure constitutions are really matters of archeology rather than of politics, 3 See Niebuhr, Hist. Rom. ii. 29, 30. Eng. Tr. Approach to Repre- sentative Govern- ment. A Senate not men- tioned, but its exist- ence to be inferred from analogy. Federal Magis- trates. 166 MINOR CONFEDERATIONS OF ANCIENT GREECE — cHAr. at home. It would have been a comparatively small change, if each city had formally elected as many of its citizens as it had votes, and had sent them with authority to speak in its name in the Federal body. But the change does not seem ever to have actually been made. In this, as in so many other cases, the ancient world trembled on the very verge of representative government without ever actually crossing the boundary.+ The description of Strabo does not mention a Federal Senate. But the universal practice of the Greek commonwealths may make us feel certain that there was a Senate, of some sort or other, in Lykia no less than in Arkadia. The several cities of Lykia had each their local Senates,? and we may be sure that the Federal Constitution followed the same universal model. It need not surprise us that a thing almost certain to be taken for granted is not directly mentioned. The Athenian Senate is not very often spoken of; it is never so prominent as at the moment of its destruction by the Four Hundred.2 The very existence of the Arkadian Senate has, as we have seen, mainly to be inferred from the dimensions of an architectural monument. We may therefore be sure that the Lykian Assembly, like other Greek Assemblies, was assisted by a preconsidering Senate, but we cannot tell what the exact constitution of that Senate was. As for the Federal Magistrates mentioned by Strabo, their titles are not mentioned, except that of Lykiarch, borne by the President of the Union.4 The magistrates of the several cities may have borne the title of General; at least Dién Cassius speaks of the General of a particular city,® as well as of the common army of the whole League.® 1 See Mommsen’s Rémische Geschichte, ii. 347. > The style of each city is commonly the familiar one ἡ βουλὴ καὶ ὁ δῆμος. C. I. 4270, 4303” et al. At Tlos we find a formula which seems to imply two distinct Councils, TAwéwy 7 βουλὴ καὶ ἡ γερουσία καὶ 6 δῆμος. C. 1. 4236, 4237, 4240. Tepovela isa word used once by Polybios (xxxviii. 5) in speaking of Achaian affairs, meaning, as it would appear, the Council of Ministers. See Bachofen, Das Lykische Volk (Freiburg im Breisyau, 1862), p. 24. 9 Thuc. viii. 69. 4 The Lykiarch seems to have borne the formal title of ἀξιολογώτατος (Ὁ. I. 4198, 4274), something like our ‘‘ Right Honourable.’ This is a sort of orientalism of which we find no trace in proper Greece. Compare the attempt by the Senate in the first Congress of the United States to confer the title of “Highness”? upon the President. See Marshall’s Life of Washington, v. 288 ; Jefferson's Correspondence, iv. 14. 5 Dion. xlvii. 34. Καὶ τοῦτο καὶ of Mupeis ἐποίησαν, ἐπειδὴ τὸν στρατηγὸν αὐτῶν. . . ἀπέλυσεϊν ὁ Βροῦτος]. S$ Ib. Tod κοινὸν τῶν Λυκίων στράτευμα. IV ORIGIN OF THE LYKIAN LEAGUE 167 The exact antiquity and origin of the Lykian League it might be difficult to discover. Bishop Thirlwall! hints that Date and Federal Government may have been of very early introduction Origin of ᾿ . ederal into Lykia. Yet we must remember that the Lykians were qjyem. not Greeks, and that they seem not even to have had that ment in degree of ethnical affinity to the Grecks which it is easy to Lykia. recognize in Macedonians and Epeirots. We need not suppose a people who proved themselves so capable of receiving Hellenic culture to have been wholly of an alien stock; but till philo- logers are better agreed as to the nature of the Lykian language, it is hardly the part of a political historian to hazard vague conjectures about them. It is clear that the Relation of early Lykians were, in the Greek sense of the word, Barbarians; ey that is, that they spoke a language unintelligible to the Grecks, the Greeks. and that they were not then distinguished in any special way from the other Asiatic races which passed under the dominion of Persia. It is equally clear that they must have possessed latent powers of assimilating themselves to Greek models in a degree beyond all other Asiatic races. The later Lykians clearly adopted the Greek language, Greek art, and general Greek civilization. They doubtless followed and improved upon Greck models, in the developement of their admirable political constitution. Its details, as described by Strabo, probably belong only to the last period of Lykian history. But some germs of a Federal system must have existed earlier. Traces of Aristotle found the constitution of Lykia, no less than that Federalism of Thesprotia, worthy of a place in his collection.2 This subjection seems to imply a Republic, and, in so large a country, most to Rhodes. probably a Federal Republic. But the Lykian monuments help us to no information on the subject. Our real knowledge begins later. After the defeat of Antiochos, the Romans, in s.c. 188. their division of the spoil, assigned Lykia and the greater part of Karia to their Rhodian allies.* Rhodes was governed by a prudent and moderate aristocracy, which one is surprised Lykia sub- to find seeking after continental dominions. But it would seem ὁδοῦ 2 that Theaitétos and Philophrén, who begged for the Lykians 5 ¢ 188. as a gift,* acted as little for the true interest of their island 168. 1 ij, 116. Cf. Drumann, p. 432. 2 Phiotios, Bibl. 104, 5. Ed. Bekker. 3 Pol. xxiii. 8. Liv. xxxviii, 39. 4 Pol, xxiii. 8. ᾿Αξιοῦντες αὑτοῖς δοθῆναι τὰ κατὰ Λυκίαν καὶ Καρίαν. . .. φάσκοντες Λυκίαν καὶ Καρίας τὰ μέχρι τοῦ Μαιάνδρου δεδόσθαι Ῥοδίοίς ὑπὸ Ῥωμαίων ἐν δωρεᾷ. Lykia in- dependent, B.C. 168. Origin of the Consti- tution described by Strabo. 168 MINOR CONFEDERATIONS OF ANCIENT GREECE — cuar. commonwealth, as Francesco Foscari did for the interest of his, when he made Venice a continental power. Perpetual disputes arose between Rhodes and Lykia; perpetual appeals were brought before the supreme power at Rome. ‘The nature of the gift was disputed ; the Rhodians looked on the Lykians as mere subjects; the Lykians maintained that they were at most dependent allies! It is certain that the gift did not hinder the existence of some sort of Federal union. The Lykians, even while subject to Rhodes, retained the ordinary style of a Greek Confederation ;? much more then must they have employed it during the earlier days of their independence. Polybios, too, in his whole narrative of these times, constantly speaks of Lykia as a national whole. Ambassadors appear at Rhodes, Rome, and Achaia, speaking in the name of the whole Lykian people,? in a way which implies a commission from some central power. But the Federal Union could not as yet have been quite perfect, as we also hear of Ambassadors being sent by the single city of Xanthos,t which would have been quite contrary to the principles of the constitution de- scribed by Strabo. «At last, after the war.with Perseus, the Rhodians were no longer in favour at Rome; they were deprived of their lately acquired continental dominions, and Lykia and Karia were declared free.o Now it was, doubtless, that some unknown Lykian Lykomédés, some statesman who had carefully studied the working of all the existing Federal Governments of Greece, devised the constitution which so happily avoided all their errors. The Lykian Confederation steered its course 1 Pol. xxvi. 7. Εὕρηνται Λύκιοι δεδόμενοι ‘Podlors οὐκ ἐν Swpeg, τὸ δὲ πλεῖον ὡς φίλοι καὶ σύμμαχοι. So Appian, Mithrid, 62, Πλὴν εἴ τινες Εὐμενεῖ καὶ Ῥοδίοις, συμμαχήσασιν ἡμῖν, ἔδομεν, οὐχ ὑποτελεῖς, ἀλλ᾽ ἐπὶ προστάταις εἶναι" τεκμήριον δ᾽ ὅτι Λυκίους, αἰτιωμένους τι, Ῥοδίων ἀπεστήσαμεν. 2 τὸ κοινὸν τῶν Λυκίων. See Boeckh, C. I. 4677 (vol. iii. 326), where the words occur in an inscription found in Egypt, the date of which comes between B.c. 188 and 181. So, immediately after the recovery of their freedom, the same Commune Luciorum dedicated its thank-offering at Rome. [See Boeckh, C. 1. 5880 (vol. iii. 768), Λυκίων τὸ κοινὸν κομισάμενον τὴν πάτριον δημοκρατίαν, κιτ.λ.1] See Bachofen, p. 23. 3 Pol. xxiii. 8, Οἱ μὲν Λύκιοι πρεσβεύοντες ἧκον. Pol. xxvi. 7. Ἢ σύγ- κλητος ἐχρημάτισε τοῖς παρὰ τῶν Λυκίων ἥκουσι πρεσβευταῖς, κ.τ.λ. 4. Ib. Οἱ γὰρ Ξάνθιοι. .. . ἐξέπεμψαν πρεσβευτὰς εἴς τε τὴν ᾿Αχαΐαν καὶ τὴν Ῥώμην. These seem to be the same with the παρὰ τῶν Λυκίων ἥκοντες πρεσβευταί. Possibly Xanthos acted, by tacit consent, in the name of the whole nation, 5 Pol. xxx. 5. Ἢ σύγκλητος ἐξέβαλε δόγμα διότι Se? Κᾶρας καὶ Λυκίους ἐλευθέρους εἷναι πάντας, ὅσους προσένειμε Ῥοδίοις μετὰ τὸν ᾿Αντιοχικὸν πόλεμον. IV LATER HISTORY OF LYKIA 169 with admirable prudence through the Mithridatic and Piratic Wars. Its opposition to Brutus, and the consequent destruction 8.0. 88-63. of Xanthos,) was indeed a terrible calamity; but a calamity 8.0. 48. endured in such a cause was a special claim upon the favour of the Julian Emperors, and we find Lykia, as we have seen, in the days of Strabo, prosperous, well-governed, and enjoying full local independence.* But these happy days were not to Destruc- last for ever. In the reign of Claudius internal dissensions,® tion of the seemingly of great violence, arose, of which that Emperor took ΕΣ advantage to destroy this remaining vestige of ancient freedom, a.p, 41- bd. and to reduce Lykia, like her neighbours, to the dead level of a Roman province. Such an ending, and for such a cause, is especially sad after so bright a picture of days so very little earlier. The last Greek Federation was now no more, and many centuries were to pass by before the world was again to see so perfect a Federal system, or indeed anything worthy to be called a Federal system at all. Liberty was gone from the earth, or lingered on, in an obscure and precarious form, on the Northern shores of the Inhospitable Sea* But it is a pleasing thought that, as the Achaians and the Lykians are the nations who stand forth, in our first Homeric picture,° as the worthiest races of Europe and of Asia, so it was the Achaians and the Lykians who were the last to maintain, in Kurope and in Asia, the truce Federal form of freedom in _the face of the advances of all-devouring Rome. 1 See Dion Cassius, xlvii. 34. 4 Strabo, xiv. 8. ἃ, Οὕτω δ᾽ εὐνομουμένοις αὐτοῖς συνέβη παρὰ Ῥωμαίοις ἐλευθέροις διατέλεσαι, τὰ πάτρια νέμουσι. 3 Dion Cassius, lx. 17, Τούς τε Λυκίους στασιάσαντας, ὥστε καὶ Ῥωμαίους τινὰς ἀποκτεῖναι, ἐδουλώσατό τε καὶ ἐς τὸν τῆς Παμφυλίας νόμον ἐσέγραψεν. Suet. Claud. 28, Lyciis ob exitiabiles inter se discordias libertatem ademit. One would like to hear the Lykian version of these troubles. Disturbances are easily produced in a small state which a great neighbour wishes to annex. 4 On the Republic of Cherson, see Finlay, Byz. Emp. i. 415 [History of Greece (ed. Tozer), ii. 350, 351]. 5 On the Lykians of Homer, see Gladstone’s Homer, i. 181, If the Homeric Lykians (see Strabo, xii. 8. 5) do not occupy the same geographical position as the historical Lykians, so neither do (except quite incidentally) the Homeric and the historical Achaians. But it is hardly possible that the recurrence of the two names, Lykian and Achaian, in this way can be purely accidental. [Cf. the position of Lykians as the last teachers of Old Greek philosophy. Hertzberg, Geschichte Griechenlands unter der Herrschaft der Rémer, iii, 508, 517, 518. ] CHAPTER V ORIGIN AND CONSTITUTION OF THE ACHAIAN LEAGUE Ir is no easy task to write the history of Greek Federalism with due regard at once to chronology and to geography. In my last chapter I have been obliged to carry on parts of my narrative down to a time even later than the suppression of the two great Federal Governments of Greece. It seemed, on the whole, the better plan to clear off both the earlier and the minor instances of Greek Federalism, before entering on any examination of the great Leagues of Achaia and Attolia. But there is no reason to doubt that the Federal principle was as old in Achaia and Attolia as in any part of Greece whatsoever. The history of the Achaian League, like the history of the Boeotian League, extends over the whole period during which we have any knowledge of Grecian affairs. But there is this important difference between the two, that by far the greater interest attaches to the earlier days of the Beeotian, and to the later days of the Achaian, League. We are led to trace the history of Boeotia to its dishonoured close only because of the borrowed interest reflected from the earlier days of Beeotian glory. We are led to examine into the obscure and scattered notices of the earlicr days of Achaia only because of the surpassing interest which attaches to the full developement of the great Achaian Confederation. It is natural then to deal with the Boeotian Confederation as a whole before entering at all on the history of the Achaian and Aitolian Confederations. Again, the Arkadian and Olyn- thian Leagues were neither of them permanent ; those of Phokis, Akarnania, and Epeiros were always of minor importance ; of Lykia, as a Federal state, we should never have heard at all, save from a single notice, and that left us, not by a historian, but by a geographer. On the whole therefore it seemed the Vv CHARACTER OF LATER GRECIAN HISTORY 171 best arrangement, though at some sacrifice of chronological exactness, to deal first with all these comparatively imperfect instances of Greek Federalism, before entering on any description of Achaian or Aitolian politics. Having now cleared off these minor examples, we are in a position to enter upon the first of the great divisions of our subject, the first great developement of the Federal principle which the world ever beheld, and which forms the main centre of the last hundred and fifty years of Old Greck independence. 8 1. General Character of the History of Federal Greece The later history of Greece has been, as it seems to me at Common least, unduly depreciated by most English scholars. The great ποδὶ οί in work of Polybios les almost untouched in our Universities. the History The mythical books of Livy are attentively studied, while those of Federal which record the struggle between Rome and Macedonia are Greece. hardly ever opened. The last great English historian of Greece ! deliberately declines entering on the Federal period of Grecian history as forming no part of his subject. In Germany the case is widely different. The student who undertakes to master this period with the help of German guides will certainly not have to complain of any lack in point of number. He will rather be puzzled at the difficulty of choice between many candidates, and Abundance at the diversity of the paths through which they will severally οἱ θπηδι offer to guide him. The importance of this period was strongly on the set forth by Niebuhr,? and few portions of history have ever met subject. with a more enthusiastic and vivid narrator than the days of Alexander and his Successors have found in the eloquent pages of Droysen.? Every state, Macedonia, Achaia, AXtolia, Bovotia, has found in Germany its special historian. Of so vast a litera- ture I am far from professing myself to be completely master ; but, from such acquaintance with it as I can pretend to, I may say without doubt that the English scholar will find the best portions of the best writers carefully weighed in the balance by the unfailing accuracy and unswerving judgement of a country- man of his own. Bishop Thirlwall has continued his great task 1 Grote, xii. 529. 2 Lectures on Ancient History, iii. 352 (Eng. Tr.) et al. 3 Geschichte Alexanders des Grossen; Hamburg. Geschichte des Hellen- ismus, 2 vols. Hamburg: 18386. . Narrative of Bishop Thirlwall. Earlier Grecian history mainly the history of Athens. Nullity of Athens in the Federal Period. 172, ORIGIN AND CONSTITUTION OF ACHAIAN LEAGUE cnap. to its conclusion with unflagging powers. With him Aratos and Kleomenés are as essential a part of Hellenic story as Themis- toklés and Periklés. His last volume must always lie before the historian of Grecian Federalism as the best of comments on the work of the illustrious Greek who has handed down to us the tale, too often fragmentary, of the last days of his country’s freedom. The truth is that, in reading the earlier history of Greece, we are, for the most part, really reading little more than the history of Athens. We read events as chronicled by Athenian historians; we turn for their illustration to the works of Athenian philo- sophers, orators, and poets. We look at everything from an Athenian point of view; we identify ourselves throughout with that great Democracy which was the true mother of right and liberty, of art and wisdom. We trace her fortunes as if they were the fortunes of our own land; when we condemn her acts, we do it with that sort of reluctant feeling with which we acknowledge that our own country is in the wrong. Sparta comes before us as the rival of Athens, Macedonia as the destroyer of her greatness; of other states we barely think from time to time as their fortunes become connected with those of the school! and ornament of Greece. In turning to “the Greece of Polybios”? we feel a kind of shock at finding ourselves in what is in truth another world. It is still Greece ; it is still living Greece; but it is no longer the Greece of Thucydidés and Aristophanés. The sea is there and the headlands and the everlasting hills; Athéné still stands, spear in hand, as the guardian of her chosen city ; Démos still sits in his Pnyx; he still chooses Archons by the lot and Generals by the uplifted hand; but the fierce Democracy has sunk into the lifelessness of a cheerless and dishonoured old age; its decrees consist of fulsome adulation of foreign kings ; ° its demagogues and orators are sunk into beggars who wander from court to court to gather a few talents of alms for the People which once received tribute from a thousand cities.* Philosophers 1 Thue. ii. 41. Ξυνελών τε λέγω τήν τε πᾶσαν πόλιν τῆς Ελλάδος παίδευσιν εἶναι, K.T.A. * Grote, xii, 528. 3 Pol. v. 106, ᾿Αθηναῖοι dé... τῶν μὲν ἄλλων ᾿λληνικῶν πράξεων οὐδ᾽ ὁποίας μετεῖχον, ἀκολουθοῦντες δὲ τῇ τῶν προεστώτων αἱρέσει καὶ ταῖς τούτων ὁρμαῖς εἰς πάντας τοὺς βασιλεῖς ἐξεκέχυντο, καὶ μάλιστα τούτων els ἸΠτολεμαῖον, καὶ πᾶν γένος ὑπέμενον ψηφισμάτων καὶ κηρυγμάτων, βραχύν τινα λόγον ποιούμενοι τοῦ καθήκοντος διὰ τὴν τῶν προεστώτων ἀκρισίαν. This is in B.c. 217. Compare, for a time seventy or eighty years earlier, Grote, xii. 529—30. + Arist. Wasps, 707. Εἰσίν γε πόλεις χίλιαι, ul viv τὸν φόρον ἡμῖν ἀπάγουσιν. ν DEGRADATION OF ATHENS 173 still babble in her schools about truth and wisdom and virtue and valour; but truth and wisdom and virtue and valour have, not indeed fled from the earth, not indeed fled from the soil of Hellas, but they have passed from the birthplace of Solén, of Aristeidés, and of Periklés to cities which they would have scorned to acknowledge as rivals, even to cities which had no place on earth when the warriors of Athens marched forth to victory at Marathén and to defeat at Délion. A Greece in which Athens has ceased to be the first power, or rather in which Athens has sunk to be the most contemptible of all the cities of the Grecian name, seems, at first sight, to be unworthy to bear the name of Greece at all. We have to encounter unfamiliar names and to thread our way through unfamiliar boundaries and divisions. The first place among Grecian states is disputed between the obscure, if respectable, cities of Achaia, and the barely Hellenic! robbers of Attolia. States known only as sending some small contingent to swell Athenian or Spartan armies, cities which had themselves sprung into being since the glory of Athens sank at Aigospotamos, now appear as powers of greater weight than the Athenian commonwealth. Feeble Akarnania, new-born Megalopolis, liberated Messéné, count for more in Grecian politics than the city of Théseus. The circle of Hellas is enlarged to take in lands which Thucydidés and Démos- thenés despised as barbarous ; Chaonians, Molossians, ‘Thespr6- tians, take their place as members of an acknowledged Hellenic state ; the Macedonian himself is indeed still dreaded as a King, but is no longer despised as a stranger of foreign blood and speech.” The very language itself has changed; fastidious scholars, fresh from the master-pieces of Attic purity, look down with contempt on the pages in which the deeds of Spartan and Sikyénian heroes are recorded by historians brought up in no politer schools than could be found at Megalopolis and Chairéneia. It may at once be freely admitted that the later history of 1 Liv. xxxii. 34. Attolos, tanquam Romanos, decedi Gracia jubere, qui, quibus finibus Grecia sit, dicere non possint. Ipsius enim Xtolie Agrzos, Apodotosque et Amphilochos, que permagna eorum pars sit, Greeciam non esse. 2 Liv. xxxi. 29. &tolos, Acarnanas, Macedonas, ejusdem lingua homines, leves ad tempus ortz causse disjungunt conjunguntque ; cum alienigenis, cum barbaris, eternum omnibus Grecis bellum est eritque. Pol. vii. 9. Μακεδονίαν καὶ τὴν ἄλλην Ἑλλάδα. . . Μακεδόνες καὶ τῶν ἄλλων Ελλήνων οἱ σύμμαχοι, K.7.X. Compari- son be- tween the earlier and later History of Greece. Character of the later period. Wide spread of Hellenic culture. 174 ORIGIN AND CONSTITUTION OF ACHAIAN LEAGUE cHap Greece, “the Greece of Polybios,” has nothing like the hfe and richness and freshness of that earlier state of things which we may call the Greece of Thucydidés. The one still enjoyed the native freedom of youth; the other at best clung to the recovered freedom of old age. The fervent lover of the earlier and fresher developement of Hellenic life is thus tempted to despise the records of a time which seems to him feeble and decrepit. Yet the recovered liberties of Achaia were a true shoot from the old stem ;/ they were the reward of struggles which would not have disgraced the victors of Marathon or the victors of Leuktra ; and the very circumstances which make the later fortunes of Greece less interestihg in the eyes of a purely Hellenic en- thusiast make them really more instructive in the eyes of a general student of the world’s history. The early history of Greece is the history of a time when Greece was its own world, and when town-autonomy was the only form of political life known within that world. Beyond the limits of Hellas,? all mankind were Barbarians ; they were to be ruled over or to be used as instruments, they were to be flattcred or to be oppressed, but they were never to be admitted as the real political equals of the meanest man of Hellenic blood. Within the bounds of Hellas, the political struggle lay between single cities oligarchi- cally governed and single cities democratically governed. In either case the independent city-commonwealth was the one ruling political idea. Monarchy was unknown or abhorred ; Federalism was as yet obscure and undeveloped. ‘The Greece of Polybios opens to us a much wider and more varied scene. Greece is no longer the whole world ; Greece proper, Greece in the geographical sense, is no longer the world’s most important portion. Rome and Carthage dispute the empire of the West ; Syria and Egypt dispute the empire of the Hast; Greece and Macedonia stand on the edge of the two worlds, to be swept in their turn, along with all other combatants and spectators, into the common gulf of Roman dominion. But if Greece had lost her political pre-eminence, she had won for herself a wider and amore abiding empire. ‘The Greek language, Greek art, general Greek civilization, were spread over the whole East, and were 1 Paus. vii. 17. 2. “Are ἐκ δένδρον λελωβημένου, ἀνεβλάστησεν ἐκ τῆς Ἑλλάδος τὸ ᾿Αχαϊκόν. 2 Hellas, it should be remembered, ‘is wherever Greeks dwell, not merely Greece—) συνεχὴς EdAds—-in the geographical sense. vy EARLIER AND LATER GRECIAN HISTORY COMPARED 17 before long to make a conquest only less complete of her Italian conquerors themselves. Philip, Alexander, and their Successors, the destroyers of Greek political greatness, had been everywhere the apostles of Greek intellectual life. The age of Polybios is, Import- in fact, the age when the world’s destiny was fixed for ever, nee οὗ when the decree of fate was finally pronounced that for all time in univer- Rome should be the political, and Greece the intellectual, mistress sal history, of mankind. Itis, in its true place in universal history, a period of the very deepest and most varied interest. And to the historian of the Greek race and language, as distinguished from and in the the historian of the soil of Hellas, no period in the whole range story οἱ of Grecian history assumes a deeper importance. The age of Rico Polybios is the age which connects the Greece of Mr. Grote with the Greece of Mr. Finlay. Philip and Alexander were in truth the founders of that Modern Greek nation which has lasted down to our own time. If they destroyed the liberties of Athens, Effects of they laid the foundation of the general intellectual dominion of nena 1 . . . ers Con- xreece. By spreading the Greek language over lands into which guests, Greek colonization could never have carried it, they did more than any other single cause to open the way for the preaching of Christianity. In founding Alexandria, Alexander indirectly founded the intellectual life of Constantinople. “By permanently Hellenizing Western Asia, he conferred on the Empire of Con- stantinople its great mission as the champion of the West against the East, of Christendom against the Fire-Worshipper and the Moslem.! It is one of the many evil results of the shallow distinction popularly drawn between “ancient” and “ modern ” history that the whole later life of the Greek people, from Philip to our own day, is so utterly neglected. My present subject brings me only upon a very small portion of so vast a field. To the historian of Federalism the Polybian age is important mainly as the age of republican reaction in Greece itself against the Macedonian monarchy. And it is surely something, to put it on no other ground, to see what was the state of Greece herself in an age in which, though the freshness of her glory was gone, she was still important—no longer politically dominant, but Character intellectually more supreme than ever. The Greek history of ° the age ΝΜ . . . . ΜΝ of Poly- this time is more like the history of modern times; it is less pjog. y 1 See the Edinburgh Review, vol. cv. p. 840, Art. Alexander the Great. History and Conquests of the Saracens, Chap. I. The World at the coming of Mahomet. Compari- son of Thucy- didés and Polybios. 16 ORIGIN AND CONSTITUTION OF ACHAIAN LEAGUE cuap. fresh than that of earlier days, but it is also less uniform, and for that very reason it is more politically instructive. It is no longer merely the history of single cities; it is the history of a complex political world, in which single cities, monarchies, and Federations, all play their part, just as they do in the European history of later times. It is a time of deeper policy, of more complicated intrigues ; an age when men had lost the vigour and simplicity of youth, but had almost made up for the loss by the gain of a far more enlarged experience. Compare, for instance, the two great historians of the several periods. Thucydidés never went out of the immediate Greek world; but for his fortunate exile, he might never have gone out of the dominions of Athens; his reading was necessarily small; he spoke only one language ; he knew only one form of political and civilized life. But an mborn genius, an intuitive wisdom, a life spent amid the full youth and freshness of the first of nations, set him at once above all who have come after him in B.c. 222 or 204. B.c. 183. ages of greater experience. Polybios,! on the other hand, is like a writer of our own times; with far less of inborn genius, he possessed a mass of acquired knowledge of which Thucydidés could never have dreamed. He had, like a modern historian, read many books and seen many lands; one language at least beside his own must have been perfectly familiar to him; he had conversed with men of various nations, living in various states of society, and under various forms of government. He had himself personally a wider political experience than fell to the lot of any historian before or after him. The son of a statesman of Megalopolis, he could remember? Achaia a powerful Federation, Macedonia a powerful monarchy, Carthage still free, Syria still threatening; he lived to see them all subject provinces or trembling allies of the great municipality of Rome. In his youth he bore to the grave the ashes of Philopoimén, a Grecian 1 On the character of Polybios as a historian, see Mommsen, Rémische Geschichte, ii. 427. 2 Whether Polybios could, strictly speaking, remember all this, depends partly on the disputed question of the year of his birth. (See Dict. of Biog. art. Polybius.) 3B.c. 222 certainly seems too early, but there is no need to fix it so late as B.c. 204. The requirements on both sides would be met by such a date as B.C. 210. But even the reckoning which places his birth latest would bring all within his life, and the intermediate one would bring all within the compass of his possible memory. The intelligent child of a distinguished statesman would surely have some understanding of such an event as the battle of Zama at the age of eight years. Vv CHARACTER OF THE AGE OF POLYBIOS 177 -----.......-- --- eee ---ὄ..-.ὄ-- -- .-. ....-. -- .....-..-- . -.. ---- -ὦ hero slain in purely Grecian warfare ; he lived to secure some little fragments of Grecian freedom as contemptuous alms from 8.6. 145, the Roman conqueror. A man must have lived through a millennium in any other portion of the world’s history, to have vained with his own eyes and his own ears such a mass of varied political knowledge as the historian of the Decline and Fall of Ancient Greece acquired within the limits of an ordinary life.! This revived life, this after-growth of Hellenic freedom, dates Begin- , oO -_. nings of from about the year B.c. 280, a date marked out by Polybios Spo aeral himself 2 as signalized by the nearly contemporancous deaths of Revival, some of the greatest Princes of the age. The elder form of 8.0. 280. Hellenic freedom and the universal empire of Macedonia were now alike things of the past. Those only who belonged to a generation already passing away could remember either the oratory of Démosthen’s or the conquests of Alexander. The dominions of the great conqueror were divided for ever, and the first generation of his Successors had passed away. Antigonos and Kassander had long been dead; Démétrios Poliorkétés, Seleukos, Lysimachos, Ptolemy the son of* Lagos and Ptolemy 1 It is curious to see how Mr. Grote, in his depreciation of ‘‘the Greece of Polybios,” looks at everything from a purely Athenian point of view. (See the close of his xevith chapter, vol. xii. p. 527—80.) He sometimes almost reminds one of a remarkable passage of Polybios himself, which, to be sure, goes almost as much too far the other way, Εἰ δὲ τηροῦντες τὰ πρὸς τὰς πατρίδας δίκαια κρίσει πραγμάτων διεφέροντο, νομίζοντες οὐ ταὐτὸ συμφέρον ᾿Αθηναίοις εἶναι καὶ ταῖς ἑαυτῶν πόλεσιν, οὐ δή πον διὰ τοῦτο καλεῖσθαι προδότας ἐχρῆν αὐτοὺς ὑπὸ Δημοσθένους" ὁ δὲ πάντα μετρῶν πρὸς τὸ τῆς ἰδίας πατρίδος συμφέρον καὶ πάντας ἡγούμενος δεῖν τοὺς “ἄλληνας ἀποβλέπειν πρὸς ᾿Αθηναίους, εἰ δὲ μὴ, προδότας ἀποκαλεῖν, ἀγνοεῖν μοι δοκεῖ καὶ πολὺ παραπαίειν τῆς ἀληθείας. (xvii. 14.) In Mr. Grote’s view, Atheus has become contemptible ; Greece is no louger the whole world ; the autonomous city is no longer the single type of Grecian govern- ment. Therefore Grecian history has come to an end; or at all events Mr. Grote has no heart to continue it. The very passages in which Polybios (i. 3, 4 : ii. 87) sets forth the greatness of his own subject, the connexion of the local history of his own land with the general history of the world, are quoted to prove that Polybios himself looked on later Greece as having ‘‘no history of its own.” Mr. Grote, in earlier volumes, has pointed out with delight the beginnings of a Federal system in Arkadia and at Olynthos. One might have expected him to have gone on with equal delight to trace out its full developement in Achaia. But in Mr. Grote’s eyes the whole charm of Grecian history passes away with the greatness of Athens. Mr. Grote’s defence of the Athenian democracy has won him such everlasting gratitude from every true student of Grecian history, that it is much to be mourned that he should be so enamoured of that one object as to see the whole history of monarchic and Federal Greece from a dis- torted point of view. 2 Pol. ii, 41. BO. 284-0. Gaulish Invasion, B.C. 280.-- 279. B.c. 322, vecon- struction of Mace- donia and Greece. B.C. 289— 272. The Anti- gonids in Macedonia. B.C, 278— 168, 178 ORIGIN AND CONSTITUTION OF ACHAIAN LEAGUE cuar. the Thunderbolt,! all died, mostly by violence, within three or four years of each other. Alexander’s own linc had long been extinct ; his realm was left without an heir; usurper after usurper had seized upon the Macedonian throne; and a scourge more fearful than even the old Median invasion was bursting upon Macedonia and Greece alike. The storm of the Gaulish inroad swept all before it in Macedonia, but the arm of the Delphian Apollo? checked its progress, like that of the Persians of old, when it presumed to threaten the most vencrated shrine of Greece. The fierce Autohans, turbulent brigands as they too often showed themselves, stood forth, as before in the Lamian War, as the true champions of Hellas. The whole barbaric host was destroyed or took refuge in Asia, there, strangely enough, to learn some measure of Grecian civilization, and to be thought worthy, by strangers at least, of some approximation to the Grecian name.? After this deluge a new state of things arose. Its natural developement was, it may be, checked for a while by the splendid and erratic career of the one prince who seemed to have been preserved from the earlier period. Pyrrhos the Molossian, after threatening alike Rome and Sparta, died before Argos by an ignoble death. The removal of the Kpeirot knight- errant left the field open for the growth of two opposing powers. Monarchic Macedonia began again to reconstruct herself, and again to aspire to dominion, under the able and ambitious prince who founded her last dynasty. Antigonos Gonatas, son of Démétrios Poliorkétés, and grandson of Antigonos who fell at Ipsos, secured the Macedonian throne. He kept it, with one short interval, till his death; he carried out the Macedonian 1 Ὁ Kepavvds, like Hamilcar Barcas and Bayezid Yildirim. See Thirlwall, vill, 45. * Paus, i. 4. 4; viii. 10.9 et al. Cf. Herod. viii. 35 et seqq. 3 Gallogrecia. Liv. xxxvii. 8. See above, p. 165. 4 On the position of Macedonia in this age see Droysen’s Hellenismus, ii. 553. Allowance must of course be made for the writer’s ultra-Macedonian bias, just as for Mr. Grote’s ultra-Athenian bias, When Droysen however goes on to com- pare the progress of Macedonia in Greece with the progress of Prussia in Ger- many, he forgets or despises the difference between small principalities and small republics, A German County or Bishoprick loses nothing, but rather gains, by being incorporated with a great German Kingdom ; a Greck city lost everything by being incorporated with Macedonia. The sympathy which would attend the King of Italy in any uttempt to recover Rome and Venice—I might add Dalmatia and the Italian Tyrol—would not extend to an attempt to annex a Swiss Canton, even of Italian speech, or to an attempt to overthrow tle immemorial liberties of San Marino. ᾿ BEGINNINGS OF THE FEDERAL REVIVAL 179 policy during a long reign, and transmitted his crown and his 5,0. 278- Hellenic position to four successors of his house, three of them 289. the natural heirs of his body. In the meanwhile the scattered Revival members of the Achaian Confederation began to draw together of the again, and to form the centre of the revived political life of pehaian republican Greece. It is the varying relations between the great 8.0, 981. Greek monarchy and the great Greck Confederation, diversified by the strange phenomenon of Aitolia, at once a Democratic Confederation and an aggressive tyranny, and by the brief but splendid revival of Spartan greatness, which form the staple of the history of Federal Greece. The objects of these two rival powers, the Achaian nation Opposite and the Macedonian house,! were exactly opposite to each other. ms of | . . . 71 [rs . Μαορβάοηΐδ The aim of the Antigonid Kings was to reduce as large a portion ἀπά of Greece as possible under either their immediate sovereignty Achaia. or their indirect influence. The aim of the Achaian Federation was to unite the greatest possible number of Greek cities in the bonds of a free and equal League. In these later Macedonian Kings, though some of them were far from insignificant men, we must not look either for the personal greatness or for the politi- cal position of the old monarchs of the line of Héraklés. Philip Position and Alexander made it their chief boast to be the chosen leaders of the | of a Greek Confederacy. And, though Athens, Sparta, and Rime Thebes were naturally of another mind, there can be no doubt that many of the smaller cities willingly accepted their su- premacy.” It is true that neither Philip nor Alexander shrank from any act of severity which suited their purposes. Philip destroyed Olynthos ; Alexander destroyed Thebes ; if he expelled 3.c. 348. Tyrants from some cities, he established Tyrants in others. 3.c. 888. But during the reigns of the two great Kings there was no Condition systematic interference with the internal independence of the of Greece Grecian cities. One or two fortresses only were held by (ree ; ; ty ; y Philip and Macedonian garrisons. The two great Athenian orators, during Alexander. Alexander’s lifetime, discussed the whole policy of Athens and Macedonia in a way which would have been offensive alike to Kassander the oppressor and to Démétrios the deliverer. The 1 Polybios draws this distinction very forcibly (ii. 37); περὶ δὲ τοῦ τῶν ᾿Αχαιῶν ἔθνους, καὶ περὶ τῆς Μακεδόνων οἰκίας. 2 See the passage from Polybios (xvii. 14) quoted in p. 177. The Megalo- politan historian, the hereditary friend of Macedonia, of course carries matters too far, but we are so apt to look at everything with Athenian eyes that it is well to stop sometimes to consider how things seemed to Greeks of other cities. B.C. 828, 2. Greece under the Successors. B.C, 323- 281. B.C, 280. Position of revived Macedonia and Greece. B.c. 281- 223. 180 ORIGIN AND CONSTITUTION OF ACHAIAN LEAGUE cuar. darkest times for Greece began when Alexander was gone. The unsuccessful, though truly glorious, struggle of the Lamian War laid Greece far more hopelessly prostrate at the fect of inferior masters. During the wars of the Successors, Greece became one of the chief battle-fields of the contending princes. The various cities were indeed often flattered and cajoled. First Polysperchén and then Démétrios—Dém¢trios, it may be, for a while, in all sincerity—gave himself out as the hberator of Greece; but Polysperchén and Démétrios alike liberated cities only to become masters of them themselves. Generally speak- ing, each Greek town became a fortress to be struggled for, to be taken and retaken, by one or other of the selfish upstarts who were laying waste Europe and Asia in quarrels purely personal. At last, as we have just seen, about forty years after the death of Alexander, nearly sixty after Philip’s crowning victory at Chairéneia, ἃ more settled order began to arise out of the chaos. The field was now cleared for a second struggle between Mace- donia and Greece, but between Macedonia under a new dynasty of Kings, and Greece represented by new champions of her freedom. Macedonia, lately a prize for every soldier of fortune to struggle for, became, if no longer mistress of East and West, yet at least a powerful Kingdom under a settled dynasty. Greece was no longer the battle-ficld of many contending rivals ; she had one definite enemy to struggle with in the single King of Macedonia. The interests of Macedonian princes elsewhere, especially of the Egyptian Ptolemies, were rather linked with those of Grecian freedom. The Antigonid Kings were rivals whose power it suited them to depress, while the wise rulers of Alexandria were far too clear-sighted to attempt the acquisition of any supremacy in Greece for themselves. The history, then, of the growth of the Achaian League is the history, not only of a political struggle between Federalism and Monarchy, but of a national struggle of Greece against Macedonia. It is a struggle which at once recalls to mind the most glorious event of our own day. The Macedonian power in Greece in some respects re- sembled the Austrian power in Italy ;! but, allowing for the difference of times and manners, it was by far the less hateful 1 No historical parallel is ever completely exact. Macedonia, for our present purpose, has strong points of analogy to Austria ; I have elsewhere pointed out resemblances between the position of Macedonia in Greece and that of Naples in Italy—some even between Macedonia and Piedmont itself. Oxford Essays, 1857, p. 154. Vv COMPARISON OF MACEDONIA AND AUSTRIA 181 of the two. The Macedonian in Greece, like the Austrian in Compari- Italy, held part of the land in direct sovereignty, as an integra] Sn of . - ye ΙΝ .ἡ- - Macedonia portion of his kingdom. Amphipolis and the Chalkidian penin- ;, Greece sula were irrevocably annexed to the monarchy of Pella, and with Thessaly, though nominally a distinct state, was held in a con- usta in dition of dependence not casily to be distinguished from βαῦ- Ὁ jection. Besides this extent of continuous territory, many strong detached points in various parts of Greece were held by Macedonian garrisons. In other cities the Macedonian King ruled indirectly through local Tyrants who held their power only through Macedonian protection.2, Where no opportunity presented itself for any of these forms of more complete absorp- tion, it was enough to do all that might be to prevent the growth of confederations and alliances, and to ensure that those states which still retained some degree of independence should at least remain weak and disunited.? This had been of old the policy of Sparta; it was the policy of all the Macedonian Kings ; it 15 equally the policy of tyrants in our own time, when we sec the despots alike of Paris and Vienna gnashing their teeth at every accession of strength to the free Italian Kingdom. The establishment of the Antigonid dynasty seems to have been accompanied by a special impulse given to the worst of all these forms of oppression ; Antigonos Gonatas is described as relying more than any of his predecessors on the indirect way of ruling through local Tyrants.* We can well belicve that this last condition was far worse than incorporation with the Macedonian Kingdom, worse even than the presence of a Macedonian garrison. So in our own 1 See above, p. 119. See Dem. Phil. iii. 42. Cf. Arr. vii. 12. 4. Κρατερῷ δὲ. ἐκέλευσε [᾿Αλέξανδρος) . . . Μακεδονίας τε καὶ Θράκης καὶ Θετταλῶν ἐξηγεῖσθαι, καὶ τῶν Ἑλλήνων τῆς ἐλευθερίας. Thessaly is here clearly reckoned as an integral part of Alexander’s dominions, not as part of the Hellenic Con- federacy of which he was the elective head. * Pol. ix. 29. Td ye μὴν Κασσάνδρῳ καὶ Δημητρίῳ πεπραγμένα, σὺν δὲ τούτοις ᾿Αντιγόνῳ τῷ Tovarg, τίς οὐκ olde; . . . ὧν οἱ μὲν φρουρὰς εἰσάγοντες εἰς τὰς πόλεις, οἱ δὲ τυράννους ἐμφυτεύοντες οὐδεμίαν πόλιν ἄμοιρον ἐποίησαν τοῦ τῆς δουλείας ὀνόματος. The whole speech of the ΖΦ ο]αὴ Chlaineas, where these words occur, should be studied as a powerful summing up of the anti-Macedonian case, . 3 All this will be found drawn out at length by Polybios (ii. 41). The words of the historian speaking in his own person quite bear out the rhetorical expressions of the Aitolian orator just quoted. 4 Pol. ii. 41. Πλείστους yap δὴ μονάρχους οὗτος [᾿Αντίγονος] ἐμφυτεῦσαι δοκεῖ τοῖς Ἕλλησιν. To ‘plant ἃ Tyrant” (ἐμφυτεύειν τύραννον) seems to be a sort of technical term. 12 ORIGIN AND CONSTITUTION OF ACHAIAN LEAGUE cnap. times, the Austrian annexation of Venice, the French occupation of Rome, have not involved the same permanent horrors as the local tyrannies of Parma and Naples. But the rule of Mace- donia, sharp as the scourge doubtless was, was certainly in some respects less irksome than the rule of Austria. It was not so completely a rule of strangers. The Macedonian Kings, and doubtless their subjects too, at least studiously claimed to be Greeks ; whatever the merits of the claim, it was prominently put forward on all occasions! If not Greek by blood—and Philip and Alexander at least were Greek by blood—they were rapidly becoming Greck in language and intellectual culture. Doubtless it was a poor substitute for the true independence of old times for the Greek to be able to say that his master was half a countryman; but it at least makes a wide difference between the lot of Greece under the half-Greek Macedonian, and the lot of Italy under the wholly foreign Austrian.? Greece indeed soon found that Macedonia was far from being her worst enemy. During the whole of this period, ever since the Gaulish invasion, Macedonia at least efficiently discharged the functions of a bulwark of Greece against the restless barbarians on her northern frontier. And the time at last came when the Mace- donian King was felt to be the champion of Greece in a truer sense than when Alexander marched forth to avenge Hellenic wrongs upon the Persian. Every patriotic Greek must have sympathized with the Macedonian nation, if not with its con- 1 See above, p.174. So Alexander, in his letter to Darius, talks of Μακεδονίαν καὶ τὴν ἄλλην "Ελλάδα (Arr. ii. 14. 4) and continues ἐγὼ δὲ τῶν Ἑλλήνων ἡγεμὼν κατασταθεὶς, x.7.X, So the style of the Confederacy of which Alexander was chief seems to have been ᾿Αλέξανδρος καὶ of “Ἕλληνες. Arr. ii. 2, 2, 3; i. 16. 7, ef. 6. Isokratés fully recognizes Philip as a Greek (Phil. 10), but a Greek reigning over foreigners (οὐχ ὁμοφύλου γένους. § 126)—foreigners, so far un-Greek as to need kingship (δ 125), but still carefully distinguished from mere barbarians -τ-φημὶ yap χρῆναί σε τοὺς uev"Ednvas εὐεργετεῖν, Μακεδόνων δὲ βασιλεύειν, τῶν δὲ βαρβάρων ὡς πλεῖστον ἄρχειν, κιτ.λ, ( 178). He was to conquer θαυ νυ Δ} to give them the advantages of a Greek master. Cf. also Isok. Archid. 51. Arr. ii. 7. 4—7. * I am of course speaking here solely of the modern sway of the so-called ‘‘ Emperors of Austria,” not of the old Teutonic Casars, whose Imperial title and bearings they venture to assume. Otto, Henry, and the Fredericks were Emperors of the Romans and Kings of Italy, recognized by all Italians, zealously supported by many. Frederick the Second, the greatest of them all, was himself an Italian by birth, language, and temperament; his Italian home was ever the dwelling-place of his choice. The Imperial claims doubtless gradually dried up into a mere legal fiction, but even a legal fiction is something different from the high-handed usurpation of modern Austria. Υ̓ OBJECTS OF THE ACHAIAN LEAGUE 183 temptible King, in the final struggle between Perseus and Rome. Through the whole history our feelings lie, naturally and rightly, against Macedonia and for republican Greece. But there is no reason for looking upon Macedonia with any special abhorrence, or for representing her Kings as perfect monsters, or even as barbarian invaders. The Great Alexander, with all his faults, still stands forth, alongside of the Great Charles, among the heroes of whom human nature is proud. And, taking the common standard of royal virtue,! the merits of Antigonos Gonatas and Antigonos Ddésén will assuredly not fall below the average. In extending their dominions and their influence they did but follow the natural instincts of their class, and Antigonos Dosdn at least sinned far less deeply in accepting Akrokorinthos than Aratos. and the Achaian Congress sinned in offering it. The object of the Achaian League, on the other hand, was Generous the union of all Peloponnésos, or, it may be, of all Greece, into aims of the a free and equal Democratic Confederation. Such at least was League. the wide scope which it assumed in the days of its fullest developement, under Aratos, Philopoimén, and Lykortas. And surely no nobler vision ever presented itsclf to a Hellenic states- man. We shall soon see but too clearly the defects in the general constitution of the League, and the still greater defects in the personal character of its great leader. But the general objects of both were as wise, generous, and patriotic as any state or any man ever laboured to effect. Other Greek statesmen had worked mainly for the mere aggrandizement of their own cities ; Periklés lived for Athens, Agésilaos for Sparta, Epameinéndas for Thebes ; but the worthies of Sikyon and Megalopolis spent and were spent in the still nobler cause of Hellas. And they came at the right time. From one point of view we may be An earlier tempted to regret that their lot had not been cast in an earlier “tb! Ρ Θ ment of day, and that an effective Federal System had not been long Federalism before established in Greece. The establishment of such a system in Greece might indeed have saved Greece from many evils; but it was at ποῦ sab 8, once utterly impossible and, in the general interests of the world, utterly undesirable. How impossible it was we see by the whole 1 “The station of kings is, in a moral sense, so unfavourable, that those who are least prone to servile admiration should be on their guard against the opposite error of an uncandid severity.” Hallam’s Constitutional History, ch. x. vol. i. p. 647, ed. 1846. Effects of the League. B.c. 191. 18 ORIGIN AND CONSTITUTION OF ACHAIAN LEAGUE cuap. tenor of Grecian history, by the nullity of the Amphiktyonic Council, by the failure of attempts, like that of Lykomédés, to establish even partial Federal Unions, by the little which, after all, Aratos and his successors were able actually to effect. And, if it had been possible, it was no less clearly undesirable. A Federal system in the days of Athemian and Spartan greatness might have spared Greece the miseries of Athenian and Spartan warfare ; it might have saved her from Macedonian conquest ;1 it might even have warded off, or at least delayed, her ultimate subjection to Rome. But Greece united ina Federal bond could never have become the Greece which has challenged the love and admiration of all succeeding ages. ‘The brilliant developement of Hellenic greatness, alike in war, in politics, in art, in eloquence, and in poetry, was inseparably linked to the system of inde- pendent city-commonwealths. The dissensions and the wars of Greece are the price which she paid for becoming the world’s teacher for all time. Again, had Greece never sunk beneath the armed force of Macedonia and Rome, she would never have won the Macedonian and the Roman as the permanent apostles of her civilization and intellectual life. It was well that Greece was disunited ; it was well that Greece was conquered ; but it was well also that she should revive, if only for a moment, to give the world the first great example of a political teaching of yet another kind. Greece had already done her work as the land of autonomous cities ; she was now to give mankind a less brilliant, but more practical, lesson in the way of free government on a more extended scale. Positively indeed but little was done ; all Greece was never united even in a nominal bond; even all Peloponnésos was at best only nominally united after the true glory of the League had passed away. Yet it was something, even in its own day, to restore freedom to a considerable portion of Greece, to give the liberated cities some generations of free and orderly government, to render the inevitable fall of Greece at once more gradual and less disgraceful; and it was yet more, in the history of the world, to give to the political thinkers of after times one of the most valuable subjects for reflection which all ancient history affords. 1 Droysen, Hellenismus, ii. 503. Hutte sich die delphische Amphiktyonie zu. einer nationalen Verfassung auszubilden vermocht, so wiirde Philipp nicht bei Chaironeia gekimpft haben. Vv EFFECTS OF THE FEDERAL REVIVAL 185 § 2. Origin and Karly Growth of the League In the last chapter we have seen the growth of Federal Growth of ideas in many parts of Greece during the fourth century before fer Christ. The evils caused by the disunion of the great cities Greoce in made the smaller ones at last understand the need of a closer the fourth union among themselves. We have therefore seen several contarys attempts, unsuccessful indeed, but still marking the direction in ”° which men’s thoughts were tending, at establishing Federations in several parts of Greece. Then came the days of Macedonian conquest and Macedonian influence. The policy of the Mace- donian Kings set itself against all Federations, against all unions of any kind. Even Philip and Alexander, chosen Captains of all Greece as they boasted of being, would have hindered any union among Grecian states which could in the slightest degree have interfered with their supremacy. Their Successors, the usurpers who rose and fell, even the more lasting and high-minded dynasty of the Antigonids, could afford still less consideration for Grecian freedom. They never ventured to put themselves forth as the chosen leaders of Greece, called to that rank by something which at least pretended to the character of a national vote. How they maintained their influence we have already seen, by foster- ing local divisions and by supporting local tyrannies. But this state of things naturally gave the Federal principle an influence Further which it had never before possessed. Modern Europeans, ᾿ oder accustomed to the compact monarchies of modern Europe, are against apt to look on the Federal system as a system of weakness and Macedo- disunion ; to a Greek of the third century before Christ, accus- ria nee tomed only to a choice between town-autonomy, local tyranny, and foreign bondage, it presented itself as a happy combination, by which freedom could be made to coexist with union, and therefore with strength. The Federal form of government henceforth became predominant, and at last almost universal, in the independent portion of Greece. Every city which achieved its own independence sought, by a natural instinct, to maintain that independence by an union with other cities. And that union was now freely made upon terms from which, a century before, nearly every Greek commonwealth would have shrunk as an unworthy surrender of its separate dignity and separate freedom. Early History of Achaia. Early Union among the Cities. B.c. 391. 186 ORIGIN AND CONSTITUTION OF ACHAIAN LEAGUE cuHap. Among the cities which had thus become disunited through Macedonian influence were the cities of the Peloponnesian Achaia. If we may trust the half mythical history of the Dorian migra- tion, the Achaians of Peloponnésos were the only independent remnant of that mighty race which, under the Pelopid Kings of Mykéné, had ruled over many islands and all Argos.) The Achaians fill the most prominent place in the Greece of Homer and in the Greece of Polybios, but in the Greece of Thucydidés they are utterly insignificant. Polybios, with a commendable national pride, collects several instances? to show that, if they were insignificant in power, they were at least highly respected for upright and honourable dealing. No people in Greece bore a higher character either for discretion or for good faith, and they were more than once called upon to act as mediators in the dissensions of more powerful states. We are, however, more concerned with the degree of union which may have existed among their several cities in times before the growth of the Macedonian power. That Achaia then contained twelve cities, democratically governed,’ and united by some sort of Federal tie, admits of no doubt. But, as in the case of most of these early Greek Federations, we have no details of the old Achaian con- stitution. There is however no reason for the supposition that it was a religious rather than a political union, a mere Amphi- ktyony to the temple of Poseidén at Heliké.* The whole history shows that a real Federal union existed among them, and that, even then, the League sometimes extended itself to take in cities beyond the strict limits of Achaia. Early in the fourth century before Christ we find the AXtolian town of Kalydén not only an Achaian possession, but admitted to the rights of Achaian citizen- ship.” Naupaktos also appears as held by the Achaians, but on what terms is not so clear. In every account of these transac- 1 Tliad, B. 108. Πολλῇσι νήσοισι kai" Apyet πάντι ἀνάσσειν. 2 Pol. ii. 39. [Cf. Strabo viii. 7. 1.] 3 Pol, ii. 41, Μετέστησαν els δημοκρατίαν τὴν πολιτείαν. λοιπὸν ἤδη τοὺς ἑξῆς χρόνους μέχρι τῆς ᾿Αλεξάνδρου καὶ Φιλίππου δυναστείας ἄλλοτε μὲν ἄλλως ἐχώρει τὰ πράγματ᾽ αὐτοῖς κατὰ τὰς περιστάσεις, τό γε μὴν κοινὸν πολίτευμα καθάπερ εἰρήκαμεν, ἐν δημοκρατίᾳ συνέχειν ἐπειρῶντο. τοῦτο δ᾽ ἣν ἐκ δώδεκα πόλεων. 4 Dict. Antiq. art. Achaicum Foedus. 5 Xen. Hell. iv. 6. 1. Μετὰ δὲ τοῦτο of ᾿Αχαιοὶ ἔχοντες Καλυδῶνα, ἣ τὸ παλαιὸν Αἰτωλίας ἣν, καὶ πολίτας πεποιημένοι τοὺς Καλυδωνίους, φρουρεῖν ἠναγ- κάζοντο ἐν αὐτῇ. [Soin Roman times ἃ harbour in the region of Kalydén belonged to Patrai ; Strabo, x. 2.21. "ἔστι δέ ris καὶ πρὸς τῇ Καλυδῶνι λίμνη μεγάλη καὶ εὔοψος, ἣν ἔχουσιν οἱ ἐν ἸΙάτραις Ῥωμαῖοι. 6 Démosthenés says (Phil. iii, 44) that Philip promised to take Naupaktos Vv EARLY HISTORY OF ACHAIA 187 tions we find the Achaian people spoken of as one whole, acting with one will both in diplomatic and military affairs. They placed Federal garrisons in cities endangered by the enemy,'.and commissioned Federal ambassadors to foreign powers.2 At the same time it is casy to believe that the Federal tie may have been much less closely drawn than it was in the revived Con- Probable federation of after-times. Still that Confederation, as we shall sree τ presently see, was looked on as a mere revival of a past state of the pond things interrupted for a while by foreign interference. We are during the hardly entitled to judge whether it was from any laxity in the ec formal constitution, or only from the fluctuations of parties so mae common in all Greek states, that the Achaian League did not, Achaia any more than that of Akarnania, invariably act as an united Oooo body throughout the Peloponnésian War. When that war broke nésian out, all the Achaian cities remained neutral, except Pelléné, War, which took the side of Sparta ;? but ata later stage all twelve ὅδ 431 were enrolled as members of the Lacedzemonian alliance.* Yet, Bc. 413. in an intermediate stage, we find Patrai at least on the side of s.c. 419. Athens, and, under Athenian influence, extending herself by Long Walls to the sea.° During the wars of Epameindéndas, Pelléné History of adhered firmly to her Spartan policy, at a time when the other Pellene, cities were, to say the least, less strenuous in the Spartan cause.® ἦτ 368. At the same time we also get some glimpses of the internal state of the several citics. We read of local oligarchies,’ which Kpameinondas found and left in possession, but which the home from the Achaians and to give it to the Avtolians; οὐκ ᾿Αχαιῶν Ναύπακτον ὀὁμώμοκεν Αἰτωλοῖς παραδώσειν ; Naupaktos, therefore, in B.c. 341, was an Achaian possession. But we read in Diodéros (xv, 75) that Epameinéndas, in B.C. 367, Δύμην καὶ Ναύπακτον καὶ Καλυδῶνα φρουρουμένην ta ᾿Αχαιῶν ἠλευθέρωσεν. If then we trust Dioddros, as Mr. Grote (x. 866) seems to do, we must suppose that the Achaians recovered Naupaktos between B.c. 367 and B.C. 341, But can we trust a writer who seems to think that Dymé needed deliverance from Achaian oppression ? 1 Xen. Hell. iv. 6. 1. Φρουρεῖν ἠναγκάζοντο. 2 Ib. Οἱ ᾽Αχαιοὶ πρεσβεῖς πέμπουσιν εἰς τὴν Λακεδαίμονα. 5 Thue. ii. 9, cf. v. 58, where we find Pelléné supporting Sparta against Argos after the Peace of Nikias, 4 Thue. ii. 9. Cf. Arnold’s note, and vii. 84, where the Achaians are in- cidentally mentioned as Lacedxmonian allies, 5 Thue, v. 52. 6 Xen. Hell. vii. 1, 15, 18. Afterwards Pelléné is found on the Theban side. 2. 11. 7. ΤΌ, vii. 1.42. Στρατεύουσι πάντες ol σύμμαχοι ἐπ᾿ ᾿Αχαΐαν, ἡγουμένου Ἔπαμειν- ὥνδου. προσπεσόντων δ᾽ αὐτῷ τῶν βελτίστων ἐκ τῆς ᾿Αχαΐας, ἐνδυναστεύει ὁ ᾿Επαμειν ὦνδας, ὥστε μὴ φυγαδεῦσαι τοὺς κρατίστους, μήτε πολιτείαν μεταστῆσαι, etc. 188 ORIGIN AND CONSTITUTION OF ACHAIAN LEAGUE cnap. Government of Thebes thought good to expel, and to substitute democracies under the protection of Theban harmosts. This policy did not answer, as the large bodies of exiles thus formed contrived to recover the cities, and to bring them to a far more decided Spartan partisanship than before. But these oligarchies, probably introduced by Spartan influence, seem to have formed ἃ mere temporary interruption to that general democratic character of the Achaian polity to which Polybios bears witness. Certain it is that Achaia was democratic at the accession of Tyranny of Alexander. He established as Tyrant in Pelléné one of her own Chairon at citizens named Chairén.? This Chairén was famous as a wrestler; Pelléné, before B.C. 335, n.c. 330. he was also a Platonic philosopher, which leads Athénaios sarcastically to say that, in some of the worst features of his tyranny, he did but carry out his master’s doctrines as to the community of goods and women.? How Pelléné had offended the Macedonian King we know not, but it appears that the establishment of the tyranny was accompanied by the expulsion of a large proportion of the citizens. This seems to mark some special ground of quarrel with the particular city of Pelléné ; for Alexander would hardly have thus punished a single town for the share which all Achaia had taken in the resistance to his father at Chairéneia.5> The presence of this domestic Tyrant prevented Pelléné from joining with the other Achaian cities in the movement against the Macedonian dominion set on foot by Agis, King of Sparta.® After the disastrous battle in which 1 Xen. Hell, vii. 1. 41—3. Grote, x. 865. Helwing, Geschichte des Ach. Bundes, p. 225, * Pseudo-Dém, π.τιπ. "Ade. 12. ᾿Αχαιοὶ μὲν of ἐν ἸΪελοποννήσῳ ἐδημοκρα- τοῦντο, τούτων δ᾽ ἐν Πελλήνῃ νῦν καταλέλυκε τὸν δῆμον ὁ Μακεδὼν ἐκβαλὼν τῶν πολιτῶν τοὺς πλείστους, τὰ δ᾽ ἐκείνων τοῖς οἰκέταις δέδωκε, Χαίρωνα δὲ τὸν παλαιστὴν τύραννον ἐγκατέστησεν. Paus, vii. 27. 7. Κατέλυσε [Χαίρων] πολιτείαν, ἐμοὶ δοκεῖν, τὴν ἐν Πελλήνῃ, δῶρον τὸ ἐπιφθονώτατον παρὰ ᾿Αλεξάνδρου τοῦ Φιλίππου λαβὼν, τύραννος πατρίδος τῆς αὑτοῦ καταστῆναι. This Chairdn could not therefore be, as Dr. Elder (Dict. Biog. art. Cheeron) thinks, the same as the Chairén who is mentioned by Plutarch (Alex. 3), for the latter was a citizen of Megalopolis, while both Pausanias and Athénaios distinctly mark Chairén the Tyrant as a citizen of Pelléné, ὃ Athén. xi. 119. [5096.] Χαίρων ὁ Πελληνεὺς, ὃς οὐ μόνῳ Πλάτωνι ἐσχό- λακεν, ἀλλὰ καὶ Ξενοκράτει" καὶ οὗτος οὖν τῆς πατρίδος πικρῶς τυραννήσας ov μόνον τοὺς ἀρίστους τῶν πολιτῶν ἐξήλασεν, ἀλλὰ καὶ τοῖς τούτων δούλοις τὰ χρήματα τῶν δεσποτῶν χαρισάμενος, καὶ τὰς ἐκείνων γυναῖκας συνῴκισεν πρὸς γάμον κοινωνίαν, ταῦτ᾽ ὠφεληθεὶς ἐκ τῆς καλῆς ΙΠολιτείας καὶ τῶν παρανόμων Νόμων. 4 Pgeudo-Déim. u.s. 5 Paus. vii. 6. 5. Tod μὲν ἐν Χαιρωνείᾳ Φιλίππου τ᾽ ἐνάντια καὶ Μακεδόνων [πολέμου] οἱ ᾿Αχαιοὶ μέτεσχον. 6. Asch. Ktés. 165. ᾿Ηλεῖοι δ᾽ αὐτοῖς [Λακεδαιμονίοις] συμμετεβάλοντο καὶ v ACHAIA UNDER THE SUCCESSORS 189 Agis fell, the Achaians and Eleians are said to have been con- demned, by the anomalous body which then issued decrees in the name of Greece, to pay a hundred talents as indemnity to Megalopolis, which had embraced the Macedonian cause and had stood a siege at the hands of the allies! The establishment of Chairén by Alexander was the beginning of the system which was more fully carried out by the succeeding Macedonian Kings. Kassander held several of the cities with his garrisons, which were driven out by Aristodémos the general of Antigonos from Patrai, Aigion, and Dymé.? In the case of Patrai and Aigion, 8.6. 314. this expulsion is spoken of by our informant as a liberation,® but Acta τ the Dymaians resisted the liberators in the cause of what the guccessors ; same historian calls their independence.* Whatever we make of this language, it at least points to a difference of political feeling in the different cities. Démétrios also, in the days when the son of the King of Asia gave himself out as the champion of Grecian freedom, expelled Kassander’s garrison from Boura, and 8.c. 308. gave to that city also something which is spoken of as inde- pendence.® But when Démétrios became King of Macedonia, 8.6. 294. he seems to have walked in the way of his predecessors, and both he and his son Antigonos are mentioned among the princes under whom some of the cities were occupied by Macedonian garrisons and others by local Tyrants.6 At what moment the under League definitely fell asunder it is hard to say: the process, qntigonos doubtless, was gradual; but as Antigonos Gonatas“ is mentioned circa ὦ B.C. 288, ᾿Αχαιοὶ πάντες πλὴν WeddAnvalwy καὶ ᾿Αρκαδία πᾶσα πλὴν Μεγάλης πόλεως, αὕτη δὲ ἐπολιορκεῖτο, κ.τ.λ, 1(), Curt. vi. 1. 19, 20. They were condemned by the “Concilium Grecorum.” So Dioddéros (xvii. 78) speaks of τὸ κοινὸν τῶν ᾿Ελλήνων συνέδριον. That is to say, Alexander’s synod at Corinth. See above, p. 100. Yet it is possible that Diodéros may here too have been dreaming of the Aimphiktyons. 2 Diod. xix. 66. 3 Ib. Πάτρας μὲν ἠλευθέρωσε. . . . τοῖς Αἰγιεῦσι κατὰ δόγμα τὴν ἐλευθερίαν βουλόμενος ἀποκαταστῆσαι. 4 Τῇ, IfLapaxadéoavres ἀλλήλους ἀντέχεσθαι τῆς αὐτονομίας. 5 ΤΌ, xx. 108. Δημήτριος. . .. Βοῦραν μὲν κατὰ κράτος εἷλε, καὶ τοῖς πολίταις ἀπέδωκε τὴν αὐτονομίαν. 6 Pol. ii. 41. Pausanias (vii. 7. 1) strangely says that no Achaian city but Pelléné was ever under a Tyrant, seemingly confounding the time of Alexander with that of the Antigonids ; τυράννων τε yap πλὴν Πελλήνης al ἄλλας πόλεις τὸν χρόνον ἅπαντα ἀπείρως ἐσχήκεσαν. 7 Antigonos Gonatas first began to play a prominent part during his father’s lifetime, about B.c. 288, when he was left in command of Démétrios’ garrisons in Greece. This was probably the time when Antigonos completed the dissolution of the League. Its complete dissolution is expressed by Polybios (ii, 40, cf. 41) Final Dis- solution of the old League. Twelve original cities. Loss of Heliké [B.c. 373] and of Olenos, 10 ORIGIN AND CONSTITUTION OF ACHAIAN LEAGUE ounar. among the Kings who had a hand in the evil work ; and, as it was at no very advanced stage of his reign that the cities began again to draw together, it would seem that the period of complete isolation cannot have been very long, and that the work of reunion must have been found proportionably easy. The twelve cities of the original Leaguc, as enumerated by Polybios,', were Heliké, Olenos, Patrai, Dymé, Pharai, Tritaia, Leontion, Aigeira, Pelléné, Aigion, Boura, and Keryneia. Of these Heliké seems to have been originally the chief; its great temple of Poseidén? was the seat of the religious meetings of the Achaian people, and the city was probably also the seat of the Federal Government. But Heliké was swallowed up by an earthquake, and its site covered by the sea, long before the dissolution of the old League.* Olenos also was deserted by its inhabitants ° at some time before the revival of the League, so that ten cities only were left. Of these, since the loss of Heliké, Aigion was the greatest.® It was the seat of the Federal Government under the revived League in the very latest times,’ as it most probably had been during the later days of the earlier one. Of the exact nature of the Federal union under the old system, of the titles and duties of in the words κατὰ πόλιν διαλυθέντος τοῦ τῶν ᾿Αχαιῶν ἔθνους ὑπὸ τῶν ἐκ Μακεδονίας βασιλέων. The formula ἐκ Μακεδονίας may well express Démétrios and Antigonos when they were not in actual possession of the Macedonian throne. Cf, Niebuhr, Lect. on Anc. Hist. iii. 259, Eng. Tr. Strabo, viii. 7. 1. 1 Pol. ii. 41. 2 See Strabo, viii. 7. 2. Paus, vii. 24. 5. 3 Not necessarily, for Koroneia was the religious centre of Boecotia, while Thebes was the political head. 4 Paus. vii. 24. 6, et seqq. Strabo, u.s. Pol. ii. 41. This destruction is by Pausanias ascribed to the wrath of Poseidén at some suppliants being dragged away from his altar. In this, as Bishop Thirlwall (viii. 88) says, ‘‘ we perceive a symptom of some violent political agitation.” 5 See Leake, Morea, ii. 157. Thirlwall, viii. 90. The expression of Strabo (viii. 7. 1), οὐ συνελθούσης, might, by itself, have inclined one to Colonel Leake’s view that Olenos survived till the Roman times, and refused to join the revived Achaian League. But there can be no doubt that Bishop Thirlwall is, as usual, right. Had Olenos remained as a considerable city during the time of the second League, we could hardly fail to have come across some mention of it in the history of Polyhios. And Polybios himself distinctly implies that Olenos had perished before his day. ii. 41. τοῦτο δ᾽ ἣν ἐκ δώδεκα πόλεων, ἃς ἔτι καὶ νῦν συμβαίνει διαμένειν͵ πλὴν Ὠλένου καὶ Ἑλίκης τῆς πρὸ τῶν Λευκτρικῶν ὑπὸ θαλάσσης καταποθείσης. It is an important point in the Federal history that the revived League was joined by all the Achaian cities which still existed. 6 Paus, vii. 7. 2. 7 Tb. vii. 24, 4. Υ FIRST BEGINNINGS OF THE REVIVED LEAGUE 191 the Iederal magistrates, we know absolutely nothing. In a curious story told by Strabo when recording the destruction of Traces of Heliké, we find a distinct mention of the Federal Assembly as ἢ eral something appealed to and passing a vote; but we also find the ynaer vote as distinctly disobeyed by the contumacious canton of the Old Heliké.! League. Thus, at the time of the Gaulish invasion, ten Achaian cities existed, but there was no Achaian League. The ten cities were ten distinct political units; some of them too were held by Macedonian garrisons, others by local Tyrants. It was the interest of every Macedonian prince to prolong this state of things; it was the interest of every Achaian, and indeed of every Greek, to put the speediest possible end to it. At last the favourable moment came. Several of the Kings were ee ΚΠ dead; Pyrrhos was absent in Italy; Macedonia was in utter the revived confusion. ‘Lhe cities of Patrai and Dymé, which, since League. the desertion of Olenos, were the two most western cities Union of of the Achaian shore, took the first steps towards the revival Dye and of the old confederacy.2, The inland cities of Tritaia and [s.c. 280], Pharai soon joined them, ‘and these four became the nucleus of Frtaia of the great Federal republic of Peloponnésos. Their union was ay ak looked on so completely as a mere revival of a past lawful state of things that its terms were not publicly recorded on a pillar, as was usually done with treaties between separate Grecian states, and as was done in after-times on the accession of fresh cities to the League. Of the circumstances of their union we know nothing; Polybios does not mention the presence either of garrisons or of Tyrants in these particular cities; his words might seem rather to imply that they were free from either scourge, but only that the circumstances of the time had led to an opposition of feelings and interests among them.* As to the 1 The ‘‘Tonians expelled from Heliké ;” that is, probably their descendants in Asia, ask either for the actual image of Poseidén, or at least for leave to make amod1 of it. he people of Heliké refuse, the Ionians appeal to the Federal body (Strabo, viii. 7. 2), οὐ δόντων δὲ, πέμψαι πρὸς τὸ κοινὸν τῶν ᾿Αχαιῶν" τῶν δὲ ψηφισαμένων, οὐδ᾽ ὡς ὑπακοῦσαι. If one can trust the details of such ἃ story, the word πέμψαι might imply that the Federal Assembly was in session, and not at Heliké, 2 Pol. ii. 41. See Clinton, Fast. Hell. 11. 204. 3 Pol, ii. 41. Οὐδὲ στήλην ὑπάρχειν συμβαίνει τῶν πόλεων τούτων περὶ τῆς συμπολιτείας. Cf. xxv. 1; xxvi. 1. Τοὺς ὅρκους, τοὺς νόμους, τὰς στήλας, ἃ συνέχει τὴν κοινὴν συμπολιτείαν ἡμῶν. 4 Pol. ii. 41. Πατρεῖς ἤρξαντο συμφρονεῖν καὶ Δυμαῖοι. . . ἤρξαντο μετανοή- σαντες συμφρονεῖν, His general description does not imply that every city had Union of Aigion [B.c. 275], Boura, and Kery- neia. Extension of the League to all Achaia. Loss sus- tained by Patrai in the Gaulish War, B.C. 279. 192 ORIGIN AND CONSTITUTION OF ACHAIAN LEAGUE cnap. -.-- ..--. next stages of the process the historian is more explicit. Aigion had a garrison, Boura and Keryneia were ruled by Tyrants. Five years after the union of Patrai and Dymé, the people of Aigion themselves expelled their garrison and joined the Union. Boura was freed, and its Tyrant slain, by the people of the city, aided by their already liberated brethren.t Iseas, the Tyrant of Keryncia, watching the course of events and seeing that he would probably be the next attacked, voluntarily surrendered his power, and, having obtained security for his own safety, he annexed his city to what Polybios, now for the first time, calls by the proud title of the Achaian League.” Seven cities were now in strict union; we know not the steps by which the two eastern towns of Aigeira and Pelléné were re- covered, but their annexation could not have been long delayed ; and the inland city of Leontion, already hemmed in by the terri- tory of the liberated towns, must have been recovered even sooner. The ten cities of Achaia Proper thus formed the revived League in its first estate, and for about thirty years they grew up in peace and obscurity. Their very insignificance was no doubt among their advantages, as sheltering them from the notice of enemics. A germ of freedom was thus allowed to grow steadily up in a corner of Greece, which, if it had appeared at Athens or Corinth, would have been at once crushed in the bud. One city indecd, immediately after the reconstruc- tion of the League, suffered a blow which forms almost the whole of the external history of Achaia during this period. The people of Patrai crossed over to help the A‘tolians, with whom they were then on friendly terms, in their struggle with the Gaulish invaders. The Patrian contingent suffered so severely that this loss, combined with the general poverty of the time, led most of the inhabitants to leave the city of Patrai, and to found smaller towns in the adjoining territory.’ It does not however appear either a garrison or a Tyrant. Συνέβη πάσας τὰς πόλεις χωρισθείσας ἀφ᾽ αὑτῶν ἐναντίως τὸ συμφέρον ἄγειν ἀλλήλαις" ἐξ οὗ συνέπεσε τὰς μὲν ἐμφρούρους αὐτῶν γενέσθαι. .. τὰς δὲ καὶ τυραννεῖσθαι. 1 The words ἑξῆς δὲ τούτοις Βούριοι τὸν τύραννον ἀποκτείναντες (Pol. ii. 41) followed presently by ἀπολωλότα δὲ τὸν ἐν τῇ Βούρᾳ τύραννον διὰ Μάρκου καὶ τῶν ᾿Αχαιῶν show the combined action of the Bourians themselves and of the con- federate cities, 2 Tb. Tlpocd@nxe τὴν πόλιν πρὸς τὸ τῶν ᾿Αχαιῶν σύστημα. 3 Paus. vii. 18. 6. Κατὰ χώραν ὑπὸ φιλεργίας ἐσκεδάσθησαν. He goes on to say that these small townships were all reunited to Patrai by Augustus Cesar, and the restored city raised to the rank of a Roman colony. These townships Vv THE LEAGUE EXTENDED OVER ALL ACHAIA 193 that this process at all affected the political position of Patrai as an Achaian city; the inhabitants of Argyra, Bolimé, and the other country towns, doubtless retained their Patrian franchise, just like Athenian citizens living in an Attic Démos. And indeed the Gaulish invasion itself, by its temporary overthrow of the Macedonian power, must have conferred indirect benefits on the League in general which far more than counterbalanced any losses sustained by the single city of Patrai. Unobserved, apparently, and uncared for, the ten Achaian cities had time to strengthen their habits of freedom and good government, to Quiet and develope their political constitution, and gradually to prepare peacell themselves for the day when their League was to step forward of the as the general champion of Grecian freedom and as one of the League, creat political lights of Greece and the world. ont 280- During this time there are only two names of individuals Names of which we can connect with the course of our history ; these are indivi- two citizens of the small town of Keryneia, [5685 and Markos. uals. Of neither of them is much recorded, but quite enough to make us wish that we knew more. Of Markos we shall hear again, Markos of and always honourably ; Polybios gives his whole career the Keryneia. highest praise ;} twenty years after his first appearance he was chosen the first sole General of the League ;* twenty-six years B.c. 255, later still, the noble old man, still in the active service of his country, perished in a sca-fight against the pirates of Illyria.? B.c. 229. But it is the earlier exploits of Markos which we desire to know more in detail. He would almost appear to have been the Markos Washington of the original League, though his fame has been Probably ΣΝ . the true obscured by the later and more brilliant services of Aratos. A day pounder came when the deliverance of Boura seemed a small matter com- of the pared to the deliverance of Sikyén and Akrokorinthos; but, in Leasve. the day of the deliverance of Boura, that small success was of greater moment than the greatest successes of later and more prosperous times. The very name of the hero, Italian rather must be the Πατρεῖς καὶ τὸ μετὰ τοῦτο συντελικόν in Pol. xl. 8. Cf. v. 94, fora similar phrase about another town. Strabo (viii. 7. 5.) says that each of the original twelve cities consisted of seven or eight δῆμοι [ἐκ δήμων συνειστήκει ἑπτὰ καὶ ὀκτώ]. 1 Pol. ii. 10. Μάρκος ὁ Κερυνεὺς, ἀνὴρ πάντα τὰ δίκαια τῷ κοινῷ τῶν ᾿Αχαιῶν πολιτεύματι πεποιηκὼς μέχρι τῆς καταστροφῆς. 2 Tb, 48. 3 Ib. 10, a) Iseas of Keryneia abdicates the Ty- ranny. Nature of the Greek Tyrannies. Difference between the earlier and later Tyrannies. 194. ORIGIN AND CONSTITUTION OF ACHATAN LEAGUE cuap. than Greek,! raises curiosity as to his origin and history. He was a citizen of Keryneia, but we find him acting in the interests of the League, and apparently as the leader of its councils, at a time when Keryncia itself was still under the sway of its Tyrant. Markos was the chief leader? in the movement, of whatever nature it was, by which the liberated cities were able to extend their help to the patriots of Boura. It is impossible to believe that Markos can have been at this time an inhabitant of his native town; it can hardly be doubted that he was an exile in the cause of freedom, who offered his services to the infant League, and was most likely admitted to the citizenship of one of its members. Iseas again, the Tyrant of Markos’ own city, is a man of whom we should gladly kuow more. He was the first of several Tyrants who had the wisdom and magnanimity to give up their ill-gotten and dangerous power, and to confine their ambition within the bounds of such honours as a free state can confer upon its citizens. If Markos was the precursor, in some respects the nobler precursor, of Aratos, Iseas may well have been the worthy precursor of Lydiadas. We must always remember what a Greek Tyranny was. It was royal, or more than royal, power possessed by one man in a state where monarchy was not the lawful constitution. It therefore neces- sarily implied the internal political bondage of the city. At this period of Grecian history a Tyranny also commonly implied, what in earlier times it did not, a state of external dependence on a foreign power. The Tyrant ruled under Macedonian pro- tection, often by the help of Macedonian troops. The Tyrannies of this age were therefore, for the most part, something far worse than the earlier Tyrannics of Peisistratos or even of Periander. Two widely different periods, in both of which Tyrannies were common, are divided by a long interval. During the fifth century before Christ and the greater part of the fourth, Tyranny was rare in Greece proper, and almost unknown in the chief cities.* The Tyrant of the old times, Peisistratos of 1 Brandstiter (Geschichte toliens, 202) makes the true form Mdpyos and not Μάρκος. But would not Mdpyos be a name quite as strange on other grounds? I follow Thirlwall and Bekker’s Polybios. 2 Pol. 11. 41. Διὰ Μάρκου καὶ τῶν ᾿Αχαιῶν. 3 Tyrants were common enough at this time in Sicily and elsewhere among the colonial Greeks, but there were very few in Old Greece between the fall of the Peisistratids and the age of the Successors. Euphron at Sikyén and Timophanés at Corinth are the most famous exceptions, The Thessalian Tyrants have per- Vv EARLIER AND LATER TYRANNIES 195 Athens or Kleisthenés of Sikyén, was a party leader, who commonly reigned with the good will of at least a part of the citizens ; at all events nothing hindered him from seeking either the external greatness or the internal splendour of his city. Corinth was never so great as under Periander, or Samos so great as under Polykratés. But the Tyrant of the Macedonian age commonly obtained his power by sheer violence, and ruled simply by the spears of foreign mercenaries. Still it must be remembered that the mere word Tyrant, in its Greek use,? expresses only the illegal nature of the Tyrant’s power, and (loes not necessarily imply any oppressive exercise of it. The Tyrant’s position indeed offered every opportunity of oppres- sion and every temptation to oppress, but the position itself does not necessarily convict a man of cruelty or rapacity. When the Tyrant came to his power by hereditary succession, the son would often be, like the younger Dionysios, if weaker, at all events less oppressive than his father. In the later period ‘Tyrannies were less commonly transmitted from father to the son than in the earlier, but on the other hand it is easy to under- stand that absolute power may now, from another set of causes, have sometimes fallen into better hands, and have been employed for better purposes. Tyranny was now quite common and familiar ; though hereditary dynasties were seldom founded, yet many cities were under the government of several Tyrants in uninterrupted succession; republican government may often have been unknown to two or three generations of citizens.2 In such an age, a man ambitious of power, and to whom no nobler way of obtaining it presented itself, may have grasped at the Tyranny as his only path to greatness, without the least inten- tion of inflicting any wanton oppression upon his countrymen.? 10 is clear that there were the same sort of differences among haps more in common with the Tyrannies of the later period, of which they may be looked upon as the beginning. 1 See above, p. 17. I do not see the gain of substituting, with Mr. Grote, the word “ Despot” for “Tyrant” as the translation of the Greek τύραννος. Whichever we use must be used in a fixed technical sense, differing somewhat from its usual modern meaning. Europe now contains several Despots, but only one τύραννος. 2 When Aratos delivered Corinth in B.c, 243, the Corinthians had not had the keys of their own city since the time of Philip—ninety-five years, Plut. Arat, 23, 3 “The Tyrants consisting of his [Antigonos Gonatas’] partisans were men of very different characters; some were moderate and bearable persons, while others were extremely cruel.” Niebuhr, Lect. on Anc. Hist. iii. 259. B.C. 625- 585. B.c. 5380- 522. 196 ORIGIN AND CONSTITUTION OF ACHAIAN LEAGUE crap. a the Greek instruments of Macedonia as we have scen in our own times among the Italian instruments of Austria! No fair person would confound the government of the deposed ruler of Tuscany with the government of the deposed ruler of Naples. But Greece saw, what Italy has not seen, Tyrants prudent and noble-minded enough to lay down the Tyranny of their own will, and honestly to adapt themselves to a change which they could not, and may not have wished to, avert. Such was the noble Lydiadas of Megalopolis, whom we shall soon meet with as one of the brightest glories of the League. Such may well have been Iseas of Keryneia in its earlier days. And it must have re- quired yet greater vigour in Iseas to sect such an example? than it required in Lydiadas, a generation later, to follow it. For Iseas, when alarmed for the security of his power, did not fly, as many a meaner tyrant has done, and leave his city to its fate ; he did not ask his royal patron for support against the encroach- ing spirit of freedom; he laid down his power, and, trusting to the faith of the Confederate cities, he himself annexed Keryneia to the League? Of his subsequent career we know nothing ; Polybios does not tell us whether Iseas, like Lydiadas and Aris- tomachos, lived to know how much really greater is the position 1 An objection may be brought against a parallel between the Greek Tyrants and “legitimate” rulers like the deposed Italian Princes. But all the dynasties lately reigning in Italy reigned only by virtue of treaties contracted by foreign powers, to which those who alone were concerned were no parties. The Princes of Lorraine, though one of them was probably the best despot that ever reigned in Europe, had really less right in Tuscany than the qld Visconti had in Milan. This sort of legitimacy was something quite unknown in old Greece, and I cannot help thinking that if a specimen had appeared, whether in the form of an indi- vidual ruler or a whole dynasty, Greek political thinkers would have set it down as a case of τυραννίς rather than of lawful βασιλεία. 2 I know of only one clear example of a Greek Tyrant in the earlier period willingly surrendering his power. This is Kadmos, Tyrant of Kés, contemporary with the Persian War, who gave up his Tyranny—éxuy re εἶναι καὶ δεινοῦ ἐπιόντος οὐδενὸς, ἀλλὰ ἀπὸ δικαιοσύνης ἐς μέσον Κῴοισι καταθεὶς τὴν ἀρχήν (Herod. vii. 164). He did not however, like Lydiadas, remain as a private citizen in the city where he had ruled. There is also the story of the contemplated abdication of Maiandrios of Samos. Herod, iii, 142. 3 The article Iseas in the Dictionary of Biography hardly does justice to our Keryneian Tyrant. Mr. Bunbury says that Iseas “judged it prudent to provid for his personal safety by voluntarily abdicating the sovereign power, whereupon Ceryneia immediately joined the Achaians,” as if Iseas had no hand in uniting Keryneia with the League. Now the words of Polybios (ii. 41) are ἀποθέμενος τὴν ἀρχὴν καὶ λαβὼν τὰ πιστὰ παρὰ τῶν ᾿Αχαιῶν ὑπὲρ τῆς ἀσφαλείας προσέθηκε τὴν πολιν πρὸς τὸ τῶν ᾿Αχαιῶν σύστημα. This surely implies that Iseas, just like Lydiadas, was himself the chief promoter of the union. Υ͂ THE ACHAIAN CONSTITUTION 197 of the republican magistrate than that of the despotic prince. But the conduct of Iseas shows a prudence or a magnanimity, or rather an union of the two, which at once stamps him as no common man. And it is honourable to the otherwise insigni- ficant town of Keryneia to have produced the only two men whose names we know during this first period of the League’s history, and both of them men of whom the little that we know makes us anxious for a more intimate knowledge. $3. Of the Achaian Federal Constitution It must have been in the course of these years, during which the League was growing up in peaceful obscurity, that that Federal Constitution was formed which was afterwards extended over so large a portion of Greece. As usual, however, we have to frame our account of it from incidental notices, from general panegyrics, and from records of particular changes in detail. We cannot lay our hands on any one document, on any Declara- tion of Independence, on any formally enacted Federal Constitu- tion, to act as a decisive authority in our inquiries. We may console ourselves with the thought that an inquirer at any equal distance of time will have to frame his picture of the British Constitution from information of exactly the same kind. Cer- tainly he will not find any one authoritative document clearly setting forth the powers of King, Lords, and Commons, or. exactly defining the Prerogative of the Crown, the Privilege of Parliament, and the Liberty of the Subject. Still less will he find any such document setting forth such hardly less important points as the nature of Government and of Opposition, or ex- plaining the exact constitution of the Cabinet and the functions of the Leader of the House of Commons. But, though no such document has survived to our time, we have every reason to believe that the Achaian Constitution, unlike the British Con- stitution, was enacted and recorded by public authority. The first union of the four towns was looked on as a mere revival of the old League, probably on the laxer terms of union on which that old League seems to have been formed. We have seen that it did not hinder Patrai from acting independently of its con- federates in the Gaulish War! just as we saw Pelléné, under the 1 See above, p. 192. Probable enactment of the Federal Constitu- tion, B.C. circa 274. Sources of Informa- tion. The Con- stitution formed for the Achaian Towns only. Demo- cratic Con- stitution of the League. 198 ORIGIN AND CONSTITUTION OF ACHAIAN LEAGUE onap. old League, acting independently of its confederates in the Peloponnésian War.t Such a course would have been contrary to every principle of the Federal Constitution in the days of its maturity. Most probably, when all the surviving Achaian towns were reunited, the union was intentionally made more intimate, and its terms were enacted and recorded by common consent.’ No such document however is preserved to us; and we have to form our ideas of the Achaian Constitution chiefly from the incidental notices and general comments of Polybios, and from such further incidental notices as are to be found in writers like Plutarch, Pausanias, and Strabo. Polybios unfortunately does not begin his detailed narrative till a later period, when in truth the most interesting portion of the League’s history had passed by. Of its foundation and its earlier fortunes he gives a mere sketch, but it is a sketch for which we may well be thankful, a sketch clear and masterly as might be looked for from such a hand. We have abundant evidence to show that the Iederal Constitution was formed while the League still embraced only the small towns of the original Achaia. The greater cities which afterwards joined the Union were admitted into a body the relations and duties of whose members were already fixed and well understood. This will plainly appear, 1f only from one or two points in the constitution which were suited only to the circumstances of the original Achaian towns,.and which were found to be a source of inconvenience, and even of unfairness, when the Union was extended over a wider territory. The whole constitution of the League was Democratic. Polybios constantly praises it as thé truest and purest of all Democracies.*? Yet we shall soon see that Democracy in Achaia was practically a very different thing from Democracy at Athens. It is possible that Polybios might have looked upon the constitu- tion of Athens as an Ochlocracy as opposed to the true Demo- cracy of his own land. But the fact rather is that in theory Achaia was as strictly democratic as Athens, but that the circumstances of the League unavoidably tempered the Achaian Democracy in practice in a way in which nothing occurred to 1 See above, p. 187. * Thirlwall, viii. 89, 90. 3 Pol. ii, 88. ᾿Ισηγορίας καὶ παρρησίας καὶ καθόλου δημοκρατίας ἀληθινῆς σύστημα καὶ προαίρεσιν εἰλικρινεστέραν οὐκ ἂν εὕροι τις τῆς παρὰ τοῖς ᾿Αχαιοῖς ὑπαρχούσης. Vv DEMOCRATIC CHARACTER OF THE LEAGUE 199 temper the Athenian Democracy. In both alike the sovereign power was vested in a Popular Assembly, in which every free citizen had an equal right to attend, speak, and vote. In both alike the People, and the People alone, enacted laws, elected magistrates, contracted alliances, declared war and peace. But Differences in Achaia conditions which never arose at Athens modified this between popular sovereignty in many ways. Far greater legal power meoeian was placed in the hands of particular magistrates. Far greater Athenian power of an indirect, though not an illegal, kind was thrown into Demo- the hands both of magistrates and other leading men. The Τα: Assembly indeed always remained the supreme and undisputed authority, but the powers even of that sovereign body would have appeared sadly curtailed in the eyes of a democrat whose ideas were formed solely on Athenian models. The constitution of the League was strictly Federal. The Federal form of government now appears in its fullest and purest shape. very city remained a distinct State, sovereign for all prposes not inconsistent with the higher sovereignty of the “Federation, retaining its local Assemblies and local Magistrates, and ordering all exclusively local affairs without any interference from the central power. There is no evidence that the Federal Government, in its best days, ever directly interfered with the internal laws, or even with the political constitutions, of the several cities.’ We read, as elsewhere in Greece, of local parties Inde- and local dissensions, and, in one case at least, at Megalopolis pendence after the fall of Kleomenés, of a purely local lawgiver.2. Kynaitha, one after her union with the League, retained her local Polemarchs,? Cities, and Aratos himself was once chosen General of the State of 8.0. 221- Argos,‘ as an office quite distinct from that of General of the ΕΣ, 293. 1 On this subject see the excellent remarks of Schorn, p. 74 et seqq. 2 Antigonos Désén is said by Polybios (v. 93) to have given one Prytanis to the Megalopolitans as a lawgiver (ἔδωκεν αὐτοῖς νομοθέτην) It was however by no means the policy of Antigonos to break through constitutional forms, and we may fairly conclude that Prytanis was named by the King at the request of the Megalopolitans themselves. His legislation however only gave rise to fresh disputes, and at last Aratos was sent by decree of the Federal Assembly (κατὰ τὸ τῶν ᾿Αχαιῶν δόγμα) to reconcile the contending parties, which he effectually did. Here again there was no breach of the cantonal rights of Megalopolis, Aratos acted simply as a mediator. The two parties agreed on certain conditions, which the City of Megalopolis, not the Federal Government, caused to be engraved on a pillar in one of its temples. (Ἐφ᾽ οἷς ἔληξαν τῆς πρὸς ἀλλήλους διαφορᾶς, γράψαντες els στήλην. . . ἀνέθεσαν.) 3 Pol. iv. 18. 4 Plut. Ar. 44. “Aparos δὲ στρατηγὸς αἱρεθεὶς br’ ᾿Αργείων ἔπεισεν αὐτούς. KT. 200 ORIGIN AND CONSTITUTION OF ACHAIAN LEAGUE cmap. League. So little indeed did the Federal power meddle with the internal affairs of the several cities that it tolerated distinc- tions within their territories which seem hardly in accordance with the principles of universal equality on which the League itself was founded. That the League did not interfere with the peculiar relations between Patrai and her townships is not wonderful ; they probably did not interfere with the full Patrian Districts citizenship of their inhabitants. But Megalopolis certainly,” and subject to Corinth probably,® had subject districts, whose inhabitants appear ities, “" to have had no direct share in the general Federal citizenship. We have seen this sort of relation among the aristocracies of Boeotia ; we shall meet with it again among the Swiss Cantons, aristocratic and democratic alike. But one would hardly have expeeted to find it amid the Equality and Fraternity of the Achaian League. But the toleration of such inequalities is really a necessary deduction from the doctrine of the sovereignty of each State within its own limits, just like the toleration of the “domestic institution” of the Southern States of America by a Federation which scrupulously excludes the word Slave from its own Constitution. But, though the several cities remained internally independent, we cannot doubt that their close union for all external purposes strongly tended to assimilate them to one another in their internal constitution and laws. It can hardly be supposed that the political constitution of any member of the League was other than democratic. We see the same Tendencies phenomenon in the United States. The Federal Constitution ἰο assimi- merely provides that each State shall have a republican govern- among the ment‘ and shall not grant titles of nobility ;° within these limits Members it may be as oligarchic or as democratic as it’pleases. Any State oF pease, that chose might transact all its affairs in a primary Assembly Achaia and Like those of Athens or Schwytz, and might give its chief magis- America, trate no higher powers than those of an Athenian Archon. Or 1 See above, p. 192. 2 Plut. Phil. 18. ὁ Φιλοποίμην ἀπέστησε πολλὰς τῶν περιοικίδων κωμῶν. See Droysen, ii. 464, Thirlwall, viii. 364. Whether these townships were strictly subject to Megalopolis will be found discussed afterwards, p. 488. It is possible that they may have been more analogous to the Patrian townships men- tioned in p. 192. 3 Strabo’s account of Tenea in the Corinthian territory sounds very much as if it had been a κώμη περιοικίς of Corinth. viii. 6.22. Ta δ᾽ ὕστατα καὶ καθ᾽ αὑτοὺς πολιτεύεσθαι᾽ προσθέσθαι τε τοῖς Ρωμαίοις ἀποστάντας Ἱζορινθίων. Cf. the Messénian districts mentioned by Polybios, xxv. 1. 4 Art. iv. § 4. 5 Art. i. § 10. 1. Υ PRESERVATION OF STATE SOVEREIGNTY 201 it might, as far as appears, make as near an approach to monarchy as would be implied in the creation of a Polish King or a Venetian Doge. For the existence of those Princes was never held to destroy the claim of Venice and Poland to the title of Republics, and if any State chose to elect its Governor for life, he would certainly fill a position of greater power than either of them. Or, to come to differences which have really existed, the elective franchise in different States has at different times varied from universal suffrage and no property qualification to the require- ment of a considerable freehold both in the elector and in the representative.' And the Federal Constitution respects all systems alike; the Federal franchise belongs to those, few or many, who possess the franchise in their own State.? But the different States have, since the establishment of the Federal Union, moved with remarkable unanimity in two directions. Nearly all have advanced in a democratic path by abolishing property qualifications, and all have advanced in what was once thought to be an aristocratic path by establishing two Legislative Chambers. So in Achaia a local oligarchy in any particular city could not possibly have kept its ground, while the constitu- tion of the League itself and the local constitutions of the other cities were all of them democratic. It seems certain also that a citizen of any Achaian city was admitted to at least the private rights of citizenship, those of intermarriage and possession of landed property, in the other cities of the League.* But it is hardly likely that an Achaian citizen could, as a citizen of the United States can,.exchange at will, or after a short time of residence, the franchise of his native State for that of another.* But the tendency to assimilation among the several cities was very strong. In the later days of the League it seems to have 1 Smith’s Comparative View of the Constitutions of the Several States, etc. (Philadelphia, 1796). Tables i. and ii, * Art. i, § 2.1. Cf 8 4. 1. 3 Thus much at least seems implied in the words πολιτεία and συμπολιτεία, which are so often used. Accordingly we find that Aratos, a citizen of Sikyén, had a house at Corinth. (Plut. Ar. 41. Kleom. 19.) So, when the League was broken up by the Romans, this intercommunion of property between different cities was forbidden. (Paus, vii. 16. 9.) It may be remembered that in the Olynthian Confederacy (see above, p. 151) these private rights were promised to the annexed cities. * Aratos, as we have seen (p. 199), was once elected chief magistrate of Argos, but this was in a moment of great political excitement, and the fact hardly proves that ἃ less distinguished Sikyénian could have held the office in an ordinary year, The League really a National Govern- ment. No inde- pendent Diplo- matic Action in the several Cities. Compari- son with America. 202 ORIGIN AND CONSTITUTION OF ACHAIAN LEAGUE cuap. developed with increased force, till at last Polybios could say? that all Peloponnésos differed from a single city only in not being surrounded by a single wall. The whole peninsula em- ployed the same coinage, weights, and measures, and was governed by the same laws, administered by the same magistrates, senators, and judges. But while the Achaian Constitution strictly respected the local rights of the several cities, it in no wise allowed their local sovereignty to trench upon the higher sovereignty of the League. The Achaian League was, in German technical language, a Bundesstaut and not a mere Staatenbund.2 There was an Achaian nation,? with a national Assembly, a national Government, and national Tribunals, to which every Achaian citizen owed a direct allegiance. The whole language of Polybios shows that every Achaian citizen stood in a direct relation to the Federal authority, and was in full strictness a citizen of the League itself, and not merely of one of the cities which composed it. The Achaian cities were not mere municipalities, but sovereign commonwealths.* But in all external matters, in everything which concerned the whole Achaian body and its relations to other powers, the Federal Government reserved to itself full supremacy. No single city could, of its own authority, make peace or war, or commission Ambassadors to foreign powers. But it would appear that the separate action of the several cities was not quite so rigidly limited in the last respect as it is in the American Union. The cause of the difference is obvious. The American States, before their union into a Federal e&epublic, had been mere Colonies, mere dependencies of a distant Kingdom. In- dependent diplomatic action was something to which they had not been accustomed, and which they could cheerfully do without. It was a great advance in their condition when the right of acting on their behalf in dealings with other nations was transferred from a King over whom they had no control to a Federal President in whose appointment they themselves had a share. But the cities of the Achaian League, those at 1 See the famous passage, ii. 87. The identity there spoken of seems to me merely to express the result of the assimilation spoken of in the text. It need not imply any compulsory introduction of uniformity, still less any extension of the powers of the Federal body in later times. 2 Helwing, p. 237. See above, p. 8. Cf. Tittmann, p. 675. 3 "Ἔθνος. See above, pp. 10, 144. 4 In Greek phrase, πόλεις and not δῆμοι. Vv NO DIPLOMATIC ACTION IN THE STATES 203 all events which lay beyond the limits of the original Achaia, had been, before their union, absolutely independent powers, accustomed to carry on wars and negociations in their own names without reference to any superior authority. Even the rule of a Tyrant did not destroy this sort of independence; a single citizen indeed usurped powers which belonged of right to the whole body of citizens, but they were not transferred to any individual or any Assembly beyond the limits of the city. When the Tyrant was overthrown, this power, with the other powers which he had seized on, at once reverted to the people of the city. The right of direct intercourse with foreign powers is one of the last which an independent city or canton is willing to surrender to any central power, as we may sce by the history of both the Swiss and the Dutch Confederations. For Sikyén, or Mantineia, or Megalopolis to forego this high attribute of sovereignty, and to entrust powers which it had once exercised without restraint to an Assembly in which it had only one voice among many, was really no small sacrifice for the public good. It is rather to be wondered at that it was so easily surrendered by so many Peloponnesian cities, and that the loss was for the most part so peaceably acquiesced in. But while an Ambassador Restriction sent to or from New York or South Carolina is a thing unheard ress, strict of, an Ambassador sent to or from Corinth or Megalopolis was a thing rare indeed, and perhaps irregular, but not absolutely without precedent. The Corinthians, after their union with 8.0. 228. the League, received separate Ambassadors from Rome,! before Rome was dangerous. They came indeed on a purely honorary errand; another embassy had transacted the political business between Rome and the League; still, whether of right or of special permission, the single city of Corinth did give audience to the Ambassadors of a foreign power. It is quite possible that for a single city to receive an embassy was not so strictly forbidden by the Federal Constitution as it was for a single city to commission an embassy. This last, it is clear, was 1 Pol, ii. 12. On this Embassy (see p. 827) the explanation of the apparent breach of rule is probably to be found in the religious character of the mission. The Roman envoys were received by the Corinthians, not as members of the Achaian League, but as administrators of the Isthmian games. In this character, they must have been in the constant habit of recciving the θεωρίαι of Greek cities. As the administration of the games always remained a matter purely of State, and not at all of Federal, concern, the reception of this political sort of embassy —necessary in the presidents of the games—must have been held not to interfere with the general external sovereignty of the League. Particular Embassies by licence of the Federal body. B.C, 224. Later ex- ceptions under Roman influence, B.c. 198. 204. ORIGIN AND CONSTITUTION OF ACHAIAN LEAGUE onap, forbidden by the gencral law of the League, just as it is forbidden! by the Constitution of the United States. Cases however occur in the course of Achaian history alike of the law being dispensed with and of the law being violated.2 We have a full account® of one very curious instance of a single city entering into diplomatic relations with a foreign power by special permission of the national Congress. The fact of such a permission being asked shows that, without it, the proceeding would have been unlawful, but the fact of the permission being granted equally shows that the request was not looked upon as altogether unreasonable and monstrous. The occasion was no other than the fatal application to Macedonia for aid against Sparta, which was first made by an embassy sent from the single city of Megalopolis, but with the full permission of the Federal body.* This is perhaps the only recorded case of a breach of the rule during the good times of the League; and this took place in a season of extreme danger, and was the result of a deeply laid scheme of the all-powerful Aratos. In later times, when unwilling cities were annexed to the League by force, and when Roman intrigue was constantly sowing dissension among its members, we shall find not unfrequent instances of embassies sent from particular cities to what was practically the suzerain power. The old law now needed special confirmation. It was agreed, in the first treaty between Achaia and Rome, that no embassy should be sent to Rome by any particular Achaian city, but only by the general Achaian body.° But this agreement was of course broken whenever its violation suited Roman interests. Sparta especially, and Messéné, cities joined to the League against their will, were constantly laying 1 The Constitution (Art. i. § 10. 1) absolutely forbids all diplomatic action on the part of the several States, and the confederate Constitution (Art. i. § 10. 1) repeats the prohibition. The looser Confederation of 1778 only forbade the receiving or sending Ambassadors “ without the consent of the United States in Congress assembled.” Art. vi. § 1. Cf. §5. 2 Tittmann (678) mistakes these exceptions for the rule. 3 Pol. ii. 48-50 + Το shall narrate this curious proceeding in detail at the proper point of the history. 5 Paus. vii. 9.4. ᾿Αχαιῶν μὲν yap εἴρητο ἀπὸ τοῦ κοινοῦ παρὰ τὴν Ῥωμαίων βουλὴν ἀπιέναι πρέσβεις, ἰδίᾳ δὲ ἀπείρητο μὴ πρεσβεύεσθαι τὰς πόλεις ὅσαι συνεδρίου ἡ τοῦ ᾿Αχαιῶν μετεῖχον. See Thirlwall, viii. 90 (note). That this prohibition was an exception, and not simply the confirmation of an ancient rule rendered more needful on entering into relation with so powerful an ally, seems quite inconceivable. Vv THE FEDERAL ASSEMBLY 205 their real or supposed grievances at the feet of the Roman Senate. Here again we may learn the lesson that a Federal body can derive no strength from the incorporation or retention of unwilling members. The supreme power of the League was vested in the sovereign The As- Popular Assembly. This was the Congress of the Union, differ- sem>’y ing from the Congress of the American Union mainly in this, that, League, according to the common political instinct of the Greek mind, it was a primary and not a representative Assembly.1 The latter notion has indeed been maintained by two German scholars,? but no sound arguments are brought in support of their opinions, and it does not seem to have met with favour in any other quarter. There can be no doubt that every citizen of The De- every city in the League, at all events every citizen who had mocratic attained the age of thirty years,* had a right to attend, speak, Ponstitu- and vote. Every free Achaian, no less than every free Athenian, could give a direct voice in the election of the magistrates by whom he was to be governed, in the enactment of the laws which he was to obey, and in the declaration of the wars in which he might be called on to bear a part. The Achaian 1 Tt is spoken of as ’Ayatol, ἔθνος, σύνοδος, πλῆθος (Pol. iv. 9, 10, 14; v. 1; xXxxvili. 2), of πολλοί (xxxvilil. 43; xl. 4; xxi. 7), ἀθροισθέντες εἰς ἐκκλησίαν οἱ πολλοὶ τῶν ᾿Αχαιῶν, ἐκκλησία (Pol. xxviii.'3), ὄχλος (xxviii. 7), ἀγορά (xxviii. 7 ; xxix. 9). These expressions explain those like σύνεδροι (Plut. Ar. 35) and συνέδριον (aus. u.s.) which might at first sight convey another idea, and which probably arose out of the practice of later times. See Niebuhr’s Hist. Rome, ii. 30, Eng. Tr. Thirlwall, viii. p. 91, note. Tittmann, 680, The formal title of the body, as usual, is τὸ κοινὸν τῶν ᾿Αχαιῶν. Pol. xxviii. 7. Boeckh, C. I. no. 1542. Paus. u.s. 2 Helwing, p. 229. Drumann, p. 4638. The chief argument adduced in behalf of this opinion is a single place of Polybios, where he remarks that a particular Assembly, in the very last days of the League, was attended by a greater number of people, and those of a lower class, than usual (Pol. xxxvili. 4): καὶ yap συνηθροίσθη πλῆθος ἐργαστηριακῶν kal βαναύσων ἀνθρώπων, οἷον οὐδέποτε, This is merely the sort of language which a Tory historian would use in describ- ing the first Reformed Parliament. It evidently implies that these people had a right to be there, but that so many of them had never before been known to come. Helwing argues that their presence was “gegen Gewohnheit und Gesetz.” It was doubtless “ gegen Gewohnheit,” but not “gegen Gesetz.” Droysen, who is generally disposed to make the constitution of the League more aristocratic than it really was, fully admits the popular character of the general Congress (ii. 462). Cf. Κι. F. Hermann, § 186, ἢ. 5, Eng. Tr. and the important note of Schorn, 371. 3 So Bishop Thirlwall (viii. 91) infers from Polybios, xxix. 9, where he speaks of a σύγκλητος, ἐν ἢ συνέβαινε μὴ μόνον συμπορεύεσθαι τὴν βουλὴν ἀλλὰ πάντας τοὺς ἀπὸ τριάκοντα ἐτῶν. Aristo- cratic Ele- ment in Achaia. Contrast with Athens, Achaian Constitu- tion a nearer approach to modern systems. 206 ORIGIN AND CONSTITUTION OF ACHAIAN LEAGUE cnap. Constitution therefore is rightly called a Democratic Constitution. And yet nothing is plainer than that the practical working of Democracy in Achaia was something altogether different from the practical working of Democracy at Athens.t At the first glance we might almost be tempted to call the Achaian Constitution practically aristocratic rather than democratic. It is evident that birth, wealth, and official position carried with them an influence in Achaia which they did not carry with them at Athens. The Athenian Assembly was sovereign in the very highest sense ; Démos was Tyrant, and he did not shrink from the name ;? the Assembled People were not only a Parliament, but also a Government ;? an eloquent speaker might wicld the fierce Democracy at pleasure, but a private citizen could do so just as easily as the highest Magistrate. The Assembly, in short, was really a master, and Magistrates were its mere servants to carry out its bidding. But in the Achaian Democracy we find a wholly different state of things. We find a President of the Union with large personal powers, a Cabinet Council acting as the President’s advisers, and a Senate invested with far higher functions than the mere Committee of the Assembly which bore the same title at Athens. In short, at Athens the People really governed; in Achaia they did little more than elect their governors and say Aye or No to their proposals. It will be at once seen that these differences all tend to make the Achaian Constitution approach, far more nearly than that of Athens, to the state of things to which we are accustomed in modern Republics and Constitutional Kingdoms. And they all spring from the different position ‘of Democracy as applied to the single City of Athens and Democracy as applied to a Federal State embracing a large portion of Greece. The Athenian 1 Kortiim (iii. 158) gives the Achaian system the appropriate name of “die gemassigte Demokratie.”’ 2 Thue, ii. 68. ἸΤυραννίδα yap ἤδη ἔχετε αὐτὴν [τὴν ἀρχήν]. Ib. iii, 87, τυραννίδα ἔχετε τὴν ἀρχήν. Aristoph. Knights, 1111. Ὦ Δῆμε, καλήν γ᾽ ἔχεις ᾿Αρχὴν, ὅτε πάντες ἄν-Θρωποι δεδίασί σ᾽ ὥς-]Π1εῤ ἄνδρα τύραννον. Ib, 13830. δείξατε τὸν τῆς Ελλάδος ἡμῖν καὶ τῆς γῆς τῆσδε μόναρχον. Ib. 1882, χαῖρ᾽, ὦ βασιλεῦ τῶν Ὡὰλλάνων. Isok. Areop. 26. Δεῖ τὸν μὲν δῆμον ὥσπερ τύραννον καθιστάναι τὰς ἀρχὰς καὶ κολάζειν τοὺς ἐξαμαρτάνοντας καὶ κρίνειν περὶ τῶν ἀμφισβητουμένων, τοὺς δὲ σχολὴν ἄγειν δυναμένους καὶ βίον ἱκανὸν κεκτημένους ἐπιμελεῖσθαι τῶν κοινῶν ὥσπερ οἰκέτας. Aristot. Pol. ii, 12, “Ὥσπερ τυράννῳ τῷ δήμῳ χαριζόμενοι, ΤῸ, ἱν, (vi) 4. Μόναρχος γὰρ ὁ δῆμος γίνεται, σύνθετος εἷς ἐκ πολλῶν. [Compare the free democracy of Outer Appenzell and the action of the people in 1732; Miiller, Hist. de la Confédération Suisse (Continuation) xiv. 186. ] 3 See above, p. 33. Vv DEMOCRATIC THEORY OF THE ASSEMBLY 207 Assembly was held at a man’s own door; the Achaian Assembly was held ina distant city. It follows at once that the Athenian Causes Assembly was held much oftener than the Achaian Assembly ° the Difference, and was much more largely attended by citizens of all classes. jrising The Athenian Assembly was held thrice in each month; the mainly Achaian Assembly was held of right only twice in each year, 'rom the greater The poorest citizen could regularly attend at Athens, where a extent of small fee recompensed his loss of time; the poor Achaian must Territory. lave been unusually patriotic if he habitually took two journeys in the year at his own cost to attend the Assembly at Aigion. For the Athenian Treasury could easily bear the small fee paid to the citizens for attendance in the Assembly, but no amount of wealth in the Federal Treasury of Achaia could have endured such a charge as the payment of travelling expenses and recom- pense for loss of time to the whole free population of Argos and Megalopolis. The poor Athenian then was both legally and practically the political equal of his richer neighbour ; the poor Achaian, though he laboured under no legal disqualification, laboured under a practical disqualification almost bordering on disfranchisement. ‘The Achaian Assembly practically consisted The As- of those among the inhabitants of each city who were at once chiefly wealthy men and eager politicians. Those citizens came together attended who were at once wealthy enough to bear the cost of the journey by rich and zealous enough to bear the trouble of it. It was, in fact, The. As. practically an aristocratic body, and it is sometimes spoken of as sembly such.” Its aristocratic character may have been slightly modified practically Aristo- 1 Some of the Attic Démoi are undoubtedly further from Athens than some of cratic. the old Achaian towns are from Aigion ; but no point of Attica is so distant from Athens as Dymé, for instance, is from Aigion, so that, on the whole, the rural Athenians were nearer to the capital than the Achaians, even of the older towns, were to the seat of the Federal Government. Also the city of Athens and its ports must always have contained a very large proportion of the citizen popula- tion, while Aigion was merely one town out of ten or twelve. Still the old Achaia is not very much larger than Attica—in superficial extent it is probably smaller—and it might perhaps have been possible to have united it by a συνοικισμός instead of by a merely Federal tie. The essential differences between Athens and Achaia begin to show themselves most clearly when the League began to extend itself over much more distant cities, which no tie but a Federal one could, according to Greek notions, ever have connected. 2 Τὴ Livy (xxxii. 21) the Achaian General Aristainos addresses the Assembly as Principes Achworum. But, especially as it comes in a speech, we cannot be quite certain that this expression really answers to anything in Polybios or any other Greek author. But it would fairly enough express the class of persons of whom the Assembly was mainly composed, for Princtpes (see Livy, xxxiii. 14) does not always mean magistrates, but leading men, whether in office or not. Not under- stood by Conti- nental Scholars. 208 ORIGIN AND CONSTITUTION OF ACHATAN LEAGUE cnap. by the possible presence of the whole citizen population of the town where the Assembly met. But we may doubt whether even they would, on ordinary occasions, be so eager to attend an Assembly of such a character as they might have been if the democratic spirit had been more predominant in it. But, if they did, though some effect is always produced by the presence and the voices of any considerable body of men, still, as they could at most control a single vote, their presence would be of but little strictly constitutional importance. The Congress, democratic in theory, was aristocratic in practice. This contrast of theory and practice, which Aristotle! had fully understood long before the days of the League, runs through the whole of the Achaian institutions. By Continental scholars, less used to the working of free governments than those of our own land, it seems not to have been thoroughly understood. They have often imagined the existence of legal restrictions, when the restriction was in fact one which simply made itself. They see that the Assembly was mainly filled by members of an aristo- cratic class, and they infer that it must have been limited by law to a fixed body of representatives. They see that offices Polybios (iv. 9) has the phrase οἱ προεστῶτες τῶν ᾿Αχαιῶν, but this evidently meaus the Δαμιοργοί as Presidents of the Assembly, not any aristocratic class. It is just possible that the words in Livy may be a formal address to the Δαμιοργοί as Presidents, like our “Mr, Speaker.’” 1 Arist. Pol. iv. [vi] 5. Οὐ δεῖ δὲ λανθάνειν ὅτι πολλαχοῦ συμβέβηκεν ὥστε τὴν μὲν πολιτείαν τὴν κατὰ τοὺς νόμους μὴ δημοτικὴν εἶναι, διὰ δὲ τὸ ἔθος καὶ τὴν ἀγωγὴν πολιτεύεσθαι δημοτικῶς, ὁμοίως δὲ πάλιν παρ᾽ ἄλλοις τὴν μὲν κατὰ τοὺς νόμους εἶναι πολιτείαν δημοτικωτέραν, τῇ δ᾽ ἀγωγῇ καὶ τοῖς ἔθεσιν ὀλιγαρχεῖσθαι μᾶλλον. So again, in a passage which almost reads like a prophetic description of the League, and which indeed may have been true of the small Achaia of his times (Pol. v. [viii] 8. 17); μοναχῶς δὲ καὶ ἐνδέχεται dua εἷναι δημοκρατίαν καὶ ἀριστοκρατίαν. .. τὸ μὲν γὰρ ἐξεῖναι πᾶσιν ἄρχειν δημοκρατικὸν, τὸ δὲ τοὺς γνωρίμους εἷναι ἐν ταῖς ἀρχαῖς ἀριστοκρατικόν. He says that this happens when offices are unpaid, as they were in Achaia. Compare Hamilton’s remarks in the “ Federalist,” No. lviii. (Ὁ. 318). “The people can never err more than in supposing, that by multiplying their repre- sentatives beyond a certain limit, they strengthen the barrier against the govern- ment of afew. Experience will for ever admonish them, that, on the contrary, after securing a sufficient number for purposes of safety, of local information, and of diffusive sympathy with the whole society, they will counteract their own views by every addition to their representatives. The countenance of the government may become more democratic; but the soul that animates it will be more oligarchic. The machine may be enlarged, but the fewer, and often the more secret, will be the springs by which its motions are directed.” The Achaian Government however never deserved the name of an Oligarchy. Tt was an Aristocracy in the literal sense of the word. Vv ARISTOCRATIC ELEMENTS IN PRACTICE 209 were mainly confined to the rich and noble, and they infer that the rich and noble must have had a legal monopoly of office. To an Englishman both phxenomena are perfectly simple. What Analogies happened in Achaia is merely what happens daily before our own ™ nd eyes in England. Every Achaian citizen had a right to a seat τὸ in the Assembly, but practically few besides the high-born and wealthy exercised that right. Every Achaian citizen was legally eligible to the highest offices, but practically the choice of the nation seldom fell upon poor men. So the poorest British sub- ject is legally eligible to the House of Commons equally with the richest, but we know that it is only under exceptional cir- cumstances that any but a rich man is likely to be elected. Even while the property qualification lasted, it was not the legal requirement which kept out poor men, but the practical necessity which imposed, and still imposes, a standard of wealth much higher than that fixed by the old law.t And moreover, it is in the most purely democratic constituencies, in the “ metropolitan ” boroughs for instance, that a poor man has even less chance of election than clsewhere. But though the Democratic Constitution of Achaia produced what was practically an Aristocratic Assembly, it must not be thought that Achaian democratic institutions were mere shadows. The working of the Federal Constitution was aristocratic, but it was not oligarchic. The leading men of Achaia were not a close and oppressive body, fenced in by distinct and odious legal privileges ; their predominance rested merely on sufferance and The As- conventionality, and the mass of the people had it legally in sem oy their power to act for themselves whenever they thought good. cratic but The members of the Assembly, meeting but rarely, and | gathered not oli- from distant cities, could have had none of that close corporate garchic, feeling, that community of interest and habitual action, which is characteristic of the oligarchy of a single town. An Achaian who was led astray from his duty to the national interests, was much more likely to be led astray by regard to the local interests of his own city than by any care for the promotion of aristocracy or democracy among the cities in general. And, of whatever class it was composed, every description of the Assembly sets it 1 The original form of the property qualification had at least an intelligible object. The requirement of real property was meant to serve a class interest. It included the landowner, even of moderate estate, while it excluded the merely monied man, however wealthy. But the property qualification, in its later form, when real property was not required, seems to have been absolutely meaningless, P Practical Demo- cratical elements. 210 ORIGIN AND CONSTITUTION OF ACHAIAN LEAGUE cnap. before us as essentially a popular Assembly, numerous enough to share all the passions, good and bad, which distinguish popular Assemblies. It had all the generous emotions, all the life, heartiness, and energy, and all the rash impctuosity and occa- sional short-sightedness, of a really popular body. So our own House of Commons may, if we look solely to the class of persons of whom it is still mainly composed, be called an aristocratic body ; but, when it comes together, it shows all the passions of a really democratic Assembly. Contrast it with a Spartan or Venetian Senate ; contrast 1t even with our own House of Lords. So the Achaian Congress, though the mass of those present at any particular meeting might be men of aristocratie position, was still in spirit, as it was in name, an Assembly of the Achaian People. Its members could not venture on any oppressive or exclusive legislation against men who were legally their equals, and who had a perfect right, if they chose to encounter the cost and trouble, to take their places in the same Sovereign Assembly as themselves. We cannot doubt, and we find it distinctly affirmed of one occasion,! that, in times of great excitement, many citizens appeared in the Assembly who were not habitual frequenters of its sittings. Extraordinary Meetings, summoned by the Government to discuss special and urgent business, would, as a rule, be far more largely attended than the half-yearly Meetings in which the ordinary affairs of the Commonwealth were transacted.2 And we must always remember that each city retained its independent democratic government, its Assembly sovereign in all local affairs, and in which Federal questions, though they could not be decided, were no doubt often dis- cussed.* In the Assembly of the State, if not in the Federal Congress, rich and poor really met on equal terms, and many opportunities must have arisen for calling in question the conduct of those citizens who took an active part in Federal business. A Federal politician whose votes at Aigion were ob- noxious to his fellow-citizens at home might be made to suffer for his delinquency in many ways. Thus the people at large held many checks upon those who were practically their rulers, and it was legally open to them to undertake at any time the 1 Pol. xxxviii. 4. See above, p. 205. Compare the description of the tumul- tuous Assembly in Livy, xxxil. 22, 2 See Pol. xxix. 9. 3 Liv. xxxii. 19. Neque solum quid in senatu quisque civitatis sue aut in communibus conciliis gentis pro sententia dicerent ignorabant, etc. Υ͂ VOTES TAKEN BY CITIES 211 post of rulers themselves. One can hardly doubt but that those citizens of any particular town who attended the Federal Con- gress practically acted as the representatives of the sentiments of that town. Thus, though the mass of Achaian citizens rarely took any part in the final decision of national affairs, yet the vote of the national Assembly could hardly ever be in opposition to the wishes of the nation at large. The votes in the Assembly were taken, not by heads, but by Votes cities.t On this mode of voting I have already had occasion to taken by make some remarks.” It was one common in the ancient re- by heads.” publics, and it has become familiar to us by its employment in the famous Assembly of the Roman Tribes. Nor is it at all unknown in the modern world. It was the rule of the American Confederation of 1778,3 and the present Constitution of the Union retains it in those cases where the election of a President falls to the House of Representatives In a Representative Constitution this mode of voting must be defended, if it be defended at all, upon other grounds ; in a Primary Assembly, like that of Achaia, it was the only way by which the rights of distant cities could be preserved. Had the votes been taken by heads, the people of the town where the Meeting was held could always have outvoted all the rest of the League. This might Evils have been the case even while the Assembly was held at Aigion, *8ainst _ . . which this and the danger would have been greater still when, in after tem times, Assemblies were held in great cities like Corinth and guarded. Argos. The plan of voting by cities at once obviated this evil. It involves in truth the same principle which led the Patrician Fabius and the Plebeian Decius to join in confining the city- populace to a few tribes, and which has led our own House of Commons steadily to reject all proposals for an increase in the number of “ metropolitan” members. The representative system would of course have effectually secured the League against all fear of citizens from a distance being swamped by the multitude of one particular town. But the representative system had not 1 See Niebuhr, Hist. Rome, ii. 29, Eng. Tr. Thirlwall, viii. 92. Kortiim (iii. 160) maintains the contrary ; but it is impossible to believe that passages like Liv. xxxii. 22, 23 and xxxviii, 82 merely mean that the citizens of the same town sat together in the theatre. 2 See above, p. 165. 3 Articles of Confederation, Art. v. § 4. 4 Art. ii. 8 1. 3, and the 12th Amendment. The Confederate Constitution preserves the same rule, and introduces it in another case, namely the voting of the Senate on the admission of new States. Art. iv. § 3. 1. Evils of the Achaian arrange- ment of votes, 212 ORIGIN AND CONSTITUTION OF ACHAIAN LEAGUE cuap. been revealed to the statesmen of Achaia, any more than to those of other parts of Greece. As matters stood, the only remedy was to put neighbouring and distant cities on an equality by ordering that the mere number of citizens present from each town should have no effect on the division. And of course the most obvious form which such a regulation could take was to give a single vote to each city. And probably, while the League was confined to the ten towns of the old Achaia, no bad conse- quences arose from this arrangement. Some of the towns were doubtless larger than the others, but there could have been no very marked disparity among them. But it was quite another matter when the League took in great and distant cities lke Sikyén, Corinth, Megalopolis, Argos, at last even Sparta and Messéné. It was clearly unjust that such cities as these should have no greater weight in the national Congress than the petty towns of the old Achaia. It was the more unjust, because we can easily conceive that questions might arise on which the old ten towns would always stick close together, and so habitually out- vote five or six of the greatest cities of Greece! While the personal influence of Aratos lasted, questions of this sort seemed to have remained pretty much in abeyance, but to provide a counterpoise to this undue weight of the old towns was one great object of the administration of Philopoimén. The most effectual remedy would of course have been to let the vote of each town count, as in the Lykian League,” for one, two, three, or more, according to their several sizes. But this was a political refinement which was reserved for a later generation, and it was one specially unlikely to occur to the mind of an Achaian legis- lator under the actual circumstances of the League. The cities external to the old Achaia were admitted, one by one, into an Achaian League, already regularly formed and practically work- ing. In the earlier stages of its extension, above all when the first step was taken by the union of Sikydén, the admission of new towns into the League was doubtless looked upon as a favour ; in more degenerate times they were sometimes compelled to enter into the League by force. In neither of these cases was it at all likely that a city newly entering into the League should 1 Schorn, p. 61. In dieser Hinsicht strebte der Bund nach villig demo- kratischer Freiheit und Gleichheit, was zwar spiterhin einer Aenderung bedurft hitte, damit nicht die Herrschaft und Gesetzgebung bei den Schwachen gewesen wire, * See above, p. 165. Vv CONSEQUENCES OF THE MODE OF VOTING 213 -- - ----- - - > — -ος receive any advantage over those cities which already belonged to it. To have given Siky6n two votes and Corinth three, while the No fair small Achaian towns retained only one each, would have been no ore more than just in itself—if indeed it would have reached the strict against the justice of the case—but it would have been a political develope- League. ment for which there was as yet no precedent, and which we can have no right to expect at the hands of Aratos or of any other statesman.! It was a great step in advance of anything that Greece had seen, when new cities were admitted into the League at all on terms of such equality as the Achaians offered. Greece had already seen petty Leagues among kindred towns or dis- tricts; she had secn great Confederacies gathered around a presiding, or it may be a tyrant, city ; but she had never before seen any state or cluster of states offer perfect equality of political rights to all Greeks who would join them. The League offered to its newest members an equal voice in its Assemblies with the oldest ; it made the citizens of all alike equally eligible to direct its counsels and to command its armies. It is hardly fair to blame a state which advanced so far beyond all earlier precedent merely because it did not devise a further improve- ment still. Had that improvement been proposed, anterior to the experience which proved its necessity, it would have appeared, to all but the deepest political thinkers, to contradict that equality among the several members which was the first principle of the Federal Constitution. Had any patriotic Corin- thian claimed a double vote as due to the superior size and glory’ of his native city, he would have seemed to threaten Dymé and Tritaia with the fate which Thespia and Orchomenos had met with at the hands of Thebes. Lykia made exactly the improvement which was needed, because her legislators had the past experience of Achaia to profit by. The Achaian principle was revived in all cases under the first American Confederation, and it is re- tained in one very important case in the actual Constitution of the United States. Nor is it in all cases an error; the principle of equality of votes for every State, great and small, has always been adhered to in one branch of the Federal Legislature, and it has always been rightly defended as a necessary check on the supremacy of mere numbers. In short, though-the Achaian 1 See Schorn, 67, 68. His strictures are perfectly just in themselves, but they are rather hard on Aratos and the Achaians merely for not possessing premature wisdom. General merits of the Achaian Constitu- tion. Short and unfrequent Meetings of the Assembly. From B.0. 217. 214 ORIGIN AND CONSTITUTION OF ACHAIAN LEAGUE cnap. Constitution failed, in this respect, to attain to the full theore- tical perfection of the Lykian constitution, yet the League fully merits the enthusiastic praises of its own historian as the body which, without retaining selfish privileges or selfish advantages, first freely offered Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity to every inhabitant of Peloponnésos.! The same causes which made the Achaian Assembly practi- cally an aristocratic body served also to make its sittings short and unfrequent. The League had no capital and no court; there was nothing to tempt men to stay at the place of meeting any longer than the affairs of the nation absolutely required. Every man’s heart was with his hearth and home in his own city: he went up to do his duty in the Federal Assembly, and to offer sacrifice to the Federal God; but to tarry half the year away from his own house and his own fields was an idea which never entered the head of an Achaian politician. The Assembly met of right twice yearly,? in Spring and Autumn. The Magis- trates were originally elected at the Spring Meeting, afterwards most probably in the Autumn. The Session was limited to three days.* Besides the two yearly Meetings, it rested with the Government to summon extraordinary Meetings, on occasions of special urgency.®, From the shortness of the Assembly’s 1 Pol, ii. 39, 42. 2 The two yearly Meetings are clearly implied in Pol. xxxviii, 2, 3. The Roman Ambagsadors come to the Autumn Meeting at Aigion (διαλεγομένων τοῖς ᾿Αχαιοῖς ἐν τῇ τῶν Αἰγιέων πόλει, c. 2). It is agreed that, instead of the Assembly coming to a decisive vote, the Ambassadors should meet some of the Achaian leaders in a diplomatic conference at ,Tegea. Kritolaos meets them there, and tells them that he can do nothing without the authority of the next Assembly, to be held six months after (els τὴν ἑξῆς σύνοδον, ἥτις ἔμελλε γενέσθαι μετὰ μῆνας ἔξ). This was, of course, mere mockery, as a special Assembly could have been called, or special powers might have been obtained from the Meeting at Aigion, but the pretext shows the regular course of things, The Autumn Meeting appears in Pol. ii. 54; iv. 14; xxiv. 12; the Spring Meeting in iv. 6, 7, 26, 27, 87; ν. 1. So seemingly in xxvili. 7, by the name of N πρώτη ἀγορά. 3 See Schorn, p. 210, Thirlwall, viii. 295. Cf. Clinton, Fast. Hell. A. 146. 4 Pol. xxix. 9. Liv. xxxii. 22. Both of these are cases of an extraordinary Meeting (σύγκλητος). If this rule prevailed on such occasions, much more would it in the common half-yearly Meetings. 5 Pol. v. 1. ὁ δὲ βασιλεὺς Φίλιππος. . . . συνῆγε τοὺς ᾿Αχαιοὺς διὰ τῶν ἀρχόντων εἰς ἐκκλησίαν. See below, p. 426. The words κατὰ νόμους in the next sentence show that this was a perfectly regular proceeding. Cf. Pol. xxiii. 10. 12; xxiv. 5. In one case (Pol. iv. 7) we meet with a strange phenomenon of a Military Vv TIMES AND PLACE OF MEETING 215 Sessions naturally followed certain restrictions on its powers, Conse- certain augmentations of the powers of the executive Govern- quent Re- ment, which to an Athenian would have seemed the utter Striehon destruction of all democratic freedom. It has been thought, on Powers. the highest of all authorities,! that, in an extraordinary Assembly at least—and an extraordinary Assembly would, almost by the nature of the case, have to deal with more important business than an ordinary one—a majority of the Executive Cabinet could legally refuse to allow any question to be put to the vote. This seems at least doubtful ;? but it is evident that, in a Session The of three days, the right of private members to bring in bills, or Initiative even to move amendments, must have been practically very much practically curtailed. No doubt the initiative always practically remained Govern- in the hands of the Government. In an extraordinary Assembly ment. it was so in the strictest sense, as such an Assembly could only entertain the particular business on which it was summoned to decide.* And in all cases, what the Assembly really had to do was to accept or reject the Ministerial proposals, or, 1t may be, to accept the counter-proposals of the leaders of Opposition. The ordinary Assemblies were, at least during the first period Place of of the League, always held at Aigion ; but it seems to have been Meeting ; in the power of the Government to summon the extraordinary ree gion, Assembly, an idea tolian or Macedonian rather than Achaian. The ordinary Meeting votes that the General shall summon the whole force of the League in arms, and that the army thus assembled shall ‘debate and determine (συνάγειν Tov στρατηγὸν τοὺς ᾿Αχαιοὺς ἐν τοῖς ὅπλοις, ὃ δ᾽ ἂν τοῖς συνελθοῦσι βονυλενομένοις δόξῃ τοῦτ᾽ εἶναι κύριον). This looks like an unusually small attendance at the regular Assembly. Cf. Livy, xxxviii. 33. 1 Thirlwall, viii. 91, 92. 2 The passage referred to is Liv. xxxii. 22. See Schorn, 242. Here the δαμιοργοί are equally divided whether to put a certain question to the vote or not; but this does not prove that they had the power to refuse to put any question, because the objectors ground their refusal on the illegal nature of the particular motion. The case seems rather to be like the famous refusal of Sokratés, when presiding in the Athenian Assembly, to put an illegal motion to the vote. See Xen. Hell. i. 7. 15. Cf. Grote, viii. 271. 3 Liv. xxxi. 25. Non licere legibus Acheorum de aliis rebus referre, quam propter quas convocati essent. It does not however follow from this that private members could not propose amendments, or even substantial motions, relating to that business, and it seems clear from a passage in Polybios (xxix. 9) that they might. (τῇ δὲ δευτέρᾳ τῶν ἡμερῶν, ἐν ἢ κατὰ τοὺς νόμους ἔδει τὰ ψηφίσματα προσφέρειν τοὺς βουλομένους, x.T.\.) In the Assembly which he describes two quite different motions are made and discussed. Most probably the Government proposals were made on the first day, those of private members on the second, and the vote taken on the third. afterwards other Cities. Advan- tages of Aigion. B.0. 189. Greater power of Magis- trates in Achaia than at Athens. 216 ORIGIN AND CONSTITUTION OF ACHAIAN LEAGUE crap, Assemblies, as at any time, so in any place, which might be convenient.! Aigion had been chosen as the place of meeting for the original League? as being the most important of the old Achaian towns after the destruction of Heliké. In after times it was at least as well adapted for the purpose for an opposite reason. It might be the greatest member of the original League, but it was insignificant compared with the powerful cities which were afterwards enrolled in the Union. Aigion was a better place for the Federal Government than Corinth or Megalopolis, for the same reason that Washington is a better place for the American Federal Government than New York. There was not the least fear of Aigion ever being to the League of Achaia what Thebes had, in times past, been to the League of Beeotia. Still, however, a certain dignity, and some material advantage, must have accrued to Aigion from the holding of the Federal Assemblies, and from the probable frequent presence of the Federal Magistrates at other times. This may well have aroused a certain degree of jealousy among the other towns, and we shall see that, at a later time,‘Philopoimén carried a measure which left the League without even the shadow of a capital, and obliged the Federal Assemblies to be held in every city of the League in turn.® I have several times, in discussing Achaian affairs, used the words Government, Ministers, Cabinet, and such like. I have done so of set purpose, in order to mark the most important of ull the differences between the city-Democracy of Athens and the Federal Democracy of Achaia. In speaking of Athenian politics no words could be more utterly inappropriate ; Démos was at once King and Parliament; the Magistrates whom he elected were simply agents to carry out his orders. This was perfectly natural in a Democracy whose Sovereign Assembly regularly met once in ten days. Another course was equally natural in a Democracy whose Sovereign Assembly regularly met only twice in each year. It was absolutely necessary in such a case to invest the Magistrates of the Republic with far greater official 1 See Helwing, p. 227. 2 Strabo, viii. 7.3. Kal κοινοβούλιον εἰς ἕνα τόπον συνήγετο αὐτοῖς (ἐκαλεῖτο δὲ ᾿Αμάριον) ἐν ᾧ τὰ κοινὰ ἐχρημάτιζον καὶ οὗτοι καὶ "Twves πρότερον, and 7b. 5, Αἰγιέων δ᾽ ἐστὶ καὶ ταῦτα καὶ Ἑλίκη καὶ τὸ τοῦ Διὸς ἄλσος τὸ ᾿Αμάριον ὅπου συνήεσαν οἱ ᾿Αχαιοὶ βουλευσόμενοι περὶ τῶν κοινῶν. 3 See Helwing, 227, 228. Thirlwall, viii. 393. That it was actually carried, though Tittmann (682) thinks otherwise, appears from Pol. xxiv. 12, where an ordinary meeting is held at Megalopolis. Vv POWERS OF THE GOVERNMENT 217 me me --- «τς a me ee eee ee - powers than any Magistrates possessed at Athens from the days of Kleisthenés onwards. It was, in short, necessary to give them the character of what we, in modern phrase, understand by a Government, and to confine the Assembly to the functions of a Parliament. We must of course make one exception, required The by the universal political instinct of Greece ; the final vote on matters of Peace, War, and Alliance rested with the Assembly. tr Achaian Magis- ates This follows at once from the difference between a republican form a Assembly, sovereign in name as well as in fact, and the Parlia- ment of a Monarchy, which in theory is the humble and dutiful Council of a personal Sovereign. All the differences between Athens and Achaia naturally flow from the differences between the position and extent of the two commonwealths. In the single City of Athens the democratic theory could be strictly carried out ; in the large Federal territory of Achaia it could be carried out only in a very modified form. The extent of territory led to the infrequent Meetings of the Assembly; the infrequent Meetings of the Assembly led to the increased authority of the Magistrates; for a ruling power must be lodged somewhere during the three hundred and fifty-nine days when the Sovereign Assembly was not in being. We therefore find the Federal Magistrates of Achaia acting with almost as little restraint as the Ministers of a modern constitutional state. They are the actual movers and doers of everything; the functions of the Assembly are nearly reduced to hearing their proposals and saying Aye or No to them. And, as the Magistrates were themselves elected by the Assembly, we should naturally expect, what the history at every step shows us to have been the case, that the vote of the Assembly would be much oftener Aye than No. The Achaian Assembly was addressed by Ministers whom its own vote had placed in office six months before ; it would, under all ordinary circumstances, give them a very favourable hearing, and would not feel that sort of jealousy which often exists between the American Congress and the American President. In fact, the relations between an Achaian Govern- ‘* Govern- ment.’”’ ment and an Achaian Assembly were in some respects more like Compari- those between an English Government and an English House of son with America Commons than the relations between an American President and gna Eng- an American Congress. The Achaian Magistrates, being Achaian land. citizens, were necessarily members of the Achaian Assembly ; so in England the Ministers are, by imperative custom, members of Points of greater likeness to Eng- land. 218 ORIGIN AND CONSTITUTION OF ACHAIAN LEAGUE cuap. one or other House of Parliament. In Achaia therefore, just as in England, the members of the Government could appear personally before the Assembly to make their proposals and to defend their policy. But in America the Ministers of the President are strictly excluded from seats in Congress,! and the President communicates with that body only by a written Message. Again, as Congress does not elect,” so neither can it remove, either the President or his Ministers; it therefore follows that the Legislative and Executive branches may remain, during a whole Presidency, in complete opposition to one another. In England the House of Commons does not either formally appoint or formally depose the Ministry, for the simple reason that the Ministry has no legal existence ; but it does both in a way which, if indirect, is still highly effectual. In Achaia, the Government was, not indirectly but directly, chosen by the Assembly. There was not, any more than in America, any constitutional means of removing them before the end of their term of office; a Government which had ceased to enjoy the confidence of the House had therefore to be constitutionally borne with for a season. But, as their term of office was cnly one year instead of four, such a season of endurance would be much shorter than it sometimes isin America. Even in England, a Government must be weak indeed which, when once in office, cannot, by the power of Dissolution or otherwise, contrive to retain power for as long a time as an unpopular Achaian Govern- ment could ever have had to be borne with. Altogether the general practical working of the Achaian system was a remarkable advance in the direction of modern constitutional government. And it especially resembles our own system in leaving to usage, to the discretion of particular persons and Assemblies, and to the natural working of circumstances, much which nations of a more theoretical turn of mind might have sought to rule by positive law. 1 Constitution, Art. i. § 6. 2. This restriction is modified in the Confederate Constitution. 2 Congress never elects the President freely ; under certain circumstances (see Amendment 12) the House of Representatives have to choose a President from among three candidates already named, The President again may be (Art. i. § 3. 6; ii. § 4) deposed by a judicial sentence of the Senate‘on an impeachment by the House of Representatives. But this of course requires proof of some definite crime ; there is no constitutional way of removing him simply because his policy is disapproved. v FEDERAL MAGISTRACIES 219 The Achaian Government then, when its details were finally Federal settled, consisted of Ten Ministers, who formed a Cabinet Offices. Council for the General of the Achaians, or, in modern language, the President of the Union. Besides these great officers, there was also a Secretary of State, an Under-General,? and a General General of of Cavalry. It is probable that the latter two functionaries Cavalry. were merely military officers, and did not fill any important political position. It is clear, for instance, that the Under- under- General, was, in civil matters at least, a less important person General. than the Vice-President of the American Union. The American Vice-President is ex-officio President of the Senate, and, in case of any accidental vacancy in the Presidentship, he succeeds to the office for the remainder of the term. But of the Achatan Under-General we hear nothing in civil affairs, and if the General died in office, his place for the remainder of the year was taken, not by the Under-General, but by the person who had been yeneral the year before.* The active officers of the League in civil matters were clearly the General, the Secretary, and the Ten Ministers. The exact functions of the Secretary are not described, but it is easy to guess at them. He was doubtless, as Secretary Secretaries of State are now, the immediate author of all public οὗ State. despatches, and in minor matters he may often have been entitled, as Secretaries of State are now, to act on his own responsibility. It is evident from the way in which both Polybios and Strabo speak of it, that the office was one of high dignity and importance. 1 Τραμματεύς. Pol. ii. 48. Strabo, viii. 7. The office was as old as the League. 2 'Yroorparyyos. Pol. iv. 59; xl. 5. Inv. 94 one Lykos of Pharai is called ὑποστράτηγος τῆς συντελείας τῆς πατρικῆς. ThisI take to mean a local magistrate of some little confederacy formed by Pharian townships like those of Patrai. See above, p. 192. Or, in the particular place where the phrase occurs, it may refer to the temporary union of Dymé, Pharai, and Tritaia in B.c. 219. See below, Chapter viii, Hither of these views seems more likely than that he was “com- mander of the pure Achaian forces, as distinguished from those of the whole League.” K. Τ᾿, Hermann, 186. 9. Such a distinction is quite alien to the whole spirit of the constitution. But no explanation seems quite satisfactory. The use of πατρικῆς seems so very strange that, when one remembers the expression in Polybios (xl. 3), Πατρεῖς καὶ τὸ μετὰ τούτων συντελικόν, one is strongly tempted to read Ilarpixyjs. Yet would Πατρικός be a correct Gentile form, and could a citizen of Pharai be a Magistrate at Pharai? There is certainly the case of Aratos’ State-Generalship at Argos. See p. 201. 3 Ἵππάρχης. Pol. v.95; x. 22; xxviii. 6. Schorn (p. 62) supposes that this officer took the place of the second General, when the number was reduced to two. This may well be true in his military, but hardly in his civil, capacity. Pol, xl, 2. The Ten Ministers. Probably chosen from all the Cities. 220 ORIGIN AND CONSTITUTION OF ACHAIAN LEAGUE cuHaAp. The Ten Ministers, the Cabinet Council of the President, are called by various names.!. They seem to have been the Federal Magistrates of the League in its earlier and looser state. Their number ten, as several writers have observed,? evidently points to the reduced number of the old Achaian towns after the loss of Heliké and Olenos. This at once suggests a question as to the position of these Magistrates when new cities were added to the League. The number remained unaltered ;* and it has hence been inferred that the Cabinet Council always continued to be filled by citizens of the old Achaian towns.4 Yet it would be of itself almost impossible to believe that this important office was confined to citizens of the old Achaia, and that an Argive, a Corinthian, or a Megalopolitan would have been ineligible. Had such been the case, we should hardly have found Polybios, himself a citizen of a non-Achaian town, using such strong language as he does as to the liberality of the League in extend- ing full equality of rights to every city which joined it, and reserving no exclusive privileges to the elder members.® In conformity with these professions, the (zeneral, as we know, was freely chosen from any of the towns enrolled in the League, and indeed he seems to have been, oftener than not, a citizen of a non-Achaian canton. These arguments alone would almost lead us to believe that, when the League had attained its full develope- ment, the old number Ten, though still retained, ceased to bear any practical reference to the ancient number of towns, and that 1 Their formal title was δημιουργοί, δαμιοργοί, Damtiuryt. Pol. xxiv. 5. Plut. Ar. 45. Liv. xxxii. 223 xxxviii. 30. Boeckh, C. 1. 1542 (vol. 1. p. 711, ef. p. 11). There were also local δαμιοργοί as Magistrates of particular cities. They are also more vaguely called ἄρχοντες, ἀρχαί (Pol. v. 15 xxiii, 10, 12 ; xxiv. 5; xxix. 9, 10; xxxviii. 4), and—with evident reference to their joint action with the General—ouvdpxovres, συναρχίαι (Pol. xxiv. 12; xxvil. 2; xxxviii. 5); also προεστῶτες (Pol, ii. 46; iv. 9), πρόβουλοι (1) (Plut. Phil. 21), and, apparently, of THs γερουσίας (Pol. xxxviii. 5). See Thirlwall, viii. 92, 491. Neither Tittmann (683, 6) nor Kortiim (iii. 161) is perfectly clear about this last unusual title. Polybios uses the verb cvvedpetw to express a meeting of the Cabinet, xl. 4. * Schorn, 62, 68. Thirlwall, viii. 91. 3 Livy, xxxii, 22. 4 T take this to be Bishop Thirlwall’s meaning (viii. 111) when he says, “Strange as it appears, we are led to conclude that the places in both these boards continued to be filled by Acheans.” [The rule in the Swiss Bundesverfassung as_ to the constitution of the Bundesrath is different. Art. 84. ‘Die Mitglieder des Bundesrathes werden von der Bundesversammlung aus allen Schweizerbiirgern, welche als Mitglieder des Nationalrathes wahlbar sind, auf die Dauer von drei Jahren ernannt.’’] 5 Pol. ii. 88. Οὐδενὶ γὰρ οὐδὲν ὑπολειπομένη πλεονέκτημα τοῖς ἐξ ἀρχῆς, ἴσα δὲ πάντα ποιοῦσα τοῖς ἀεὶ προσλαμβανομένοις, κιτιλ. Cf. c. 42 throughout. Cf. Κι Ἐν Hermann, § 186, n. 10. Vv THE TEN MINISTERS 221 the office of Minister, as well as the Presidency, was open to every citizen of the League. It not uncommonly happens, in the growth of constitutions, that numbers of this sort are retained long after they have ceased to bear any practical meaning. So the Ten Achaian Ministers may have once really represented the Ten Achaian Towns, and yet, at all events after the accession of Sikyén, they may have been chosen indiscriminately from any of the confederate cities.1 But we are hardly left to argue the point from probabilities. ‘There is a full description in Polybios of the proceedings in an Achaian Cabinet Council,? with the names of several of the members. Four of the Ministers are mentioned, and, of these, three, besides the General, are citizens of Megalo- polis ;* the fourth is a citizen of Aigeira, one of the old Achaian towns. The exact relations of the Ten Ministers and of the Secretary to the executive Chief of the State are not very clearly marked. It must have been essential to the good government of the League that they should be able to work together in tolerable harmony, and that their differences, if they had any, should not go beyond a debate and a division among themselves. For Achaian statesmen had certainly not reached that pitch of refinement by which a division in the Cabinct is held to be a thing not to be thought of. They had not discovered that all differences of opinion must be compromised or concealed, or that, if this is Impossible, the minority must resign office. This is a political refinement which can exist only where, as among ourselves, the whole constitution of the Ministry is something wholly conventional, where the Cabinet has no legal existence, and where the rights and duties of its members are regulated purely by usage. But the Achaian Cabinet was directly clected to a definite office to be held for a definite time ; if differences of opinion arose among its members, they were simply to be 1 The only expression which looks the other way, is that of Damiurgi civi- tatium. Liv. xxxviii. 80. On the other hand, in xxxii. 22, he calls them Magistratus gentis, which tells at least as much for their strictly Federal character. 2 Pol, xxiii. 10, 12. These ἀρχαί, ἄρχοντες, summoned by the General, must be the council of Ministers. Indeed we find nearly the same story over again in Pol. xxiv. 5, where the formal word δημιουργοί is used, clearly as synonymous with ἄρχοντες. 3 Aristainos the General, Diophanés, Philopoimén, and Lykortas, all from Megalopolis ; Archén from Aigeira. The General himself takes no part in the debate, but his party is outvoted. Relations of the Ministers to the General. The Ministers probably generally united among them- selves, An Achaian * Caucus. 222 ORIGIN AND CONSTITUTION OF ACHAIAN LEAGUE cuap. settled by a majority, like differences of opinion in the Senate or in the Assembly itself. In the United States the President chooses his own Ministers, and that with a much greater freedom of choice than is allowed to any Constitutional King. The Achaian President had his Ministers chosen for him; but then they were chosen along with himself, at the same time, and by the same electors; the majority which carried the election of the President himself would probably seldom give him colleagues who were altogether displeasing to him. If, on some occasions,! we find the General and his Cabinet disagreeing, the special mention of the fact seems to show that it was something exceptional. Altogether the science of electioneering seems to have obtained a very fair develope- ment in the League. Polybios in one place gives us a vivid description of an Achaian “ Caucus,”? where several leading men of a particular party met to discuss the general affairs of that party, and especially to settle their “ticket” for the next election. They agreed upon a President and upon a Gencral of Cavalry. It is not expressly said that they agreed upon other Magistrates as well, but we may reasonably infer that they did. At least we cannot infer the contrary from the sole mention of an officer who does not commonly appear in connexion with politics. One cannot help suspecting that the President alone would have been mentioned, if his subordinate officer had not chanced to be the historian himself. In comparing the constitution of the Achaian League with the constitutions of modern free states, it is difficult to avoid speaking of its Chief Magistrate by the modern name of 1 See Pol. xxiii. 10; xl. 4. But in the first case, the disagreement does not go beyond a division in the Cabinet itself. 2 Pol. xxviii. 6. Nothing can be plainer than that this was simply what the Americans call a ‘‘ Caucus.” Yet two distinguished German scholars, Schorn (p. 64) and Droysen (ii. 463), have built upon this passage a theory that the δαμιοργοί (who are not mentioned) had the sole right of proposing candidates for the Presidency. Bishop Thirlwall of course sets them right (viii, 91). Indeed Schorn himself, by the time that he reached the event itself in his actual narra- tive (p. 854), seems to have better understood the state of the case. What Polybios here describes is simply the preliminary process which must go before every public election. This is one of the many cases in which a citizen of a free country has a wonderful advantage in studying the histary of the ancient commonwealths. Many things which the subject of a continental monarchy can only spell out from his books ure to an Englishman or an American matters of daily life. Υ OFFICE OF THE GENERAL 223 President. But we must remember that his real official title The Pre- was Stratégos or General. In all the democratic states of sident or Greece there was a strong tendency to strengthen the hands Genet: of the military-commanders, and to invest them with the func- tions of political magistrates. Thus, at Athens, the Archons remained the nominal chiefs of the state, but their once kingly powers gradually dwindled away into the merest routine. The Ten Generals, officers seemingly not known before Kleisthenés,' po vers of became really the most important persons in the commonwealth, Generals entrusted with as large a share of authority as Démos would 3” other entrust to anybody but himself. The transition between the cree’ two systems is clearly scen at the battle of Marathén, where , . 490. Kallimachos the Polemarch, one of the Archons, is joined in command with the Ten Generals. Earlier, he would have been the sole commander ; later, he would have had no part or lot in the matter. In most of the later Grecian states, especially in the Federal states, we find the highest magistrates bearing the title of General. The number of Generals differed in pjgerent different Leagues, but it was always much smaller than the numbers in Athenian Ten. The Epeirots had at one time as many as ‘ifferent three,” but the Arkadians under Lykomédés,® the Akarnanians,* states. and the Aftolians® had each a sole General. The Achaians, »,, - for the first five-and-twenty years of their renewed Confederacy, Generals elected two Generals. Then an important change was made οὗ the in the constitution by reducing the number to one. In the ὙΜΉΝ emphatic words οἱ Polybios,® “they trusted one man with all reduced their affairs.” ‘“ Now,” he continues, “the first man who to One. — obtained this dignity was Markos of Keryneia.” Markos, it ὅδ 200. 1 Grote, iv. 181. 2 See above, p. 118. 3 See above, p. 159. 4 See above, p. 116. 5 See next Chapter. 8 Pol. ii. 48. Εἴκοσι μὲν οὖν ἔτη τὰ πρῶτα καὶ πέντε συνεπολιτεύσαντο μεθ᾽ ἑαντῶν αἱ προειρημέναι πόλεις, γραμματέα κοινὸν ἐκ περιόδου προχειρι- ζόμεναι καὶ δύο στρατηγούς" μετὰ δὲ ταῦτα πάλιν ἔδοξεν αὐτοῖς ἕνα καθιστάνειν καὶ τούτῳ πιστεύειν ὑπὲρ τῶν ὅλων, καὶ πρῶτος ἔτυχε τῆς τιμῆς ταύτης Μάρκος ὁ Κερυνεύς. [Cf. Strabo, viii. 7. 3. εἶτα ἔδοξεν ἕνα χειροτονεῖσθαι στρατηγόν.] After reading this passage, and after considering the tendency in Federal Greece, in America, and in Switzerland, to give to every Federal body a single President, it is curious to find Calhoun (Works, i. 393) arguing against a single President, saying that no commonwealth ever retained freedom under a single President, wishing to bring the United States to a double Presidency, like that before Markos, and fortifying his position by the examples of the Roman Consuls and the Spartan Kings. It is curious to find all these American writers —Mr. Motley, indeed, is an exception—so thoroughly anxious to find classical precedents, and so constantly missing those which really bear upon their case. Extensive powers of the Office. Compari- son with a modern First Minister. 224 ORIGIN AND CONSTITUTION OF ACHAIAN LEAGUE ocnar. will be remembered, was the gallant deliverer of Boura, and probably, more than any other one man, the true founder of the revived League. He obtained, like Washington, his due reward, to be chosen as the first chief of the land which he had delivered. The practical extent of the Gencral’s powers is here plainly set forth. Everything was entrusted to him ; he was not indeed to rule, like a Tyrant, with unlimited powers, or even, like a lawful King, for an unlimited time ; he was to govern for a single year with a commission limited by Law; but, while his term of office lasted, he was to be the Chief of the State in a sense in which no man, or body of men, had been chief under the elder Democracy of Athens. His will was indeed limited by the necessity of consulting his colleagues in the Government and of bringing all great questions to the decision of the Sovereign Assembly. The will of the most powerful Minister of modern days is limited by the same conditions. No Minister in a free state can legislate at his own pleasure, in his own name or in the name of his Sovereign ; he can impose no tax, he can touch no man’s life or estate: he may indeed, in his Sovereign’s name, make war or peace without formally consulting Parhament, but he cannot venture to declare war or to conclude peace on terms which he knows will be offensive to the majority of the House. Yet it is not the less true that such a Minister may be practically all- powerful; that his colleagues in the Cabinet, and his fellow- members in the House, may accept all his proposals; that he alone may be the real mover in everything, possessed of a practical initiative in all matters, and leaving to other powers in the state a mere right to say No, which they probably never think good to exercise. Such is a powerful HKuropean Minister in our own time; such too was the Gencral of the Achaians. The Republic trusted him with all its affairs; the Assembly of course reserved to itself the final power of saying Aye or No; but every earlier stage of every affair—the beginning of all legislation, the beginning of every negociation,' the bringing of all measures up to the point at which they could be brought forward as motions in the Assembly — everything, in short, which a modern nation looks for at the hands of a strong !'The process of negociation is clearly set forth in Pol. xxviii, 7. A diplo- matic communication is first made to the General, who is favourable to it; he then brings the Ambassadors personally before the Assembly. Vv COMPARISON BETWEEN ATHENS AND ACHAIA 225 Government —all was left to the discretion of the General, in concert with a body of colleagues who commonly looked up to him as their natural leader. Now all this is utterly Compari- contrary to the practice of the earlier democratic states. 8 of yl ΤᾺ . “1 TA ἢ, Aratos and Periklés exercised as great a power as Aratos; Periklés, like pois. Aratos, was practically prince ;+ but Periklés ruled purely by the force of personal character and personal eloquence ; Aratos ruled by virtue of a high official position. It is true that the official position of Aratos was the result of his personal character ; it 1s true that Periklés, like Aratos, held the most important office in his own commonwealth; the difference is that the official position was necessary to the influence of Aratos and that it was not necessary to the influence of Periklés. Periklés was General of the Athenians, one General out of Ten; he was General, both because of his personal inclination and capacity, and because, in that stage of the republic, a man who pretended to advise measures was ex- pected to be ready to carry them out himself. But the position of Periklés in the Athenian Assembly was not the result of his office; it was a position wholly personal; it was a position which was not shared by the other Generals; it was a position which it was soon found that a man might hold without being General. The Assembly listened to Kleén Influence as obediently as it listened to Periklés; Kleén became, no of men less than Periklés had been, the leader of the People, the nae originator of all its policy; but Kleén was simply a private Athens, citizen with no official character whatever ; it was only towards the end of hts days that he foolishly* took upon him an office for which he was unfit, and which had not been needed to support an influence which ended only with his life. Dé- mosthenés again, without any official position, if he did not rule as effectually as Kleén, yet contended on at least equal terms with the official chief Phédkién, and often succeeded in carrying measures of which Phokién utterly disapproved. Now the power of Aratos undoubtedly rested on his personal char- acter ; the League trusted him officially because it trusted him 1 Thue. ii. 65. "Eylyverd re λόγῳ μὲν δημοκρατία, ἔργῳ δὲ ὑπὸ rod, πρώτου ἀνδρὸς ἀρχή. The words ὁ πρῶτος ἀνήρ are not an official title. 21 do not refer to the expedition to Sphaktéria, for which Mr. Grote makes out at least a plausible case, but to his last expedition to Thrace. Probably his success at Sphaktéria had turned his head, and made him seek for an office which he had never before thought of. Q Greater import- ance of Office in Achaia. 226 ORIGIN AND CONSTITUTION OF ACHAIAN LEAGUE crap. personally ; indeed it trusted him in a way in which it trusted no one else; other Generals, with the same legal powers, could never exercise anything like the same practical authority.’ This is simply the difference, with which we are all familiar, between a weak Government and a strong one. But the influence of Aratos was nevertheless of a kind which could not be exer- cised without a high official position; he could not have ruled the League, as Kleén ruled Athens, as a private citizen in the Assembly, any more than the greatest of statesmen and orators could govern England from the cross benches. During the whole history of Athens, we find the counsels of the Republic directed by eloquent speakers in the Assembly, who hold office or not as it happens to suit them personally. During the whole history of the Achaian League, we find its counsels constantly directed by those citizens whom it chose to its high magistracies. It is clear that an Athenian statesman could dispense with office if he pleased; it is equally clear that an Achaian statesman sought office as naturally as an English statesman; without it, he might indeed win fame as an opposition speaker, but he could not hope to be the real guiding spirit of the commonwealth. It is clear also that an Athenian General, though warfare and diplomacy formed his immediate department of the public business, was by no means the necessary originator of military and diplomatic measures. An Athenian General might, as Nikias and Phékidn were, be sent, without any loss of official dignity, to carry out plans against which he had, as a citizen in the Assembly, argued with all his force. It is equally clear that an Achaian General was the very soul of the League, the prime deviser of every- thing. Aratos did not often sce his proposals rejected, though that might happen now and then. But it certainly never happened that he was ordered, like Nikias, to carry out the opposite proposals of anybody else. The whole history then shows that the Achaian General really stood at the head of the League, in a way in which no one stood at the head of any of the earlier Greek republics, but in a way very like that in which a powerful Minister stands at the head of a modern constitutional state. He 1 See the account given by Polybios (v. 30) of the contemptible adminis- tration of Epératos. Everybody despised him, nobody obeyed him, nothing was ready, etc. Vv COMPARISON OF ACHATIA, ENGLAND, AND AMERICA 297 resembled the American President in being formally elected Compari- for a definite time, while the position of an English Minister ἦρι of the . . . . Cnhajan is at once conventional and precarious. But in many respects (General, his duties came nearer to those of an English First Minister the than to those of an American President. The main difference American . . . President, is one which has been already hinted at, namely that the sia ine Achaian President was a member, and the leading member, English of Congress itself, while the American President is something First external to Congress. ‘The Achaian President did not com- Minister. municate his sentiments by a Message, but by a speech from the Treasury Bench.! It follows therefore that he formally made motions on which the House voted, while in America the Houses vote first and send their conclusions to the Presi- dent.2- An Achaian Federal Law was a motion of the General Goser passed by the Assembly ; an American Federal Law is an Act approach of Congress confirmed by the President. In America, in short, eee there is no Ministry in our sense, because there is no King. system, Or, perhaps more truly, the President is a four-years’ King, owing to a King with very limited powers, but who, within the extent the Gene- of those powers, really governs as well as reigns. Being a hinselfa King then, he cannot be a member of his own Parhament ; member all he can do is to recommend measures from outside, and, jane when they are passed, cither confirm them or send them back ~ - for reconsideration.2 Our monarchical forms really come nearer to the Parliamentary relations which existed in the Achaian Republic than is done by the Republic of the United States. An English Minister, being himself a Member of Parliament, 1 he first two Presidents, Washington and Adains, opened each Session of Congress with @ speech ; at other stages of the Session they sent messages. In both these respects they followed the common practice of Kings. Jefferson extended the custom of the written message to the opening of the Session (see Tucker’s Life of Jefferson, ii. iii. 2). Such speeches were “ King’s speeches,” proceeding from an external power, not “ ministerial statements,” proceeding from a Member of the House, 2 The President may recommend measures to Congress (Constitution, Art. ii. § 3), just as a King does, but he cannot make a motion in Congress, like the Achaian General. Congress passes bills, and sends them to the President, for approval (Art. i. § 7. 2), as toa King. On the other hand, the Senate (Art. ii. § 2. 2) can confirm or reject many official acts of the President ; but here the Senate is not acting in a strictly legislative character, and the House of Repre- sentatives is not consulted. 3 The President has no absolute veto, but a measure sent back by him cannot be passed again except by a majority of two-thirds of both Houses (Art. i. § 7. 2). Tuis is practically a more valuable power. Greater power in the General necessary ina Federal than in a City Demo- cracy. 228 ORIGIN AND CONSTITUTION OF ACHAIAN LEAGUE cnap. retains his power of making direct motions, and, as Minister, he practically acquires the sole right of making important motions with any chance of success. And, as the Royal Veto is never used, the decision of the Houses is practically as final as that of the Achaian Assembly. This lofty position of the Achaian Gencral, as compared with that of any Athenian Magistrate, is the crowning example of those tendencies which naturally arise from the different position of a City Democracy and of a Federal Democracy. In either case the Republic necds some centre, some visible head. At Athens the ‘Ten Generals were really that head ; some of them were always on the spot; but if any unforeseen emergency took place, there was no necd for them to act on their own responsibility ; an ordinary Assembly of the People could not be many days distant, and an extraordinary one might, if need be, be summoned even sooner. In such a state of things there was really no occasion to give the Magistrates any large powers. But turn to Achaia; if an unforeseen emergency arose ;—if a foreign Ambassador, for instance, arrived with important proposals; if King Kleomenés threatened or King Ptolemy made friendly advances—where was he to look for the Achaian League? The Athenian Démos was never very far from his Pnyx, but the League was, for three hundred and fifty-nine days in the year, scattered to and fro over all Peloponnésos. In such a state of things there must be some one to represent the nation; some one who can be found at once; some one who can enter into negociations, who has authority to give a provisional answer, and who can summon the Assembly to give a final one. Such a representative of the nation the constitution of the League provided in its General. Every application was first made to him; he con- sulted his Ministers; in concert with them, he either brought the matter before the next ordinary Assembly, or, if the business was specially urgent, he called an extraordinary As- sembly specially to consider it. In that Assembly his proposals were not merely those of an eloquent citizen, they carried with them all the weight of a modern Government measure. On any weighty matter, it was his business to come forward and declare} his mind, exactly as it is the business of the Leader 1 Pol. xxviii. 7. ᾿Βκάλει yap τὰ πράγματα τὴν τοῦ στρατηγοῦ γνώμην. Cf. Livy, xxxv. 25. Multitudo Philopemenis sententiam exspectabat. Pretor v INCREASED POWERS OF MAGISTRATES IN A FEDERATION 229 --τοὄ.-ὦΞ ... of the House in our own Parliament. The main difference is that, if by any ill luck his proposals were rejected, the General on the one hand could not dissolve the Assembly, and on the other he was not expected to resign his own office. The same chain of reasoning, which shows the necessity of the large powers which were vested in the Achaian Government, leads also irresistibly to the conclusion that the members of that Government were always men of wealth and high social position. As every Achaian citizen wasa member of the Achaian Assembly, so, in the absence of the slightest proof to the contrary, we cannot doubt that every Achaian citizen was legally eligible to every Office in the Achaian commonwealth. But if only well-to- do citizens could habitually attend the Assembly, it is clear that only very wealthy citizens could be commonly chosen to the high offices of the State. There is commonly, even under the most democratic forms, a tendency in the pcople themselves to give a preference to birth and wealth. It is only in days of strong reaction against oligarchic oppression that this tendency utterly dies away. In most ages and countries the aristocrat of liberal politics is the most popular of all characters. Kven in the Athenian Democracy, though low-born Demagogues! might guide the counsels of the Assembly, the office of General was almost always conferred on members of the old nobility. In the Achaian League this natural tendency must have become a practical necessity. There is no evidence that any public officer of the League was paid; there is distinct evidence that some important public officers were not paid ;* and the office of General is distinctly spoken of as one which involved great expense." Now none but men who were at once rich, ambitious, and zealous, is tum erat, eb omnes eo tempore et prudentia et auctoritate anteibut. In both these cases the General, like an English Minister, does not speak till atter several other speakers, and apparently not till the House began to call for him. 1 T use this word in its original neutral sense, a Leader of the People, whether for good or for evil. An Athenian δημαγωγός in later ties is a citizen, be he Hyperbolos or be he Démosthenés, who is influential in the Assembly without holding office. But Isokrat¢és (περὶ Kip. 126) applies the word to Periklés him- self. 2 This is clear in the case of the Senators. See Pol. xiii. 7 and Thirlwall, viii, 92. Of course I suppose only the great magistracies to have been unpaid. In Achaia, as everywhere else, there must have been plenty of paid subordinates. 3 Polybios (xxviii. 7) incidentally mentions the expensiveness of the General’s office ; διὰ τὸ πλῆθος ἱκανὸν χρημάτων els τὴν ἀρχὴν δεδαπανηκέναι ["Apywvra]. This passage alone would be enough to prove the unpaid nature of public office in Achaia. Members of the Govern- ment necessarily wealthy men. Offices in the eague apparently unpaid No pro- perty qualifica- tion. Natural effect of unpaid offices. 230 ORIGIN AND CONSTITUTION OF ACHAIAN LEAGUE cuHap. would or could accept offices which involved oncrous duties and large expenses, and which carried with them only honorary rewards. We are ourselves familiar with an unpaid Magistracy, an unpaid Parliament, a Government not unpaid indeed, but whose highest members reccive salaries barely covering their expenses, and therefore do not seek for office as a source of personal gain. We therefore can fully understand the working of a similar system in Achaia. We can understand how the system might be safely left to its own practical working, how an unpaid Magistracy would necessarily be an aristocratic Magis- tracy, without the requirement of any property qualification. Here again, we see how great an advantage a student of ancient history derives from familiarity with the usages of a free state. One of the very best of German scholars,! finding that in practice the men who held the high magistracies and who filled the Federal Tribunals? were always rich men, has supposed the existence of a property qualification for office, of whose existence no proof or likelihood whatever is found in our authorities. Had such a qualification been enforced by law, Polybios ceuld. never have spoken as he does of the strictly democratic character of the Achaian constitution. Our own great historian of this period,® as usual, instinctively sees the truth of the case. Every Englishman knows that no law forbids the poorest man to become a Member of Parliament, or even a Cabinet Minister. Yet, though no law forbids him, the poor man is so far from being likely to be elected a member himself, that he has small chance of being listened to even as the proposer of a candidate. [ven where there is a qualification, as in the case of Justices of Peace, 1 Droysen, ii. 461, 2. Lam quite at a loss to guess what the use of the word κτηματικοί in one of the passages of Polybios (v. 93) which Droysen quotes has to do with the matter. The historian is speaking of a local quarrel between rich and poor at Megalopolis. 2 One cannot doubt either that there were Federal Courts or that their members were commonly wealthy men, Poor men could not often appear in an unpaid court sitting at a distance. But Iam not quite sure that the passage commonly cited in proof of the fact really bears on the matter. According to Plutarch (Phil. 7), the Knights (ἐπ πεῖς) were μάλιστα κύριοι τιμῆς Kat κολάσεως, This is generally taken to mean that the judges or jurors—the Greek δικασταί are some- thing between the two—in the Federal Courts were commonly men of the eques- trian census. Cf. Thirlwall, viii. 938. But I do not feel quite certain whether the κόλασις here spoken of may not be parliamentary rather than judicial, as the τιμή Clearly refers to the influence of the equestrian class in disposing of the great Federal magistracies. See the parallel passage of Polybios, x. 22. 3 Thirlwall, viii. p. 98. V EFFECT OF UNPAID OFFICES 231 ἃ man 1s seldom appointed who does not possess much more— or at least who does not belong to a class whose members com- monly possess much more—than the legal qualification for the office. In Achaia, as in England, these things doubtless settled themselves. There is everywhere a certain natural influence about birth and wealth, which does not spring from legal enact- ments, and which no legal cnactments can take away. All that Democracy—legal and regular Democracy !—can do is to deprive birth and wealth of all legal advantage, and to let birth, wealth, talent, happy accident, all start fair and all find their level. This the Democracy of Athens and the Democracy of Achaia both did; only circumstances, not laws, fixed the practical standard of eligibility at ἃ much higher point in the Democracy of Achaia than in the Democracy of Athens. We will now attempt to gather what information we can from our authorities as to the exact legal powers of the Achaian General and his Councillors. It has heen doubted ? whether the Power of .power of summoning extraordinary Assemblies rested with the ΝΣ μας General or with the Ten Ministers. One can hardly doubt that ες vested it was vested in the General acting with the concurrence of his in the Ministers? This union of a Governor and a Council is not General ἴῃ . . . . . . __ Council. unknown cithcr in American States or in English Colonies. But the formal presidency of the Assembly, and the duty of The putting questions to the vote, clearly rested with the Ten Ministers . . . e act as Ministers and not with the General. The reason is obvious. Sneakers ae of the 1 A constitution which by legal enactments excludes any class, be that class Assembly the rich or the poor, the patrician or the plebeian, has no right to the name of Democracy—it is essentially Oligarchic. “ K. FL Hermann, § 186, p. 392, Eng. ΤΥ. Ὁ Pol. v. 1. (See above, p. 214, and below, 426.) Compare xxiii. 10 throughout. The General and ἄρχοντες meet the Roman Ambassador and decline to call an Assembly. + See the passage in Livy (xxxii. 22) quoted already. Jf Bishop Thirlwall be right, as he clearly is, in thinking that οἱ τῆς γερουσίας in Pol. xxxviil. 5 mean the δαμιοργοί (viii. 92, 491), we find them distinctly acting as Speakers of the Assembly. ‘They seem to be the ἄρχοντες mentioned just before, and ἄρχοντες in Polybios means the δαμιοργοί. They call the President of the Union, Krito- laos, to order for unparliamentary language. This was in very late, bad, and violent times ; one vannot fancy Aratos or Philopoimeén receiving or needing such an interruption, though doubtless they were legally open to it, just as an English First Minister may be called to order by the Speaker. Drumann (p. 462) seems to confound this γερουσία with the βουλή or Senate. Tittmann (688) accurately distinguishes them, though he is not quite clear about their identity with the δαμιοργοί. Joint action in diplomatic matters. B.C. 223. 282 ORIGIN AND CONSTITUTION OF ACHAIAN LEAGUE cnap, The General was necessarily an important speaker; he had to explain and to defend his policy; he would have been as unfit to act as President of the Assembly as the Leader of the House of Commons is to be at the same time its Speaker.! Theoreti- cally the same.objection might seem to apply to his ten colleagues ; they were as responsible as he was for the measures on which they had to take the votes of the Assembly. But they were not so personally hound as he was to be active speakers on their behalf. Our own House of Lords presents a close analogy. The Lord Chancellor is Speaker of the House; he presides, and puts the question. But, unlike the Speaker of the Commons, he is also a member of the Government, an active member of the House ; he can vote, speak, bring in bills of his own, just as much as any other Peer; one class of bills indeed it is his special duty to bring in rather than any other Peer. Still itis felt that the Speaker of the House cannot fittingly be the Government Leader in the House; some other Peer is always looked upon as the special representative of the Cabinet in the House of Lords. This division of parliamentary duty exactly answers te what I conceive to have been the division of duties in the Assembly between the Achaian Ministers and the Achaian General. Out of the House, the General and his Ministers doubtless acted in concert in all important civil business. On some great occasions we distinctly see the whole Government acting together. For instance, Aratos and his Ten Councillors 3 all went to meet King Antigonos, and to make arrangements with him for his coming into Peloponnésos. In short, in all civil and diplomatic business the General acted together with the other members of the Government. He was chief of a Cabinet, and we know what powers the chief of a Cabinet has. He could not indeed get rid of a refractory colleague, as a modern First Minister can ; but we may be sure that, in the good times of the League—the days of Kritolaos are another matter—a General who was in the least fit for his place could always command a majority among his colleagues, and a majority was all that was needed. 1 That in some other Federations, as those of Atolia and Akarnania (see pp. 264, 484, note 1), the General presided in the Assembly shows the higher political developement of the Achaian System. The Achaian institution of the Ten Ministers seems to have no exact parallel elsewhere. To their existence it is probably owing that we hear less of the Senate in Achaia (sce p. 239) than in some other commonwealths. 2 Plut. Ar. 48, ᾽᾿Απήντα μετὰ τῶν δημιουργῶν ὁ “Aparos αὐτῷ. Υ UNRESTRAINED POWERS OF THE GENERAL IN WAR 233 In military affairs the case was different. The Ten were a Unre- purely civil magistracy ;' the General, besides being the political strained chief of the state, was also, as his title implies, its military chief, ey and that with far more unrestrained power than he exercised in General in civil affairs. The Sovereign People declared war and concluded War. peace; but while war lasted, the General had the undivided command of the Achaian armies. The Achaians, as Polybios says, trusted their General in everything: they did not hamper his operations in the field in the same way as was too often done by the Venetian, Spartan, and Dutch Republics. There was not the same reason or temptation for doing so. The hereditary Kings of Sparta were naturally looked upon with jealousy by the Ephors, who represented another principle in politics. And Venice, in her land campaigns, had commonly to do with mercenary leaders, whose fidelity might not always be absolutely trusted. But if an Achaian General, a citizen ‘chosen for a year by the free voices of his fellow-citizens, cannot be fully trusted by them, no man can ever be trusted at all. In fact he commonly was both fully and generously trusted. He was allowed to act for himself, subject only to the after-judgement of the Assembly, in which his proceedings might be discussed after the fact.? But it is in this union of the chief military and the chief political Union of power in the same person that we see the main point of differ- military ence between the Achaian system and that of all modern states, angen republican or monarchic.? No First Minister of a constitutional tions monarchy thinks of commanding its armies; it is felt that his "like duties lie in quite another sphere. The American President is move indeed, by the Constitution,* Commander-in-Chief of the Federal forces by sca and land; that is to say, they are necessarily at his disposal as the chicf exccutive Magistrate; but it is not implied that the President shall always be the man _ personally to lead the armies of the Republic to battle. But in the Achaian League the General was really a General ; his command in the field was as much a matter of course as his chief influence in the 1 T only remember one instance (see p. 419) of the Ministers being mentioned in military affairs, and this is on the reception of a new city into the League, a business as much diplomatic as military. 2 Thirlwall, viii. 102. “ He wielded the military force of the League in the field with absolute, though not irresponsible, authority.” 3 I speak of the civilized states of Europe and America ; I do not answer for Mexican or South American Republics. 4 Art. ii. 8 2. 1. His title military, but his badge of office civil. Athenian experience on the union of civil and military powers, 234 ORIGIN AND CONSTITUTION OF ACHAIAN LEAGUE cuap, Assembly ; his only official title! was a military one ; though it should be noticed that the outward symbol of his office was one purely civil. We have scen a Theban Archon with nothing military about him, but whose badge of office was a spear ;” we now find, in curious contrast, that the badge of office of the Achaian General was the purely civil symbol, a seal. The General kept the Great Seal of the League; and his admission to or resignation of office is sometimes spoken of as accepting or laying down the Seal,® much as we speak, not indeed of a Com- mander-in-chief, but of a Lord Chancellor. This union of civil and military duties, which was usual in the later Greek Republics, looks at first sight like a retrograde movement, after the experi- ence of the Athenian commonwealth on the subject. At one time it was held at Athens that the functions of statesman and General should go together. In Miltiadés, Themistoklés, Aristeidés, we see the union in its fulness. In the next generation we discern the first signs of separation between the two. Periklés and Kimdén indeed still unite both functions ; Periklés could fight and Kimdén could speak. But it is clear. that, though the functions were united, they were not united in equal proportions in the two men. Periklés was primarily a statesman and secondarily a general; Kimén was primarily a general and secondarily a statesman. The military abilities of Periklés were considerable, hut they were a mere appendage to his pre-eminent civil genius; and most certainly Kimon was far more at home when warring with the barbarians than when contending with Periklés in the Assembly. It showed the good sense of both the rivals, when they agreed upon the compromise that Periklés should direct the counsels, and Kimén command the armies, of the commonwealth.* In the next stage of things the schism between the two callings becomes wider and wider. 1 Polybios is singularly fluctuating in the various titles which he gives to the Assembly and to the Ministers, but I do not remember that the General is ever called anything but στρατηγός, or, perhaps, its equivalent ἡγεμών (see iv. 11; v. 1) ; προεστώς (ii. 45) is hardly meant as a formal title. * See above, p. 129. ὁ Plut. Ar. 88, ᾿Εβουλεύσατο μὲν εὐθὺς [6”Aparos] ἀποθέσθαι τὴν σφραγῖδα καὶ τὴν στρατηγίαν ἀφεῖναι. Pol. iv. 7. Παραλαβὼν [ὁ “Aparos] παρὰ τοῦ Τιμοξένου τὴν δημοσίαν σφραγῖδα. [So in Outer Appenzell. Miiller, Hist. de la Confédcration Suisse (Continuation), xiv. 213. Wetter, the Landammann, resigned his office ; his son was elected in his stead and ‘‘reeut le scean des mains de son pere.’ | + See Grote, v. 150. Vv UNION OF CIVIL AND MILITARY DUTIES 239 The versatile genius of Alkibiadés indeed united both characters, or rather all characters ; but Nikias was a professional soldier, whose position as‘a statesman is quite incidental, while the elder Démosthenés, an admirable soldier, does not appear as a states- man at all. On the other hand Kleédn and his brother Dema- Gradual vgogues are mere politicians, who do not in any way profess to Separation be military commanders! In the next century the callings nuilitary were utterly separated. Phdékién is the only man in whom there functions. is the least approach to an union of them. Iphikratés and Chabrias were strictly professional soldiers, who eschewed politics altogether. Démosthenés, Adschinés, Hyperidés, never thought of commanding armies. Indeed in their days it was but seldom that the armies of Athens were formed of her own citizens and commanded by her own Generals; they were too commonly Employ- mere mercenary bands commanded by faithless soldiers of fortune. ment of It may have been the remembrance of the evils inflicted on (Oe Greece by these hireling banditti, which induced both the Achaian League and the other later Greek commonwealths to The _ fall back upon the old system, and to insist upon the union of coe military and civil powers in the chief of the state. The arrange- ΣΝ ΤΟΙ ment doubtless gave greater unity and energy to Federal action ; pisaq- but it undoubtedly had a bad side. It by no means followed vantages cither that the wisest statesman would be also the bravest and οἱ the most skilful captain, or that the bravest and most skilful captain ἡ stem would be also the wisest statesman. Aratos was unrivalled as a diplomatist and parliamentary leader, but his military carcer contains many more failures than successes. Could he and Lydiadas have divided duties, as Periklés and Kimdén did, the League might perhaps never have been driven to become a suppliant for Macedonian protection. It is also clear that the union aggravated one difficulty which perhaps can never be entirely avoided in any government where magistrates are elected for a definite time. Once a year, or once in four years, The Presi- what we call a Ministerial Crisis comes round as a matter of dental in- 1 Kledn’s command at Amphipolis is, as we have seep, something quite exceptional. But of course a Deimagogue, like another citizen, might be called upon to serve in war. Hence the point of Phékidn’s retort to a troublesome ογαῦοι---πολέμου μὲν ὄντος ἐγὼ σοῦ, εἰρήνης δὲ γενομένης σὺ ἐμοῦ ἄρξεις. Plut. Phok. 16. Compare also the story of Phokién and Archibiadés in the same life, ο, 10. Démosthents and Aischinés both served in the army, and Aschinés gained some credit for personal gallantry, just as Sékratés did, but no one ever thought of choosing any one of the three to the oftice of General. terregnum aggravated by the union of powers. B.C. 220. Question of re-elec- tion of the President. 236 ORIGIN AND CONSTITUTION OF ACHAIAN LEAGUE cnar. course. It is felt to be a practical fault in the American system that the President is chosen so long before he actually enters on his office. A practical interregnum of some months takes place ; the incoming Government are still private men; the outgoing Government, though still invested with legal powers, cannot venture to use them with any effect in the face of their desig- nated successors. ly- may hold, can cease to be a member of an Assembly whose very essence is that it consists of all the citizens. A Senate is neces- sary for many purposes; sometimes it prepares measures for discussion in the Assembly, sometimes it acts independently by commission from the Assembly; but in either case it is a mere Committee of the sovereign body, a portion of its members acting on the behalf, and by the authority, of the whole. The special duties of the American Senate were, in Achaia, part of the duties of the Sovereign Assembly itself. The Assembly finally confirmed the treaties which the General negociated; the Assembly, in which each city had an equal voice, was itself the natural guardian of State independence. The principle of State equality which America confines, in most cases, to one branch of her Legislature, was applied in Achaia, in a more rigid form,! to her single Assembly. The Achaian Senate 1s Analogy of more analogous to the Norwegian Lagthing than to anything the Nor- in the constitution either of England or of America. The Nor- fasthing. wegian Storthing is, like most other European Assemblies, — Representative and not Primary ; it is indeed doubly representa- tive, being chosen by indirect election. But it so far approaches to the nature of a Primary Assembly that there is no distinct Second Chamber. The Storthing chooses a Lagthing from among its own members, and the body thus chosen discharges several of the functions of a Senate or House of Lords.2 But even here the analogy is very imperfect; for the Lagthing, being a mere portion of the Storthing, exists only while the Storthing 1s sitting, while it is of the essence of a Greck Senate to act when the Public Assembly is not sitting. A less important difference 1 In the Achaian Assembly, each city, great or small, had one vote. In the American Senate each State, great or small, sends an equal number of Senators, but the votes are not taken by States ; the two Senators ofa State may vote on opposite sides of the question, like the two members for an English county or borough. 2 Constitution of Norway, § 74-6 (Latham’s Norway, ii. 87). 245 ORIGIN AND CONSTITUTION OF ACHAIAN LEAGUE ΟΗΔΡ, between the Achaian and American Constitutions may be seen in the far higher legal position of the Ministers or Councillors of Higher the Achaian General, as compared with the Cabinet of the position American President. But, even here, we have scen that, in all of the wy ᾿ ες . Achaian probability, the Achaian Ministers were practically almost as Ministers much the General’s chosen Councillors as if they had been of his ἐΔαμιοργοί] own nomination. Here again the difference arises from the different origin of the two offices. The Achaian Ministers were a Magistracy more ancient than the General, by whose powers they must have been thrown somewhat into the background. But of the President’s Cabinet the American Constitution makes no distinct mention at all. The different departments of admini- stration were arranged by an Act of the first Congress.! Such are the chief points of likeness and of unlikeness between the two great Federal Democracies of the ancient and the modern world. It is singular that that which was practically the less democratic of the two should be that which had theo- retically the more democratic constitution.2 Every Achaian citizen was himself a permanent member of Congress, with a voice in all Federal legislation, in declaring peace and war, and in electing the Magistrates of the Union. The American citizen, Achaia the on the other hand, has only a vote in electing the Repr esentatives more ἐὸν of his State, in electing electors of the President, in electing the in theory State Legislature which again elects the Senators of his State. and Ame- Yet nothing is clearer than that the tone and feeling of govern- ea ἵπ ment and policy is far more democratic in the United States than P ' it was in ancient Achaia. Here again comes in the difference between the Primary and the Representative system. The Primary system, theoretically the most democratic system possible, that which invests every citizen with a personal share in the Federal Government, becomes, in a large territory, prac- tically the less democratic of the two. The franchise which it confers can be exercised only under circumstances which act on the mass of the people as a practical property qualification.® The franchise which the American Union confers on every citizen is far more restricted in its powers, but it is one which every citizen can exercise without cost or trouble. The real power of the mass of the people is therefore far greater; the franchise is ? Marshall’s Life of Washington, v. 228 et seqq. * See above, p. 208. * See Federalist, lviii. (p. 818) quoted above, p. 208. Vv AMERICA NOT A COPY OF ACHAIA 249 universally exercised, or abstained from only by the very class by which the Achaian franchise was almost solely exercised. Two constitutions, framed two thousand years and seven thousand miles apart, naturally present no small diversity. Yet, after all, the diversity is trifling compared with the likeness. Probably no two constitutions, produced at such a distance of time and place from one another, ever presented so close a resemblance to each other, as that which exists between the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of the Achaian League. The question then naturally arises, Was the younger of these two Constitutions, so lke in their provisions, so distant in time The and place, in any degree a conscious imitation of the elder? I eeniean am inclined to think that it was not. The founders of the ons a American Union were not scholars, but practical politicians. conscious They were fully disposed to listen to the teaching of history, but ΝΣ they had small opportunity of knowing what the true and un- 4cjajan, corrupted teaching of Grecian history really was. Those chapters of the “Federalist”? which are devoted to the consideration of Remark- earlier instances of Federal Government show every disposition able treat- to make a practical use of ancient precedents, but they show Mets very little knowledge as to what those precedents really were. Achaian It is clear that Hamilton and Madison knew hardly anything history more of Grecian history than what they had picked up from the Pe “Observations ” of the Abbé Mably. But it is no less clear that ratist.” they were incomparably better qualified than their French guide to understand and apply what they did know. Mably’s account of the Achaian League,” lke his account of the Amphiktyonic ὅ Council, is in the style of the French scholarship of the last century. How that looks by the hght of English and German scholarship of the present century, hardly needs to be told. Of course the Amphiktyonic Council appears as the “ States- General” of a regular Confederation, which is paralleled with the Confederation of Switzerland. In treating of the Achaian League, Mably confounds the Assembly with the Senate ;4 1 Federalist, No. xviii. p. 91. “ Observations sur ]’Histoire de Greece. CEuvres de Mably, iv. 186, ed. 1792. 3 Ib, iv. 10. See above, Ὁ. 110. , 4 On eréa un sénat commun de la nation; il s’assembloit deux fois l’an ἃ Egium, au commencement du printemps et de l’autornne, et il ctoit composé des députés de chaque république en nombre égal. Cette assemblée ordonnoit la guerre ou la paix,” etc., p. 187. The confusion is the more curious, because in matters of mere detail, like the two yearly meetings, Mably is accurate enough. Mably’s account of the League, followed by the American writers. 250 ORIGIN AND CONSTITUTION OF ACHAIAN LEAGUE σπᾶν. he has hardly any notion of the remarkable powers vested in the General, or, as he calls him, the Pretor ;} finally, he loads Aratos with praises for that act of his life which Plutarch so emphatically condemns, which Polybios has so much ado to defend, his undoing his own work and laying Greece once more prostrate at the feet of a Macedonian master.2 The comments of the American statesmen on such a text are curious, and more than curious; they are really instructive. Their vigorous intellects seized on, and practically applied, the few facts which they had got hold of, and even from the fictions they drew con- clusions which would be perfectly sound, if one only admitted the premisses. They instinctively saw the intrinsic interest and the practical importance of the history of Federal Greece, and they made what use they could of the little hight which they enjoyed on the subject. One is at first tempted to wish that, instead of such a blind guide as Mably, such apt scholars had had the advantage of the teaching of a Thirlwall, or that they had been able to draw for themselves from the fountain head of Polybios himself. Had they known that, in the Achaian Assembly, Keryneia had an equal vote with Megalopolis, how dexterously would they have grappled with the good and evil sides of such a precedent. How they would have shown that the principle of State equality which the Achaians thus affirmed was amply secured by the constitution of the Senate,* while the unfairness which could not fail to attend this part of the Achaian system was carefully guarded against by the opposite constitution of the House of Representatives.© Had they fully realized the prominent position of the Achaian General, so different from any- He had evidently read his books with care, but without the least power of under- standing them. 1 He does indeed say (p. 190), “Ele fit la faute heureuse de ne confier qu’a un seul préteur l’administration de toutes ses affaires,” This is of course a trans- lation of those famous words of Polybios to which I have 80 often referred ; but no words ever stood more in need of ἃ comment. 2 “On ne peut, je crois, donner trop de louanges ἃ Aratus pour avoir recouru ἃ la protection de la Macédoine née, dans une conjoncture facheuse ot il s'agis- soit du salut des Achéens. Plutarque ne pense pas ainsi,” etc., p. 197. This very curious argument goes on for several pages. Polybios had praised Aratos a little ; Mably was determined to praise him much. 3 The elder President Adams seems to have gone to Polybios, at least in a translation. He gives a long extract on the Achaian history. Defence of the Constitution, etc., i. 298. But he is far from entering into its practical value like the authors of the ‘‘ Federalist.” 4 See Federalist, No. Ixii. (p. 384). 5 ΤΌ, liv. (p. 298). Vv GREATER VALUE OF AN UNCONSCIOUS PARALLEL 251 pee ---- - + . a ee ee thing in earlier Democracies, what an example they would have had before them to justify those large powers in the President for which they so strenuously contend.1 But it was really better for mankind, better for historical study, that the latter of these two great experiments was made in practical ignorance of the An uncon- former. A living reproduction, the natural result of the recur- a ae, rence of like circumstances, is worth immeasurably more than ancient any conscious imitation. It is far more glorious that the wisdom parallel and patriotism of Washington and his coadjutors should have vy, led them to walk unwittingly in the steps of Markos and Aratos, than a than that any intentional copying of their institutions should conscious have detracted ought from the freshness and singleness of their °* own noble course. Had it heen otherwise, the later generation of patriots might have shone only with a borrowed light; as it is, the lawgivers of Achaia and the lawgivers of America are entitled to equal honour. In truth the world has not grown old; the stuff of which heroes are made has not perished from among men; when need demands them, they still step forth in forms which Plutarch himself might have pourtrayed and worshipped. The dim outline of Markos of Keryneia grows into full life in the venerable form of Washington ; a Timoledn, unstained even by Tyrants’ blood, still lives among us under the name of Garibaldi; it remains for us to see whether the modern world can attain to another no less honourable form of greatness, whether, among the rulers of later days, one will ever be found who shall dare to enter upon the glorious path of Lydiadas. 1 Tb. Ixix, (p. 371 et seqq. ). General Resem- blances and Dif- ferences between the CHAPTER VI ORIGIN AND CONSTITUTION OF THE TOLIAN LEAGUE THE Achaian Confederation is an object of such surpassing interest, both in Grecian history and in the general history of Federal Government, that I have dwelt upon its smallest begin- nings and its minutest constitutional details at a length which seemed no more than their due. But, alongside of the League of Achaia, there existed, during nearly the Whole time of its being, a rival Union, differing from it but slightly in constitu- tional forms, equal or superior to it in military power, but whose general reputation in the eyes of the contemporary world was widely different. The League of A‘toha preceded that of Achaia in assuming the character of a champion of Greece against foreign Invaders. But, in that period of Grecian history with which we are most concerned, the League of /toha most commonly appears as an assemblage of robbers and pirates, the Leagues of Common enemies of Greece and of mankind. The Achaian and Achaia and the Aftolian Leagues, had their constitutions been written down AEtolia. in the shape of a formal document, would have presented but few varicties of importance. The same general form of Govern- ment prevailed in both ; each was Federal, each was Democratic ; each had its popular Assembly, its smaller Senate, its General with large powers at the head of all. The differences between the two are merely those differences of detail which will always arise between any two political systems of which neither is slavishly copied from the other. Both are essentially Govern- ments of the same class. If therefore any general propositions as to the moral effect of particular forms of Government had any truth in them, we might fairly expect to find Achaia and Aftolia running exactly parallel careers. Both Achaia and Adtolia were alike Federal states; both were alike Democracics in theory ; both were alike tempered in their practical working HAP, νι COMPARISON BETWEEN ACHAIA AND ATOLIA 253 by an element of liberal Aristocracy. If therefore Federal states, Illustra. or Democratic states, or Aristocratic states, were necessarily home weak or strong, peaceful or aggressive, honest or dishonest, we they give should see Achaia and /&tolia both exhibiting the same moral of the characteristics. But history tells us another tale. The political ¢™ptiness . . . of general conduct of the Achaian League, with some mistakes and some proposi- faults, is, on the whole, highly honourable. The political conduct tions in of the AXtolian League is, throughout the century in which we Politics. know it best, almost always simply infamous. The counsels of the Achaian League were not invariably enlightened ; they were now and then perverted by passion or personal feeling; but their general aim was a noble one, and the means selected were commonly worthy of the end. But the counsels of the Attolian League were throughout directed to mere plunder, or, at most, to selfish political aggrandizement. Some politicians might tell us that this was the natural result of the inherent recklessness and brutality of democratic governments. If so, the same evil results should have appeared in the history of the Democracy of Achaia. If it be said that Achaia was saved from such crimes by the presence of an aristocratic clement, /Htolia should have been saved in the hke manner. [or the tempering of democratic forms by aristocratic practice is as visible in the history of Attolia as in the history of Achaia. If, on the other hand, it 15 argued that a Federal Union is necessarily weak, and that even Achaian history contains instances of such weakness, it is easy to answer that no Monarchy, no indivisible Republic, ever showed greater vigour and unity than the original Mtolian Confederation. There are absolutely no signs of disunion, no tendency to separation, visible among any of its members. If suasive speaker we need no proof; without eloquence of some kind no man could have remained for life, as he did, at the head of a Greek commonwealth. Perhaps the very absence of rhetorical and sophistic training may have left room for some- thing more nearly reproducing the native strength of Themistoklés and Periklés. His physical education was well cared for; the future deliverer of Sikyén and Corinth contended in the public games, and reccived more than one chaplet as the prize of bodily prowess. It is possible that this devotion to bodily exercises may not have been without influence on his future career. The discipline of the athlete and the discipline of the soldier were inconsistent,! and these early laurels were perhaps won at the expense of future defeats of the Achaian phalanx. Further than this we have no details of his early life; but we find him, at the age of twenty, vigorous, active, and enterprising, full of zeal, not only against the Tyrants who excluded him from his own home and country, but against all who bore usurped rule over their fellows in any city of Hellas. Meanwhile matters in Sikyén went on from bad to worse. Succession Abantidas had a turn for those rhetorical exercises which Aratos οἱ a neglected ; he frequented the school of two teachers of the art named Deinias and Aristotelés, who, from what motive we are not told, one day assassinated the Tyrant in the midst of his studies. His place was at once filled by his own father Paseas, 8.0. 252-1. who was in his turn slain and succeeded by one Nikoklés. The eyes of men in Sikydn now began to turn to the banished son of their old virtuous leader. Aratos was looked to as the future Expecta- deliverer of his country, and Nikoklés watched his course with a tons from ως . Aratos. degree of suspicion proportioned to the hopes of those whom he held in bondage. But, as yet, the Tyrant deemed that he had little to fear from the personal prowess of the youth. Indeed Aratos purposely adopted a line of conduct suited to throw Nikoklés off his guard. He assumed, at all events when he knew 1 See Plut. Phil. 3. The remark however is as old as Homer. Il. xxiii, 668-671. Certainly Alexander of Macedon (Herod. v. 22) and Dorieus of Rhodes combined the two characters (see Grote, viii. 217 and cf. x. 164), but one can hardly fancy Periklés stripping at Olympia, Karly 282 HISTORY OF FEDERAL GREECE CHAP. that agents of the Tyrant were watching him, an appearance of complete devotion to youthful enjoyments and frivolous pursuits. Men said that a Tyrant must be the most timid of all beings, if such a youth as Aratos could strike fear into one.! But the real fears of Nikoklés were of another kind. He did not so much dread the personal prowess of Aratos as the influence of his father’s name and connexions. The position which the family of Kleinias must have held is marked by the fact that the Kings both of Macedonia and Egypt were among his hereditary friends? We may sce also the first signs of a weakness which pursued Aratos through his whole life, when we hear that he at first hoped to obtain freedom for his country Schemes of through royal friendship. To look for the expulsion of a Aratos. 'er- ance of Tyrant at the hands of Antigonos Gonatas was a vain hope indeed.? It appears however that the King did not absolutely refuse the new character in which the inexperienced youth prayed him to appear: he put him off with fair words; he promised much, but performed nothing. Aratos then looked to Ptolemy Philadelphos of Egypt, whose rivalry with Mace- donia seemed to guarantee his trustjorthiness as an ally of Grecian freedom, and whose actions did not always belie his pretensions. But in leaning on Egyptian aid Aratos soon found that he was leaning on the staff of a broken reed; whatever might be the good intentions of Ptolemy, he was far off, and the hopes which he held ott were slow to be fulfilled. The young deliverer at last learned no longer to put his trust in princes, but only in the quick wits and strong arms of himself and his fellow-exiles. A Sikyénian exile named Aristomachos, and two Megalopolitan philosophers named Ekdémos and Démo- phanés,* are spoken of as among his principal advisers. The details of the perilous night-adventure by which Aratos and 1 Plut. Ar. 6. 2 Schorn (p. 70) suggests, ingeniously enough, that the connexion between the house of Kleinias and the Ptolemies began during the Egyptian occupation of Siky6n in Β.6. 808-3. But how came the same family to be on such terms with both the rival dynasties at once, with the descendants of Ptolemy and with the descendants of Démétrios ἢ 3 Something may be allowed to the inexperience of a youth of twenty ; it is indeed hard measure to hint, as Schorn (p. 70, note) does, that Aratos at first merely wished to be Tyrant himself instead of Nikoklés. Every act of his tife belies the imputation. Niebuhr (Lect. Anc, Hist. iii. 277, Eng. Tr.) does Aratos more justice. 4 the names are variously given. They are Ekdémos and Démophanés in Pol, x. 22. (26). Plut. Phil. 1. Suidas, v. Φιλοποίμην ; Ekdélos and Mega- VII DELIVERANCE OF SIKYON BY ARATOS 283 his little company surprised and delivered Sikyén have all the Sikyén by interest of a romance.! Here, in the last days of Greece, our Aratos, ᾿ ι B.C, 261. path is strewed with tales of personal character and personal adventure, such as we have met with but seldom since we lost the guidance of Herodotos: For our purpose it is enough that all Sikyén lay down at night under the rule of Nikoklés, and heard at dawn the herald proclaim to the delivered city that Aratos the son of Kleinias called his countrymen to freedom. Never was there a purer or ἃ more bloodless revolution ; Sikydn was delivered without the loss of a single citizen; the very mer- cenaries of the Tyrant were allowed to live, and Nikoklés himself, whom public justice could hardly have spared, contrived to escape by an ignoble shelter. Never did mortal man win glory truer and more unalloyed than the young hero of Sikyé6n. Sikyén was now free, but she had dangers to contend against from within and from without. Antigonos, to whom the youthful simplicity of Aratos had once looked for help, now hardly concealed his enmity.? ‘The infection which he External thought he could afford to neglect while it spread no further ane than the petty Achaian townships, was now beginning to ΘΧ- difficulties tend itself to cities of a higher rank. And, within the walls of Sikydn. of Sikyén, Aratos had to struggle against difficulties which were hardly less threatening. With the restoration of freedom came the return of the exiles. Under this name are included both those who had been formally banished, and those who had voluntarily fled from the city, during the days of tyranny.° Nikoklés, during his short reign of four months, had sent eighty into exile; those whose banishment dated from the days of earlier Tyrants reached the number of five hundred. Some of these last had been absent from their country fifty years.* lophanés in Paus, viii. 49. 2; Ekdélos in Plut. Ar. 5. Suidas also turns Nikoklés into Neoklés. 1 One is strongly tempted to tell the tale once more; but the Greek of Plutarch, the German of Droysen, and the English of Thirlwall are enough. It should be remembered that all the details rest upon good authority, namely the Memoirs of Aratos himself. 2 plut. Ar. 9, ᾿Επιβουλευομένην μὲν ἔξωθεν καὶ φθονουμένην ὑπ᾽ ᾿Αντιγόνου τὴν πόλιν ὁρῶντι [τῷ ᾿Αράτῳ] διὰ τὴν ἐλευθερίαν, ταραττομένην δ᾽ ὑφ᾽ αὑτῆς καὶ στασιάζουσαν. 5. The word φυγάς includes both classes, Many fled to escape death, but some were formally banished. τοὺς μὲν ἐξέβαλε, τοὺς δ᾽ ἀνεῖλεν [ὁ ᾿Αβαντίδας]. Plut. Ar. 2. [Cf. Cicero, De Off. ii. ο. 23.] 4 So says Plutarch (Ar. 9); but why did they not return during the admini- stration of Kleinias and Timokleidas ? Internal pacifica- tion by Aratos. 284 HISTORY OF FEDERAL GREECE CHAP, Many of these men had lost houses and lands, which they naturally wished to recover, but which their actual possessors as naturally wished to keep. Doubtless, in so long a time, much of this property must have changed hands more than once, so that the actual possessor ‘would often be an honest purchaser, and not a mere grantee of a Tyrant’s stolen goods. The young deliverer was expected to satisfy all these opposing claims, as well as to guard his city against Antigonos and all other enemies. What was chicfly wanting for the former purpose was money; and here the friendship of King Ptolemy really stood him in good stead. He obtained, at various times, a sum of one hundred and seventy-five talents, partly, 10 would seem, as a voluntary gift,! partly as the result of Aratos’ own request, for which purpose he made a voyage to Egypt in person. By the help of this money he contrived to satisfy the various claimants. Some of the old owners were glad to accept the value of their property instead of the property itself ; some of the new ones were willing to give up possession on receiving a fair price for what they resigned. We are told that by these means he succeeded in pacifying the whole city.? It is added, as a proof of his true republican spirit, that, on being invested with full and extraordinary powers for the purpose, he declined to exercise them alone, but, of his own accord, associated with himself fifteen other citizens in the office.* Against danger from without Aratos sought for defence by that step which first brings him within the immediate sphere of this history. He annexed Sikydn to the Achaian League. 1 Plut. Ar. 11. “Hxe δ᾽ αὐτῷ καὶ χρημάτων δωρεὰ παρὰ τοῦ βασιλέως. 2 See Plutarch (Ar. 9-14) and the well-known passage of Cicero (De Off. ii. 25), who winds up, as ἃ Roman of his day well might, “O viruam magnum, dignumque qui in nostra republica natus esset. Sic par est aygere cum civibus, non (ut bis jam vidimus) hastam in foro ponere, et bona civium voci subjicere preeconis.” 3 Plut. Ar. 14. ᾿Αποδειχθεὶς yap αὐτοκράτωρ διαλλακτὴς καὶ κύριος ὅλως ἐπὶ τὰς φυγαδικὰς οἰκονομίας μόνος οὐχ ὑπέμεινεν, ἀλλὰ πεντεκαίδεκα τῶν πολιτῶν προσκατέλεξεν ἑαντῷ, κιτ.ιλ. So Cicero ‘‘ Adhibuit sibi in consilium quindecim principes.”” This is hardly done justice to by Schorn (p. 72) in the words, ‘‘Nach Hause zuruckgekommen setzte er eine Commission nieder, an deren Spitze er selbst trat.” These internal measures of Aratos, or some of them, seem to have been later than the annexation of Sikyon to the League. But it seemed better to finish the account of the deliverance and pacification of Siky6n before entering on the career of Aratos as a Federal politician. ' vit ANNEXATION OF SIKYON TO THE ACHAIAN LEAGUE 286 This of course implies both that he prevailed on his own Annexa- countrymen to ask for admission to the Achaian body, and gon of that he persuaded the Achaian Government and Assembly to Fo the grant what they asked. It is much to be regretted that no Ασηλιὰν record is preserved of the debates either in the Sikyénian or LEacuE, . . B.C, 251. the Achaian Assembly on so important a proposal. The step was a bold and a novel one. For a Greek city willingly to sur- render its full and distinct sovereignty was a thing of which earlier times presented only one recorded instance. Corinth and Argos had once removed the artificial limits which separated s.c. 393, the Argeian and the Corinthian territory, and had declared that Argos and Corinth formed but a single commonwealth.! But so strange an arrangement lasted only for a short time, and it was offensive to large bodies of citizens while it did last. Still Argos and Corinth were, at least, both of them Doric cities; their citizens were kinsmen in blood and _ speech, sharing alike in the traditions of the ruling race of Peloponnésos. It was a far greater change when Siky6n, a city of the Dorian Import- conquerors, stooped to ask for admission to the franchise of ance and the remnant of the conquered Achaians.? Federalism, as we novelty of . . 1 . the step. have seen, was nothing new in Greece, but the Federal tie had as yet united only mere districts or very small towns, and those always districts or towns of the same people. For one of the greater citics of Greece to enter into Federal relations with cities belonging to another division of the Greek race was something altogether unknown. But now the Doric Sikyén was admitted into a League consisting only of small Achaian towns,? any one of which singly was immeasurably her inferior, and whose united strength hardly equalled that of one of the great cities of Greece. The SikyOnians were to lose their national name® and being; Sikyén indeed would survive as an inde- 1 Xen. Hell. iv. 4. 6. See Grote, ix. 462. The change, in the opinion of Xenophon and the Corinthian oligarchs, amounted to a wiping out of their city ; αἰσθανόμενοι ἀφανιζομένην τὴν πόλι. The whole description is very curious. 2 Paus. ii. 8. 4. Tods Σικυωνίους és τὸ ᾿Αχαιῶν συνέδριον ἐσήγαγε Δωριεῖς ὄντας. 3. Plut. Ar. 9. Δωριεῖς ὄντες ὑπέδυσαν ἑκουσίως ὄνομα Kat πολιτείαν τὴν ᾿Αχαιῶν οὔτε ἀξίωμα λαμπρὸν οὔτε μεγάλην ἰσχύν ἐχόντων τότε' μικροπολῖται γὰρ ἦσαν οἱ πολλοί, κ.τ.λ. ᾿ 4170), Οἱ [ol ᾿Αχαιοὶ] τῆς μὲν πάλαι τῶν Ἑλλήνων ἀκμῆς οὐδὲν, ὡς εἰπεῖν, μέρος ὄντες, ἐν δὲ τῷ τότε μιᾶς ἀξιολόγου πόλεως σύμπαντες ὁμοῦ δύναμιν οὐκ ἔχοντες. 5 Ib. So Polybios (ii, 88), πῶς οὖν καὶ διὰ τί νῦν εὐδοκοῦσιν οὗτοί τε καὶ Beginning of a new Kpoch. General extension of the League and its Objects. Sikyon admitted on equal terms. 286 HISTORY OF FEDERAL GREECE CHAP. .»“--.---- -........ὕ... ee woe .....-....... - -- τ ---- .-.....οό.. ve ὕὕ.......:.--ὄο...---.-... .--- pendent canton, untouched in the freedom of her local govern- ment; but in all dealings with other states the name of Sikyén would be sunk in the name of Achaia. The warriors of Siky6n would be commanded by Achaian Generals,! and her interests would be represented in foreign Assemblies and at foreign courts by Ambassadors commissioned by the whole Achaian body.? Such a change must have given a complete shock to all ordinary Greek feeling on such subjects. The accession of Sikyén to the League was the beginning of a new state of things in Greece. No more striking testimony could be borne to the prudent and honourable course which the League had hitherto followed within its own narrow limits? This first extension beyond the limits of Achaia at once put the League on quite a new footing. Hitherto it had been a merely local union; it now began to swell into Pan-hellenic importance.4 When once Sikyén had joined the League, other cities were not slow in following her example. From the moment of the admis- sion of Sikyén, it was an understood principle that the arms of the League stood open to reccive any Grecian city which was willing to cast in its lot among the Confederates. The League now became the centre of freedom throughout all Greece ; the supremacy of Macedonia in Peloponnésos was doomed. Sikyén was admitted to the League on perfectly equal terms. She was subjected to no disqualifications as a foreign city, and she claimed no superiority on account of her power and fame being so vastly superior to those of any of the old Achaian towns. Like other Achaian cities, she obtained one vote, and no more, in the Federal Congress. The evil of this arrangement τὸ λοιπὸν πλῆθος τῶν ἸΪελοποννησίων dua τὴν πολιτείαν τῶν ᾿Αχαιῶν καὶ τὴν προσηγορίαν μετειληφότες ; 1 plut. Ar, 11. ὋὉ δ᾽ "Ἄρατος. . . καίπερ συμβολὰς τῷ κοινῷ μεγάλας δεδωκὼς τὴν ἑαυτοῦ δόξαν καὶ τὴν τῆς πατρίδος δύναμιν, ὡς ἑνὶ τῶν ἐπιτυχόντων χρῆσθαι παρεῖχεν αὑτῷ τῷ ἀεὶ στρατηγοῦντι τῶν ᾿Αχαιῶν, εἴτε Δυμαῖος, εἴτε Torraseds, εἴτε μικροτέρας τινὸς ὧν τύχοι πόλεως. 5. Aratos seems to have gone to Alexandria in a purely private character to ask help of King Ptolemy as a friend of his family. 3 See Plutarch’s panegyric on the League (Ar. 9), and Polybios passim, especially ii, 88 and 42, 4 Droysen, ii. 8369. “Durch den Beitritt von Sikyon und durch Aratos Verbindung mit Aegypten war die Rolle, welche die Achaier zu ubernehmen hatten, bezeichnet ; Arat war es, der die Thatigkeit des Bundes zuerst und vielleicht nicht ohne Widerstreben der bisher nur fiir die innere Ruhe und Selbststandigkeit bedachten Eidgenossen nach Aussen hin wandte.” VII IMPORTANCE OF THE ANNEXATION OF SIKYON 287 possess no privilege which could endanger the common rights of all; it was wise to avoid making Sikyén the seat of government, or in any way giving her the character of a capital; but it was not abstractedly just that her large population should possess in the national Assembly only the single vote which belonged equally to Dymé and Tritaia.* Sikyén, whose strength must have been equal to half, or more than half, that of the League as it then stood, could at any moment be outvoted ten times over by the petty Achaian townships. Not that we are at all entitled to blame, or even to wonder at, the omission. Federal- ism was then, not indecd exactly in its infancy, but still making its first experiment on a large scale. It could not be expected to hit upon every Improvement at once, and this particular im- provement had been as yet suggested by no practical necessity. To give Sikyén a double vote would have seemed to sin against the great principles of freedom and equality among all the members of the League. We may well believe that, though the accession of Sikyén was such a clear gain to the League, there were Achaians who looked on its admission on any terms as a sort of favour. . Embassy the war waged by Greece against the Trojan ancestors of Rome ; to Rome, the Akarnanians were not enrolled in the Homeric Catalogue 8.0. 239 - even as an independent people, much less as countrymen or 229: subjects of their AXtolian oppressors. The Akarnanian embassy 1 Paus. iv. 35. 5. ᾿Ηπειρῶται δὲ ws ἐπαύσαντο βασιλεύεσθαι, τά τε ἄλλα ὁ δῆμος ὕβριζε καὶ ἀκροᾶσθαι τῶν ἐν ταῖς ἀρχαῖς ὑπερεώρων, Cf. Justin, xxviii. 3. One would like however to hear the answer of a democratic Epeirot to this charge. 2 Pol. ii, 2-4, 3 Strabo, x. 2. 25. Οἱ ’Axapvadves σοφίσασθαι λέγονταί Ῥωμαίους. λέγοντες, ws οὐ μετάσχοιεν μύνοι THs ἐπὶ τοὺς προγόνους τοὺς ἐκείνων στρατείας" οὔτε γὰρ ἐν τῷ Αἰτωλικῷ καταλύγῳ φράζοιντο, οὔτε ἰδίᾳ, Cf. Justin, xxviii, 1. Vv Siege ΟἹ Medeon by the AAtolians, B.C. 231, Atolian Assembly in the cap before Medeon. HISTORY OF FEDERAL GREECE CHAP. en tee - ~ oe ς - oe to Rome produced much the same effect as the Ionian embassy to Sparta in the days of Cyrus! In both cases the power appealed to interfered by a haughty message, but sent no effectual aid. Rome ordered the Attolians to desist from all injuries towards Akarnania,? a mandate which only led, in mockery of the barbarian interference, to a more cruel inroad than Akarnania had ever before suffered. At the time which we have now reached, we find the A®tolians engaged in their usual business of extending their Confederation by force of ams. ‘They were besieging the Akarnanian town of Mededn, which had refused to become a member of their League.® While the siege was going on, and when the inhabitants were wready counted on as a certain prey, the autumnal equinox brought round the time for the yearly election of the Aétolian Federal Magistrates. The Assembly summoned for that purpose was evidently held beneath the walls of Medeon. The Aitolians had come with their whole foree,* and, under such circumstances, with AMtolians, as with Macedonians, the army and the nation were the same thing. Doubtless those citizens of Aftolia proper who remained at home would be summoned ; but it is clear that the outlying cities incorporated with the League could have no share in a Mecting so collected. In this Assembly of citizen- soldiers, the General who was goiny out of office—his name is not mentioned—set forth his hardships before his hearers. He had begun the siege of Mededn; he had brought it to a point at which no man doubted of the speedy capture of the city ; had it been taken within his year of office, he would have been entitled to the disposition of the spoil and to have his name inscribed on the arms which were preserved as trophies.’ It would be an injustice unworthy of a nation of soldiers, if 1 Herod. i. 141, 152. * The evidence for this Roman embassy to AStolia seems quite sufficient. Justin—that is, Trogus Pompeins—doubtless, as Niebuhr says (KI. Schr. i. 256), followed Phylarchos, But it involves an apparent contradiction to a passage of Polybios, in which he seems to imply that the Roman Ambassadors who not long after visited A’tolia and Achaia were the first of their nation who had visited Greece in an‘ official character. (See Pol. ii 12; Niebthr, ws. ; Thirlwall, viii. 140.) But 1 am not certain that the words of Polybios positively, or at all events in- tentionally, deny the fact of this earlier embassy. As it led to no results, it probably was not in his thoughts, and even his words need hardly imply any direct contradiction of the story in Justin. 3 Pol. 11, 2. + 1)), Στρατεύσαντες οὖν πανδημεί. ὅ Ib. Δίκαιον εἶναι καὶ τὴν οἰκονομίαν τῶν λαφύρων, ἐπὰν κρατήσωσι, καὶ τὴν ἐπιγραφὴν τῶν ὅπλων ἑαυτῷ συγχωρεῖσθαι. ὙΠ SIEGE AND RELIEF OF MEDEON 323 another commander should be allowed to step in, and to reap the fruits which he had sown amid so much of danger and of endurance. He therefore prayed the Assembly to decree that, whatever might be the result of the election, these honours and advantages might be reserved to himself as the true conqueror of Medeon. Other speakers, especially those who were them- selves candidates for the chief magistracy,! took the other side. Let the spoils and the honours go, according to the law, to him to whom fortune shall assign them. Some man of moderate views must have proposed a compromise ; for the Assembly finally voted that the disposition of the spoil and the inscription of the name should be shared by the outgoing General with the General about to be elected. This discussion occupied that day ; on the next day the new General was to be chosen, when, accord- ing to Attohan law, he would enter upon his office at once.? But that very night help came to the besieged. King Démétrios was the ally of Akarnania; his help took the same shape as the support which he gave to the Pcloponnésian Tyrants, but it proved in this case very effectual. No Macedonian army marched to raise the siege of Mededn; but Démétrios had, by a subsidy, engaged the Illyrian King Agron to send a large body of his subjects by sea. The fleet, a hundred of the lght piratical vessels of Illyria, must have entered the Ambrakian Gulf and landed the troops at Limnaia. By a swift and well-concerted march, they surprised the Aftohans, apparently while actually engaged in electing their General. This attack, supported by a sully from the city, completely routed the besiegers. Great spoil fell into the hands both of the Tlyrians and of the people of Mededn. The latter presently in turn held their Meeting, and the Medeénian Assembly voted that the decree of the Atohan Assembly should be duly carried out, and that the names both of the outgoing Aitolian General and of his successor should be inscribed on the trophy raised by the victorious Akarnanians.? 1 Pol. ii, 2, Τινῶν δὲ, καὶ μάλιστα τῶν προϊόντων πρὸς τὴν ἀρχὴν, ἀμφισ- βητούντων πρὸς τὰ λεγόμενα. Τὸ). 3. See above, p. 2θ4, 3 Brandstiter (269) derides what he calls das Episodische und Unwesentliche dieser Anekdote.” I confess to being thankful for so life-like a report of an Adtolian debate. The independent action of the Medednian Assembly (ἐκκλησία) should also be noticed. Akarnania formed one commonwealth in all dealings with other nations, but, just as in Achaia, the canton of Mededn had its own local Assembly, with full sovereignty in local matters. Relief of Medeou Vv the TNyrians Ravages of the Hiyrians in Pelo- ponnesos. Iyrian capture of Phoiniké, B.C. 230, Allianee of Kpeiros and Akar- nana with the [lyriaus. 324 HISTORY OF FEDERAL GREECE CHAP. The Nlyrian King Agron, and his widow Teuta, who presently succeeded hin, were emboldened by this success over such renowned warriors as the A‘tolians to carry on their piratical excursions on a yet wider scale. They ravaged the coasts of Elis and Messénia, as they had often done before. Both coun- tries had a long sea-board, and the principal towns were inland, so that invaders by sea could gather a large booty without danger of resistance.!. They now ventured on a bolder achieve- ment. A party of them had occasion to land near Phoinike in Chaonia. This place, one of the greatest cities of Hpeiros, had been entrusted to the care of eight hundred mercenary Gauls, who betrayed the town to the Jllyrians. This form of national defence certainly gives us no very favourable impression of the wisdom of the new Epeirot Republic. Nor had its native armies another Pyrrhos at their head; they utterly failed in the attempt to recover Phoinike. The young League of Hpeiros now applied for help to the elder Leagues of /Etolia and Achaia.? Help was sent, but no battle was fought; the cause of inaction is not mentioned, but Aratos was General of the year. Phoinike however was restored on terms to its owners, and the Epceirots, toyether with the Akarnanians, concluded an alliance with the [llyrians, by virtue of which they for the future helped the barbarians against their benefactors from Southern Greece.’ The two Leagues were now generally looked to as the protectors of Hellas. Epidamnos, Apollonia, Korkyra, were all attacked or threatened. All three are spoken of as independent states, from which we may infer that Korkyra, which had formed part of the Kingdom of Pyrrhos, did not form part of the Epeirot League.* Of these three cities, Epidamnos had gallantly beaten off an Illyrian attack; Korkyra was actually besieged, when a joint embassy from all three implored the help both of tolia 1 Pol. 1]. 5. * Ib. 6. ᾿Επρέσβευον πρὸς τοὺς Αἰτωλοὺς καὶ τὸ τῶν ᾿Αχαιῶν ἔθνος. 3 Pol. ii. 6, 7, where the matter is discussed at length. Mommsen (Rom. Gesch, i. 869) says, “ Walb gezwungen halb freiwillig traten die Kpeiroten und Akarnanen mit den fremden Riubern in eine unnaturliche Symmachie.” The Leagues of Akarnania and KEpeiros thus became hostile to Achaia. ‘The next time we hear of them (see pp. 383, 389), they are Achaian allies. The probable explanation is that the two northern Leagues became allied with Macedonia as soon aS Macedonia became hostile to Aftolia, and, as Macedonian allies, became Achaian allies along with Antigonos. As they had no direct cause of enmity towards Achaia, they could have no repugnance to the Achaian alliauce, as soon as Achaia was again unfriendly to Aftolia. * See Dict. of Geog. art. Corcyra, Vil DEATH OF MARKOS 325 and of Achaia! The petition was listened to with favour by Joint ex- the Assemblies of both Leagues, and ten Achaian ships, manned Petition . . . υ of the twa with contingents from both nations,” were sent to the help of | cacues Korkyra. Lydiadas was now General; there was therefore no to relieve delay, no shrinking from action. Whether he himself com. Korkyra, manded is not recorded, but the ships were sent at once,® and ”“ aa. they were sent, not to intrigue or to le idle, but to fight. This is the first time that we hear of any naval operations on the part of the League, and that, singularly enough, at a moment when its chief was an Arkadian landsman. The Achaians of the original towns, though dwelling on a long sea-board, seem never to have been a maritime people; their coast had no important harbours,’ and we hear nothing of any Achaian exploits by sea. But the acquisition of so many maritime cities, above all of the ereat Corinth with its two havens, would naturally tempt the League to aspire to the character of a naval power. And it would well agree with the lofty spirit of its present chief to seek to win glory for his country on a new element.2 The original 4iitolians too were essentially a still more inland people than the Achaians, but the possession of Naupaktos would naturally give a& maritime impulse to them also. The treaties with distant citics like Teds and Kios® show that A‘tolian pirates infested the Afgan and even the Propontis, but the language of Polybios seems to imply that the A‘tolians had no Federal navy, while the Achaian League habitually kept ten ships.’ This combined naval enterprise of the two Leagues unluckily failed. The Achaian squadron, with its half Achaian, half A‘tolian crews, was defeated by the combined fleets of Ilyria and Akarnania. Among other ships lost or taken, ἃ quinquereme was sunk which Death of carried Markos of Keryneia, the original founder of the League, peat kos. of . . . . . ° Xerynela. still, in his old age, rendering faithful service to a commonwealth of which he had long ceased to be the guiding spirit. MKorkyra 1 Pol, ii. 9. “Ib. Οἱ δὲ [Axacol καὶ οἱ Αἰτωλοὶ] διακούσαντες τῶν πρέσβεων καὶ προσδεξ- άμενοι τοὺς λόγους ἐπλήρωσαν κοινῇ τὰς τῶν ᾿Αχαιῶν δέκα vais καταφρᾶκτους. 3 lb. Καταρτίσαντες δ᾽ ἐν ὀλίγαις ἡμέραις ἔπλεον ἐπὶ τῆς Κερκύρας, ἐλπίζοντες λύσειν τὴν πολιορκίαν. 4 Plut. Ar. 9. Θαλάττῃ προσῴκουν [οἱ ᾿Αχαιοὶ] ἀλιμένῳ, τὰ πολλὰ κατὰ ῥαχίας ἐκφερομένῃ πρὸς τὴν ἤπειρον. Yet Patrai has become a great port in later times. δ This may well have been among the πράξεις οὐκ ἀναγκαῖαι proposed by Lydiadas. 8 See above, p. 268. 7 This seems implied in the words ras δέκα ναῦς. Dénitrios of Pharos. Inter- ference of Rome. Korkyra, Apollémia, and Epi- damimnos hecome Roman allies, Humilia- tion of Nlyria. 326 HISTORY OF FEDERAL GREECE CHAP. had to surrender ; she received an Illyrian garrison, commanded by a man who was one of the chief pests of Greece and the neighbouring lands, Démétrios of Pharos. This man, a Greek of the Hadriatic island from which he took his name, here began a career of treachery which lasted for many years. He was now in the service of Queen Tenuta, but he soon found that her cause was not the strongest. Rome had declared war against the pirate Queen, in what was in truth the cause of all civilized states on both sides of the sea. The Consul Cneus Fulvius came against Korkyra with the Roman fleet; Démétrios, who was already out of favour at the Illyrian court,! joined the citizens in welcoming the invaders, and surrendered the Ilyrian garrison to Fulvius. Korkyra and, soon afterwards, Apollénia and Epidamnos, became the first Roman Allies ?—a condition which so easily slid into that of Roman subjects—on the Greek side of the Ionian Sea. The Il]yrian kingdom was dismembered, and the adventurer Démétrios suddenly grew into a consider- able potentate, a large portion of the dominions of Teuta being conferred upon him by the Roman conqueror.? In the small part of her kingdom which she was allowed to retain, she was hampered with conditions which effectually hindered her from being any longer dangerous to Greece. Not more than two Illyrian ships, and those unarmed, might appear south of Lissos. This is the first real interference of Home in Grecian affairs. The former haughty message to the Autolians had no effect. But now Rome appeared as an active, though as yet only as a beneficent, actor on the Greek side of the sea. She had broken the power which was just then most dangerous to Greece, and had delivered three Greek cities from a barbarian yoke. The wrongs of Akarnania and the defiance of Autolia were doubtless by this time forgotten. Autolia, ike Rome, was an cnemy of Illyria, while Akarnanian galleys, if they had not sailed to Troy at the bidding of Agamemnon, had undoubtedly swelled the numbers of the pirate fleet of Teuta. Aulus Postumius, the 1 Pol. ii. 11. Ἔν διαβολαῖς ὧν καὶ φοβούμενος τὴν Τεύταν. 2 Polybios (u.s.) uses a somewhat different word for the reception of each of the three. Oi Κερκυραῖοι. . . αὐτοί re σφᾶς ὁμοθυμαδὸν ἔδωκαν παρακληθέντες els τὴν τῶν Ρωμαίων πίστιν... . . Ῥωμαῖοι δὲ προσδεξάμενοι τοὺς Kepxupatous εἰς τὴν φιλίαν ἔπλεον ἐπὶ τῆς ᾿Απολλωνίας. . . καὶ τούτων ἀποδεξαμένων καὶ δόντων ἑαυτοὺς εἰς τὴν ἐπιτροπὴν, . . . Ῥωμαῖοι δὲ καὶ τοὺς ᾿Ἐπιδαμνίους παρα- λαβόντες εἰς τὴν πίστιν προῆγον, Κκιτιλ. [For Roman “faith” cf. below chap. ix. p. 494. ] 3 See Thirlwall, viii. 140, note. vil INTERCOURSE WITH ROME 327 et ee ee eee final conqueror of the [llyrian Queen, sent Ambassadors to the Roman two Leagues, who explained the causes of the war with Teuta, Embassies and of the appearance of Roman armies in a quarter where their τ neues, presence might seem threatening to Greece.!. They then related z.¢, ρος, the events of the campaign, and read out the treaty which had just been concluded, the terms of which were so favourable to the interests of every Greek state. The Roman envoys were received, as they well deserved, with every honour in the Assem- blies of both Confederations. The political embassy was followed Honorary by one, apparently of a religious or honorary character, to Embassies Corinth and to Athens. The Corinthians bestowed on the ἰ9 rorinta Rtomans the right of sharing in the Greek national festival of the ‘Athens. Isthmian Games? This was equivalent to raising the Roman People from the rank of mere barbarians to the same quasi- areek position as the Epeirots and Macedonians.’ It shows also that the administration of the Isthmian Games was still in the hands of the State of Corinth, and had not been at all trans- ferred to the general Achaian body. As adnunistrators of those games, the Corinthians might lawfully receive and honour a Roman Embassy which was charged with no political object, but merely came on a pilgrimage to Corinth and its holy places. Such an Embassy in no way interfered with the Federal sover- elgnty in matters of foreign negociation ; those had been already dealt with by the Federal Assembly.t. And truly Rome might just then seem worthy of any honours on the part of Greece. Not but that a feeling of shame’ might arise in the breast of This seems implied in the expression of Polybios (ii. 12), ἀπελογίσαντο τὰς αἰτίας τοῦ πολέμου καὶ τῆς διαβάσεως. “ Pol. ii. 12, ᾿Απὸ δὲ ταύτης τῆς καταρχῆς Ῥωμαῖοι μὲν εὐθέως ἄλλους πρεσ- βευτὰς ἐξαπέστειλαν πρὸς Κορινθίους καὶ πρὸς ᾿Αθηναίους" ὅτε δὴ καὶ Κορίνθιοι πρῶτον ἀπεδέξαντο μετέχειν ‘Pwuaious τοῦ τῶν ᾿Ισθμίων ἀγῶνος. “Soon afterwards the Romans sent other embassies to Corinth and to Athens, with no other object, so far as appears, than of introducing themselves to some of the most illustrious states of the Greek name, which many of the Romans had already learned to admire.” Arnold’s Rome, iii. 40. 3 Arnold, us. Thirlwall, viii. 140. The act, though done by a body of less authority, had somewhat the same effect as the admission of Macedonia to the Amphiktyonic franchise. 4 πὸ τῶν ᾿Αχαιῶν ἔθνος. Pol. ii. 12, of the other embassy. See above, p. 203. 5 “*Man kann fragen, ob der Jubel in Hellas grisser war oder die Scham, als statt der zehn Linienschiffe der achaeischen Kidgenossenschaft, der streitbarsten Macht Griechenlands, jetzt zweihundert Segel der Barbaren in ihre Hifen einliefen und mit einem Schlage die Aufgabe Josten, die den Griechen zukam und an der diese so kliglich gescheitert waren,” Mommsen, Rim. Gesch. i. 371. Eventual results of Roman inter- ference. Tnaction of Mace- donia. Death of Dimétrios, B.C. 229, 328 HISTORY OF FEDERAL GREECE CHAP. any patriotic Greek, when he thought that the freedom of three cities, which the two greatest powers of independent Greece had in vain attempted to deliver, had now to be received as ὦ gift from a barbarian conqueror.! The conduct of Rome throughout this war was thoroughly just and honourable ; there is no reason to charge either the Senate or individual Roman leaders with any ulterior views of selfish aggrandizement ; but it is clear that, when the Roman arms had once been seen before a Greek fortress, when the wiles of Roman diplomacy had once been listened to by a Greek Assembly, a path was opened which directly led to the fight of Kynoskephalé and to the sack of Corinth. The inaction of Macedonia during all these events is remark- able. Since Démétrios first engaged the Illyrians to help Medeén, we hear of absolutely no Macedonian interference, either warlike or diplomatic, in matters which would seem to have very directly touched Macedonian interests. We are not told with what eyes Macedonian statesmen looked upon the first appearance of so formidable a power as Rome in lands so closely bordering upon their own, Nor do we hear that Rome thought it necessary on this occasion to enter into any relations with the Macedonian Kingdom. Roman embassies went on political errands to Aigion and Thermon, and on honorary errands to Corinth and Athens, but no envoy seems to have been dis- patched in either character to the court of Pella or to the sanctuary of Dion. This apparent temporary insignificance of a power lately so great, and soon to be so great again, is explained by the unusual activity of the restless northern tribes, and by the commotions which commonly attended a change of sovereign in Macedonia.2 The reign of Démétrios ended about the time when the Romans first crossed into Ilyria.* He appears to have died in battle with the Dardanians ; certainly he had lately been defeated by them.* The heir to his crown was his young son 1 “Tn the course of this short war, not only Corcyra, but Apollonia also, and Epidamnus, submitted to the Romans at discretion, and received their liberty, as was afterwards the case with all Greece, as a gift from the Roman people.” Arnold, iii. 39. See Flathe, Gesch. Mac. i. 148 et seqq. ' 3 Pol. ii. 44. Anunrplou δὲ βασιλεύσαντος δέκα μόνον ἔτη καὶ μεταλλάξαντος τὸν βίον περὶ τὴν πρώτην διάβασιν εἰς τὴν ᾿Ιλλυρίδα Ρωμαίων. 4 See Thirlwall, viii. 141. VIE AFFAIRS OF MACEDONIA 329 Ben ee ee eo - Philip, but the royal authority was assumed—first, it would seem, as Protector and then as King for life'—by Antigonos, Protecto- surnamed Désén,? a distant kinsman of the royal house, but with ele ae a distinct reservation of the rights of young Philip as heir- anticonos apparent. A new King of Macedonia seldom ascended the Dosin, throne without some disturbance, and a King reigning on such Dot 229- terms as these was even less likely than usual to find his power ~~ perfectly undisputed. We hear vaguely of fresh Dardanian inroads, of commotions in Macedonia itself, and even of some movements in Thessaly of which one would gladly know some- thing more.* All these it appears that the energy of Antigonos sufficed to put down; but his hands, like those of Démétrios during the last years of his reign, must have been far too full for him to give much attention to the advance either of Achaia or of Kome. It is evident that the death of Démétrios, and the events Advance which followed it, must have greatly shaken the Macedonian ane influence in Southern Grecce, and must have given a propor- after the tionate advantage to the cause of Greek independence.* The Death of two great desires of Aratos were now to be gratified; Athens Potties. and Argos were both to be delivered. It would scem that Aratos and the Athenians had at last come to an understanding. The Achaian chief was no longer looked on as an enemy at Athens, and he no longer pressed for the incorporation of Athens with the League. Both sides agreed to be satisfied if Deliver- all Macedonian garrisons were withdrawn from Attica, and if ee Athens, again restored to freedom, became the ally of Achaia. p.¢, 229, The way in which this desirable end was brought about curiously illustrates the position and character of Aratos. He was not then in office, the Presidency of the League being held by his rival Lydiadas.° But it was not to Lydiadas, but to Aratos, that 1 Justin, xxviii. 3. 5 Ὁ Δώσων, he who is about to give, that is, he who promises and does not perform. It does not appear how he came by the nickname, as his general con- duct is honourable and straightforward, % Justin, xxviii, 8. See Thirlwall, viii. 164. 4 Pol. ii. 44. Δημητρίου δὲ. . . μεταλλάξαντος τὸν βίον. . ἐγένετό τις εὔροια πραγμάτων πρὸς τὴν ἐξ ἀρχῆς ἐπιβολὴν τῶν ᾿Αχαιῶν. Plut, Ar. 84. Kal Μακεδόνων μὲν ἀσχόλων ὄντων διά τινας προσοίκους καὶ ὁμόρους πολέμους, Αἰτωλῶν δὲ συμμαχούντων, ἐπίδοσιν μεγάλην ἡ τῶν ᾿Αχαιῶν ἐλάμβανε δύναμις. 5 So Flathe, ii. 156. Plutarch (Ar. 34) says only ἑτέρου μὲν͵ ἄρχοντος τότε τῶν ᾿Αχαιῶν, but it clearly was Lydiadas. This year, B.c. 229, is that of his third and last Generalship. Applica- tion of the Athenians to Aratos when out of office. Aratos buys the Mace- donians out of Attica. 330 HISTORY OF FEDERAL GREECE CHAP. the Athenians applied for μοῖρ. To them Aratos, whether as friend or as enemy, had always appeared as the one representa- tive of the League ; we hear of no application to the Achaian General, of no audience given to Athenian Ambassadors by the Achaian Assembly ; he who had delivered Siky6n and Corinth is prayed to deliver Athens also somehow or other. Probably the Macedonian garrisons would have hindered the progress of avowed Athenian envoys on such an errand; but nothing need have hindered Aratos from communicating the message which he had secretly received, if not to the Assembly or to the Senate, yet at all events to the Chief Magistrate of the year. But so to have done would have been to run the risk of winning glory and influence for a rival; it would have been giving the rash ex- Tyrant a fresh opportunity to propose some of his needless enterprises. Lydiadas might have gone the length of an open attack on the Macedonian garrisons, and have exposed the armies of the League to all the hazards of a pitched battle. Aratos, as ever, is zealous for the deliverance of a Greck state, above all for the deliverance of Athens; to promote that deliverance he is ready to undergo any amount of personal cost, personal exertion, and personal danger; he will vladly free Attica from the presence of the stranger, but he must be allowed to free her himself, and to free her in his own way. This time he did not try a night escalade ; a long illness, which obliged him to be carried in a litter, prevented him from leading an attack on Peiraieus or Mounychion ; probably, as the Macedonians occupied four distinct fortresses, even a successful attack on one garrison might have done little more than increase the watchfulness of the others.? His way of compassing his end was simple but daring. He went in his litter to a private con- ference with Diogenés, the Macedonian officer of whom we have already heard,? and negociated a bargain, by which, in considera- tion of a sum of one hundred and fifty talents, Diogenés restored Peiraieus, Mounychion, Sounion, and Salamis to the Athenians. At this particular juncture the position of Diogen¢és must have been very precarious and ambiguous. Macedonia had lost her King, and was in a state of utter confusion ; he could expect no 1 Plut. Ar. 84, Οἱ δ᾽ ᾿Αθηναῖοι συμφρονήσαντες αὐτοῦ [᾿ Ἀράτου] τὴν ἀρετὴν, ἐπεὶ Δημητρίου τελευτήσαντος ὥρμησαν ἐπὶ τὴν ἐλευθερίαν, ἐκεῖνον ἐκάλοιν. 2 Paus. ii. 8.6. Οὐ γὰρ ἤλπιζε δύνασθαι πρὸς βίαν αὐτὰ ἐξελεῖν, 3 See above, p. 310. VII DEALINGS OF ARATOS WITH ATHENS AND ARGOS 331 -----τ...ὄ.... -.--.--....-.--ςςΞ.--. -- - wee we em eee “τως - aid from home, nor could he tell what might be the policy of the new reign. The idea of such independence as Alexander had enjoyed at Corinth might have occurred to him, but one hundred and fifty talents in ready money may well have seemed more valu- able than such a hope accompanied by so many risks. The money was paid ; Aratos himself contributed a large sum,' either out of his private estate or out of the accumulations of his Egyptian pension. The Macedonians departed; Athens was again free, but her incorporation with the League was not pressed. Aratos had won a victory after his own heart; he had achieved one of the foremost and noblest objects of his ambition. He had delivered a famous city, and had won a new ally for his country, and that without shedding a drop of blood, and at no one’s risk or cost but his own. But we can well understand that Lydiadas might be displeased at secing a private citizen do even such good deeds, without deeming the Chief Magistrate of the League worthy of any share in them ; and he may have looked on the de- liverance of Greek citics by gold instead of steel as an unworthy substitution of the merchant’s craft for that of the warrior. Though Athens had not actually joined the League, yet this ex- Progress ploit of Aratos, and the consequent close alliance of Athens, greatly mee raised the Achaian credit and influence. Aigina at once joined Union of the League ;? Xenén, Tyrant of Hermioné, followed the example Aigina and of Lydiadas, laid down the Tyranny, and made Hermioné another Hermione. member of the Achaian body.* We may also infer from a vague notice in Plutarch that some more of the Arkadian towns were gathered in at the same time.* And now came the great acquisi- tion of Argos. In the narrative of this event we have the rivalry between Aratos and Lydiadas more vividly set before us than ever. Lydiadas was General of the League; but Aratos Unautho- did not think it inconsistent with the duty of a good citizen to "Zed nego- make private advances to Aristomachos, to send messages to cations of him, to invite him to follow the example of Lydiadas in laying with Ari- down his Tyranny and uniting his city to the Achaian League. stomelios Private action of this sort had long been familiar to Aratos, and’? it had never been, at all events when successful, very severely scrutinized by his countrymen. But then the chief place in the 1 Twenty talents, according to Plutarch (Ar. 34)’ twenty-five, according to Pausanias (ii. 8. 6). * Plut. Ar, 34. 3 Plut. us. Pol. ii. 44. * Plut. us. Ἢ τε πλείστη τῆς ᾿Αρκαδίας αὐτοῖς τοῖς [᾿Αχαιοῖς] συνετέλει. Lydiadas interferes as General, His pro- posal for the Union of Argos 332 HISTORY OF FEDERAL GREECE CHAP. League had never before been filled by a personal rival, and a rival who was at least his equal in ability and ambition. Aratos continued his negociations with the Argeian Tyrant ; he enlarged to him on the miseries of absolute power, and on the far loftier position of a General of the Achaians, a post which, on the union of Argos with the League, Aristomachos might aspire to fill as well as Lydiadas. Aristomachos agreed to the proposal, on condition of receiving fifty talents to pay off his mercenaries. Money seems never to have been any difticulty with Aratos ; he undertook to provide this large sum, and began to collect it, from what sources we know not. Large as was doubtless his private estate, and inexhaustible as was the wealth of his friend King Ptolemy, it was a bold undertaking so soon after his large con- tribution towards the ransom of the Attic fortresses. While the money was collecting,! the negociation came to the ears of the Achaian General. As Chief Magistrate of the League, Lydiadas was naturally and rightfully offended that a private citizen should undertake these unauthorized negociations with foreign powers. As the personal rival of Aratos, we can hardly blame him for wishing that the glory of winning Argos, especially in his own year of office, should fall, not to Aratos, but to himsclf.? He entered into communication with Aristomachos ; Plutarch— that is, of course, Aratos—tells us that he counselled the Argeian Tyrant to trust him, Lydiadas, the ex-Tyrant, rather than Aratos the sworn foe of Tyrants. However this may be, Lydiadas simply did his duty, as head of the League, in taking the matter into his own hands. His position was that of an Ameri- can President or an English Foreign Secretary who should find ‘that his predecessor in office and rival in politics was busily engaged in planning treaties and alliances with foreign states. Lydiadas arranged the terms of union with Aristomachos ; he laid them before the Assembly for confirmation, inviting Aristo- machos himself, as his own Ambassador, to plead his own cause before the Achaian People.* A proposal was thus made, in the most regular and constitutional way, to bring about an object 1 Plut. Ar. 35. Τῶν χρημάτων ποριζομένων. 2 Th. Φιλοτιμούμενος ἴδιον αὑτοῦ πολίτευμα τοῦτο πρὸς τοὺς ᾿Αχαιοὺς γενέσθαι. 3 Ib, Τοῦ μὲν ᾿Αράτον κατηγόρει πρὸς ᾿Αριστόμαχον ὡς δυσμενῶς καὶ ἀδιαλ- λάκτως ἀεὶ πρὸς τοὺς τυράννους ἔχοντος. 4 Tb. Αὐὑτῷῴ δὲ πείσας τὴν πρᾶξιν ἐπιτρέψαι προσήγαγε τοῖς ᾿Αχαιοῖς τὸν ἄνθρωπον. Helwing (p. 102), the idolater of Aratos, sees in all this only a very improper interference with Aratos on the part of Lydiadas, Vil ACCESSION OF ARGOS TO THE LEAGUE 333 which had been for years one of the darling wishes of the heart of Aratos, and which he had himself been endeavouring at some sacrifice to effect. We can understand the natural disappoint- ment of Aratos at secing the accomplishment of his own cherished scheme transferred to his rival; but this in no way justifies the factious and unpatriotic conduct to which he now stooped. What arguments could have been brought, above all by Aratos, against a Government proposal for the annexation of Argos, history does not tell us, and it is certainly very hard to guess them by the light of nature. He could hardly have had the face to argue that the General of the League had no right to discharge one of his constitutional functions, because a private citizen or an inferior magistrate! wished unconstitutionally to usurp it. But it is certain that Aratos spoke in strong oppost- rejected tion; that on the division the Noes had it, that the Cover nment at the . instance of motion was thrown out, and that Aristomachos was dismissed ἃ ratos from the Assembly, apparently with a degree of disrespect which, [πιὸ 229- Tyrant as he was, he certainly had not ‘deserved.2 Sut, hefore 8], long, things are quite altered ; Aratos is again Gencral ;* he has but carried made his peace with Aristomachos ; he brings forward, and on the triumphantly carries, the very motion which a few months Wotton οἱ before he had caused to be ignominiously thrown out; Argos General, is united to the League; and, at the next election of Federal ¥.¢. 228. Magistrates, Aratos is succeeded in his office, not, as had now Aristo- become the rule, by Lydiadas, but by Aristomachos himself, »@chos This election was doubtless made through the personal influence eed of Aratos, and the narrative seems rather to imply that it was part of the bargain between him and Aristomachos. Along with Argos and Aristomachos, Phlious and its Tyrant Kleédnymos° ' It is always possible that Aratos may have filled some other Federal magis- tracy in the years when he was not General. 2 Plut. Ar. 856. ᾿Αντειπόντος μὲν yap αὐτοῦ [’Aparov] δι’ ὀργὴν ἀπήλασαν τοὺς περὶ τὸν ᾿Αριστόμαχον. 3 See Flathe, ii. 167, Thirlwall, viii. 166. The Assembly at which Lydiadas produced Aristomachos was probably the regular Spring Meeting of the year 098, At that meeting Aratos would be elected General for the year 228-7. When he came into office, he might either summon a special Assembly for the discussion of the question, or might introduce it at the regular Autumnal Meeting. + Plut. Ar. δῦ, ᾿Ἰπεὶ δὲ συμπεισθεὶς πάλιν αὐτὸς ἤρξατο περὶ αὐτῶν δια- λέγεσθαι παρὼν, πάντα τάχεως καὶ προθύμως ἐψηφίσαντο καὶ προσεδέξαντο μὲν τοὺς ᾿Αργείους καὶ Φλιασίους εἰς τὴν πολιτείαν, ἐνιαυτῷ δὲ ὕστερον καὶ τὸν ᾿Αριστόμαχον εἵλοντο στρατηγόν. 5 Pol, ii, 44, Union of Phhious with the League. Estimate of the conduct of Aratos. 70M1- manding Position of the Achaian League, B.C. 228, 334 HISTORY OF FEDERAL GREECE CHAP. were also admitted into the League, which thus included all Argolis. By these annexations Aratos doubtless gained much fame, but it was at the expense of his true honour. Plutarch tells us of the wonderful proof of the national goodwill and con- fidence which the Achaian Assembly showed to Aratos.! One who is not a professed biographer of heroes might be tempted to say that neither Aratos nor the Assembly ever showed them- selves Ina more paltry light. It is perhaps not quite unknown in other constitutional governments for a statesman’s view of a measure to differ a good deal, according as he is in office or in opposition. But to an impartial spectator this proceeding of Aratos will perhaps appear an extreme, not to say shameless, case of such sudden conversion. One cannot help wondering how any Assembly could be got to follow him to and fro in such i course. but, granting that some ingenious misrepresentations, some fervent declamations, had once beguiled the Assembly to reject the proposal of Lydiadas, yet afterwards to accept the pro- posal of Aratos was, on the part of the Assembly, whatever we say of Aratos himself, merely a return to common sense. The League was now at the height of its glory. Days were indeed in store when its territorial extent was to be far greater, but those were days when its true greatness and independence had passed away for ever. But now it was wholly independent of foreign influences ; the Egyptian connexion did not practically hamper its action, and, in the political morality of those times, it carried with it no disgrace. The League was now the greatest power of Greece. A Federation of equal cities, democratically governed, embraced the whole of old Achaia, the whole of the Argolic peninsula, the greater part of Arkadia, together with Phlious, Sikyén, Corinth, Megara, and the island of Aigina. Within this large continuous territory we hear of no discontent, no hankering after secession, save only in the single turbulent city of Mantineia. Achaians, Dorians, Arkadians, had forgotten their local quarrels, and lived as willing fellow-citizens of one Federal state. Tyrants and Tyrannicides confined their warfare within the limits of parliamentary opposition, and appeared in alternate years at the head of the councils and armies of the League. The rival League of Attola was still a harmonious ally ; its alliance carried with it the alliance of Elis; Athens was hound to the 1 Plut, Ar. 35. Ἔνθα δὴ μάλιστα φανερὰν ἐποίησαν οἱ σύνεδροι τῶν ᾿Αχαιῶν τὴν πρὸς τὸν “Aparoy εὔνοιαν καὶ πίστιν. vit CONDITION OF SPARTA 335 League by every tie of gratitude; the breed of local Tyrants had ceased to exist; some had been extirpated, others had been converted into Achaian citizens and leaders. Macedonia was doubtless not friendly, but she was not ina position to be actively hostile; Rome herself, a name which doubtless already commanded a vague respect, though as yet no servile fear, had entered into the friendhest relations, cemented by the choicest honours on either side. The work of the League seemed to be done; Greece, all Greece at least south of Thermopylae, was free ; all her noblest cities enjoyed freedom from foreign garrisons and foreign tribute ; none of them was hostile to the League; many of them were incorporated as its principal members. Never did the League itself stand so high in power and reputation ; never had Greece, as a whole, so fair a prospect of peace and good government. The time was now come when the man who had done all this good for his native land was to undo it with his own hands, $3. From the Beginning of the Var with Kleomenés to the Opening of Negucuttions with Macedonia B.C. 297—224 The one possible rival of the Achaian League within Pelo- Gonaition ponnésos was Sparta. That famous city had now indeed, for of Searta, nearly a hundred and fifty years, utterly fallen from her ancient yo 374_ vreatness. The day of Leuktra had not only cut her off from 227. all hope of retaining or recovering her old supremacy, it had cut off the fairest portion of her home territory from her dominion. The President, we might almost say the Tyrant, of Greece was brought down to the rank of one Peloponnésian city among many. Instead of sending her armies to lord it over Thebes and Olynthos, she was hemmed in on one side by her new-born rival Megalopolis, on another by her own liberated serfs of Messénia, As for her internal state, we are told of corruptions of every kind; the Laws of Lykourgos had become a name; all power and all property were centred in a few hands; Kings and people alike were held in bondage by the ruling oligarchs. And yet, on the whole, the history of Sparta during this age is more honourable than that of any other of the great Hellenic ‘cities. Her supremacy, her greatness, had passed away; but, within the narrow bounds in which she was pent up, she preserved her B.C, 338, ller internal condition, 336 HISTORY OF FEDERAL GREECE CHAP, independence and her dignity in a way that Thebes and Corinth and Athens had failed to do. During the times of greatest violence and confusion, she had been free alike from foreign conquest and from domestic revolution. She could not indeed always defend her territories from invasion ; still she had never seen cither a native Tyrant or a Macedonian garrison. Philip had marched along her coasts, he had contracted her borders, but his phalanx had never appeared before her unwalled capital. The democratic hero of Thebes and the royal hero of Epeiros had alike been driven back when they assaulted her in her own hearth and home. She had never recognized the Macedonian as chief of Greece; she had sent no deputies to the Corinthian Congress ; her name was formally excepted in the inscriptions which described Alexander and all Greeks, save the Lacedie- monians, as victorious over the Barbarians of Asia. But she was not dead to the cause of Greece; her kingly Ilé¢rakleids could still command armies on behalf of Helleme freedom; one Agis had dicd fighting in a vain attempt to break the Macedonian yoke; another had come ready, if Aratos would but have let him, to fight as bravely to free Pcloponnésos from the robbers of .tolia. At home, whatever were her political or social cor- ruptions, they were the mere gradual decay of old institutions, not the lawless usurpations of high-handed violence. [16] Kings, her Ephors, her Senate, her Assembly, were no longer what they once were; but the venerable names and _ offices remained unchanged. No Spartan King had ever trampled on the rights of Sonate or People, none had even ventured to resist the far more doubtful pretensions of the despotic Ephors. And, on the other hand, Sparta had seen no usurping citizen holding her in bondage by a mercenary force, nor had she ever acknowledged any chief but her own lawful and Zeus-descended Kings. Sparta lay quict, seldom touched by the revolutions of the rest of Greece, fallen indeed, but neither crushed like Thebes, enslaved like Thessaly, nor degraded like Athens. She was still inde- pendent within her own borders; she might yet again become powerful beyond them. And now the day had come when Sparta was once more for a moment to stand forth as the first of Grecian states, and, after a short career of glory, to sink into a state of degradation, both within and without, almost lower than that of Athens itself. 1 [See Thirlwall, vi. 114. Cf. Strabo, viii. 5, 6.] Vil REVOLUTION OF KLEOMENES AT SPARTA 337 First came Agis the reformer, Agis the martyr, the purest Reform and noblest spirit that ever perished through deeming others as and ἴδιο pure and noble as himself. Then, for the first time, internal 3 νά]. revolution began in Sparta, and the hand of the executioner was raised against the sacred person of a Hérakleid King. But his Reign memory died not; a successor and an avenger arose from the % KLEo- . " . . MEN&S, very hearth of his destroyer ; Sparta had at last a King indeed ;! 5 4 936_ no Tyrant, no invader, but a Spartan of the Spartans, a Hérakleid 222. of the divine seed ; one who grasped the sceptre of Agis with a firmer hand, and who secrupled not to carry out his schemes by means from which his gentle spirit would have shrunk in horror. Kleomenés burst the bands with which a gradually narrowing Revolution oligarchy had fettered alike the Spartan Kings and the Spartan of Kleo- ᾿ . menés people. He slew the Ephors on their seats of office, and , 6 996- summoned the people of Sparta to behold and approve the deed. 225. An age which has condoned the most deliberate perjury and the most cold-blooded massacre which history records is hardly entitled to be severe on the comparatively mild coup d'état? of the Lacedeemonian King. He put out of the way by violence, because Law could not touch them, men who, there is every reason to believe, had put to death his own royal colleague, and then charged him with the deed.2 The slaughter of the Ephors was a stroke in which Agis or Epameinéndas would have had no share, but it was one at which Ehud, Tell, or Timoleén could not consistently have scrupled. The Ephors, the real Tyrants, once gone, Kleomenés stood forth as the King of a free people, the General of a gallant army. He was no longer the slave of a narrow caste of ruling families; he was the beloved chief of a nation, which, recruited by a large addition from the subject classes, was now a nation once more. A people thus springing 1 The character of Kleomenés has been a subject of warm dispute both in his own days and in ours. Polybios, as a Megalopolitan, of course draws him in the darkest colours ; in Plutarch we find the counter-statement of his admiring con- temporary Phylarchos. I do not feel called upon minutely to examine questions which are inatters of Spartan, not of Federal, history ; but I believe that my notion of Kleomenés will be found quite in harmony with the views of Bishop Thirlwall. See his History, viii, 160-183. * Four of the Ephors were killed, with ten persons who attempted to defend them. Eighty citizens were banished, that is, not sent to some Spartan Cayenne, but allowed to live in any Greek city except Sparta, retaining their rights of pro- perty, and encouraged by a proinise to be allowed to return home at some future day. So small an allowance of bloodshed and confiscation would be counted a very poor day’s work at the “inauguration”’ of an Empire or a Red Republic. 3 See Thirlwall, viii. 172. Cf. 163. Z Relations between sparta and the League. Causes of war between Sparta and the League. HISTORY OF FEDERAL GREECE CHAP. into a revived life 1s sure to be warlike, if not positively aggressive. The discipline of victory—and only a chief like Aratos can lead such a people to defeat—is needed to teach it to feel its own powers ; it is needed to efface all divisions, all hostile memories, by cammon struggles and common triumphs in the national cause; How was Peloponnésos to contain two such powers, each in the full vigour of recovered freedom, each fresh with all the lofty aspirations of regenerate youth? What were to be the mutual relations of the revived League and of the revived King- dom? Above all, what were to be the personal relations of two such chiefs as Aratos and Kleomenés? Free and equal alliance would be the bidding of cold external prudence. Sparta, such a counsellor would say, is far too great to become a single city of the League ; Achaia, on the other hand, is far too free and happy as she is to be asked to admit the slightest superiority on the part of Sparta. Live in friendship side by side; and hang up your shields till the dftolian again proves faithless, or till the Macedonian again becomes threatening. Advice sound indeed, advice at once prudent and benevolent, but advice which two ambitious chiefs and two high-spirited nations were never likely to take. The war between Sparta and the League began before Kleo- menés had accomplished his great revolution at home. There can be no doubt that it was a war which was cqually acceptable to the leaders on both sides, and that in no case could peace have been kept very long. It was like the old Peloponnésian War between Sparta and Athens; in both cases war was the natural result of the position occupied by two rival powers ;! in both cases the grounds of warfare which were alleged on either side were at most the occasions, and not the real causes, of the struggle. In the cyes of Aratos, Sparta was a power which stood in the way of his darling scheme of uniting all Pelopon- nésos into one Confederation.2 On that object his mind had dwelt so long that he had begun to regard himself as having a mission to compel as well as to persuade the refractory ; the 1 Thue. 1. 28, Τὴν μὲν yap ἀληθεστάτην πρόφασιν, ἀφανεστάτην δὲ λόγῳ, τοὺς ᾿Αθηναίους ἡγοῦμαι, μεγάλους γιγνομένους καὶ φόβον παρέχοντας τοῖς Λακεδαιμονίοις, ἀναγκάσαι ἐς τὸ πολεμεῖν" ai δ᾽ ἐς τὸ φανερὸν λεγόμεναι αἰτίαι αἵδ᾽ ἦσαν ἑκατέρων. This is as true of Orchomenos and Athénaion as οἵ Epi- damnos and Korkyra. 2 Plut. Kl. 8. Ὁ yap “Aparos . . ἐβούλετο μὲν ἐξ ἀρχῆς εἰς μίαν σύνταξιν ἀγαγεῖν Ἰ]ελοποννησίους, κ. Τ. λ. VIL SPECIAL POSITION OF SPARTA 339 deliverer was at last beginning to share some of the feelings of a conqueror. Elis, Sparta, and some Arkadian towns! were still wanting to the completion of his great work. Now Sparta, and Different Klis also, stood in a wholly different position from the cities Pe ctta which Aratos had incorporated with the League in earlier days. rope the Sikydén, Corinth, Megara, Argos, had every reason to rejoice in cities de- their annexation. Instead of foreign or domestic bondage, they vere’ by obtained freedom within their own walls, and true confede- Ὁ ” rates beyond them. Sparta had no such need; she had no foreign garrison, no domestic ‘Tyrant; she lived under a Govern- ment which, whether good or bad, was a national Government, resting on the prescriptive reverence of eight hundred years. No enemy threatened her, and, had any enemy threatened her, she was fully able to resist. She was far greater than any one city of the League ; indecd the event proved that she was able to contend on more than equal terms with the League’s whole force. Her immemorial polity, the habits and feelings of her people, were all utterly inconsistent with the position of a single member of a Democratic Confederation.2, What was deliverance and promotion to Corinth and Argos would to Sparta have been i sacrifice of every national feeling, and a sacrifice for which no occasion called. Sparta was never likely to enter the League as a willing member, and Aratos had yet to learn that none but willing members of a League are worth having. Sparta was too strong to be herself directly attacked; but she might be weakened and isolated, till she was either actually conquered, or else led to think that accession to the League would be the less of two evils. On this poimt Aratos, Lydiadas, and Aristoma- chos would be of one mind. To Lydiadas the matter would seem very simple: Sparta was the old enemy of his city ; Sparta and Megalopolis had, as usual, border disputes ; territory was said to be unjustly detained on either side;° the hope of Achaian help against Sparta was doubtless one among the 1 Plut. Kl. 8. ᾿Απελείποντο Λακεδαιμόνιοι καὶ ᾿Ηλεῖοι καὶ ὅσοι Λακεδαιμονίοις ᾿Αρκάδων προσεῖχον --- that is, doubtless, Mantineia, Tegea, and Orchomenos. Phigaleia,’ too, and perhaps some other Arkadian towns, were not yet incor- porated. He should also have added Messéné. 2 See the remarks of Schorn, p. 96. 3 Plut. Kl. 4. "EuBorn δὲ τῆς Λακωνικῆς τὸ χωρίον ἐστὶ, καὶ τότε πρὸς τοὺς Μεγαλοπολίτας ἣν ἐπίδικον. Pol. ii. 46. TO καλούμενον ᾿Αθήναιον ἐν τῇ τῶν Μεγαλοπολιτῶν χώρᾳ. To the Megalopolitan historian the right of Megalopolis to Athénaion did not seem open to those doubts which were intelligible at the distance of Chairdneia. War ac- ceptable on both sides. Aimbigu- ous rela- tions of Attolia to Sparta and to Achaia, 340 HISTORY OF FEDERAL GREECE CHAP. objects which had led him to join the League at all. To Aristoma- chos, if he had in him a spark of the old Argeian spirit, Sparta would be the object of a hatred no less keen than it was to Lydi- adas. The day was at last come when the old wrong might he redressed, when Argos, if not, as of old, the head of Pelopon- nésos, might at least see Sparta brought down to her own level. The three chief men of the League would thus be agreed, or, if there was a difference, it would be a difference as to the means rather than the end. We can well believe that, while Aratos was weaving his subtle web, Lydiadas and Aristomachos would be clamouring for open war with Lacedemon, and setting forth the standing border-wrongs of their several citics. To Kleo- menés, on the other hand, war was just as acceptable as it could be to the most warlike orator at Aigion. He had not as yet appeared as ἃ revolutionist ; he was a young and orderly King, humbly obeying his masters the Ephors. But he was doubtless already meditating his daring plan of carrying out the dreams of Agis with the strong hand. A war in which he might win the popularity and influence which attend a victorious general, a war in which he might show himself forth as the retriever of Sparta’s ancient glory, was of all things that which best suited his pur- pose! He rejoiced at every hostile sign on the Achaian side, and nourished every hostile disposition among his own people. Small as was the actual authority of a Spartan King, all Spartan history shows that his position was one which allowed an able and active prince to acquire a practical influence in the state far beyond the formal extent of his royal powers.” Kleomenés, even thus early, was evidently popular and influential; Sparta felt that one of her old Kings, a Lednidas or an Agésilaos, had again arisen to win back for her her ancient place in the eyes of men. The position of the A%tolian League just at this time is singular and ambiguous. If we may believe Polybios, that is, doubtless, the Autobiography of Aratos, Aitolian intrigue was at the bottom of the whole mischief. The ttolians, urged by their natural injustice and rapacity,® stirred up Kleomenés to 1 Plut. KL. ὃ, Olduevos δ᾽ ἂν ἐν πολέμῳ μᾶλλον ἢ κατ᾽ εἰρήνην μεταστῆσαι τὰ παρόντα συνέκρουσε πρὸς τοὺς ᾿Αχαιοὺς τὴν πόλιν αὐτοὺς διδόντας ἐγκλημάτων προφάσεις. The whole state of the case could hardiy be more tersely expressed. See also Droysen, ii. 478. 2 See Oxford Essays, 1857, p. 154. 3 Pol, ii, 45. Αἰτωλοὶ διὰ τὴν ἔμφυτον ἀδικίαν καὶ πλεονεξίαν φθονήσαντες, κ.ιτ.λ. VII WAR ACCEPTABLE ON BOTH SIDES 341 make wrongful attacks on the Achaian League; they once more plotted with Macedonia to partition the Achaian cities ; it was only Aratos who, by skilfully winning over Antigonos to the Achaian side, saved the League from being overwhelmed by three enemies at once. On the other hand, we have the facts that the two Leagues were still on friendly terms, and that there had been, to say the least, no open war between Achaia and Mace- donia since the beginning of the reign of Antigonos. It might be doing the Aftolians too much honour to suppose that a scrupulous regard to the faith of treaties would have kept them back from any aggression which might be convenient at the moment. But there is the fact that the Af‘tolians did not strike a blow throughout the whole Kleomenic War, even though the Achaians were, at one stage of it at least, at war with their cherished allies of Elis. ‘There is the other fact, which we shall come to presently, that Aratos himself, before he took the final step of asking for Macedonian help, first asked for help from Aiitolia. Had the two Leagues been on the same cordial terms on which they were a few years before, that help would never have been refused; but had the Adtohans been such bitter enemies to Achaia as Polybios represents, that help would never have been asked for. In the latter case they would doubtless have taken an open part against the League long before. The truth doubtless is! that the Aitolians were jealous of the pro- vress of the Achaian League in Arkadia, but that, Just now, Peloponnésian affairs seemed to them of secondary moment. Their hands appear to have been at this time full of enterprises for extending their power nearer home. They were hostile to Macedonia, and were occupied in some of their Thessalian con- quests. This extension of their continuous territory was a more important object than the retention of a few inland towns in Peloponnésos. They were doubtless well pleased to see the two great Peloponnésian powers at war with one another; they may even have taken such steps as were likely to embroil them together ; but their agency was clearly something quite secon- dary throughout the matter. It is evident that, in the explana- tion given by Polybios of the causes of the war, we have not the historian’s own statement of matters of fact, but only the best apology which Aratos could think of for his own unpatriotic conduct. In fact, no very remote causes need be sought for to 1 See Thirlwall, viii, 168. Inaction of the AXtolians through- out the Kleomenic War. Atolian avquisi- tions in Thessaly. Spartan acquisition of the Astolian towns in Arkadia, B.C. 228. Achaian interests involved in this an- nexation. 342 HISTORY OF FEDERAL GREECE CHAP. menés and Aratos, were shut up within one peninsula ; and that was enough. It will be remembered that the -Htolians had certain posses- sions in Arkadia, the nature of whose relation to the League, whether one of real confederation or of subjection, 1s not very clear! One of these towns, Mantineia, had, as we have seen, from whatever cause, forsaken the Achaian for the A“tolian con- nexion. Mantineia now, together with Tegea and Orchomenos, was, on What ground or by what means we know not, induced by Kleomen¢s*—he is already always spoken of as the chief doer of everything—again to exchange the A‘tohan for the Lacedemonian connexion. On what terms these towns were united to Sparta, whether as subjects, as dependents, or as free allies, does not appear. But in any case their new relation was one which involved separation from the Altolian body. The Aitolians however made no opposition, and formally recognized the right of Sparta to her new acquisitions.* Such distant possessions were doubtless felt to be less valuable to the Ai‘tolian League than the certainty of embroiling Sparta and Achaia. For it is evident that their occupation by Sparta was a real ground for alarm on the part of the Achaians. As the territory of the League now stood, these cities seemed naturally designed to make a part of it. As independent commonwealths, or as out- lying dependencies of /Htolia, they had doubtless been always looked wpon as undesirable neighbours. But it was a far more dangerous state of things now that a long wedge of Lace- dzemonian territory had thrust itself in between the two Achaian cantons of Argos and Megalopolis.* But however much such a frontier might in Achaian eycs seem to stand in need of rectifi- 1 Pol. ii. 46, Tas Altwrots οὐ μόνον συμμαχίδας ὑπαρχούσας ἀλλὰ καὶ συμπο- λιτευομένας τότε πόλεις. See above, p. 270. 5.1. KAeouévous πεπραξικοπηκότος αὐτοὺς [τοὺς Αἰτωλοὺς] καὶ παρῃρημένον Τέγεαν, Μαντίνειαν, ᾿᾽Ορχόμενον. 5 ΤΌ, Οὐχ οἷον ἀγανακτοῦντας ἐπὶ τούτοις ἀλλὰ καὶ βεβαιοῦντας αὐτῷ [Κλεο- μένει] τὴν παράληψιν. .. ἑκουσίως παρασπονδουμένους καὶ τὰς μεγίστας ἀπολ- λύντας πόλεις ἐθελοντί. The sentence of which these extracts are parts is one of the longest [ know in any language. 4 “Durch sie war plotzlich das Spartanergebiet ticf in den achdischen Bereich hinein vorgeschoben ; die Kidgenossenschatt musste inne werden dass sic auf das (refiibrlichste bedroht 561. Droysen, fi. 480. So Kortum (iii, 188); “ Auch blieb jene [die Kidgenossenschaft der Achaer], welche das Gefahrliche einer frem- den keilformig in die Bundesmark hineingeschobenen Ansiedelung volikomimen erkannte, keineswegs ruhige Zuschauerin.”’ vir ATTEMPT OF ARATOS ON TEGEA AND ORCHOMENOS 848 cation, no formal injury was done to the League by the Lace- deemonian occupation of Orchomenos and Tegea, cities which were not, and never had been, members of the Achaian body. Man- tineia indeed might, to an Unionist of extreme views, seem deserving of the chastisement of rebellion, but it was rather late in the day to take up such a ground, after quietly seeing the city—seemingly for several years—in Adtolian occupation. But nations and governments are seldom swayed by such considcra- tions of consistency. Any nation, any government, would have been stirred up by seeing the frontier of a rival power suddenly carried into the heart of its territory, and that by the occupation of one district at least to which it could put forth some shadow of legal right. The course taken by Aratos was characteristic. Delibera- He and the other members of the Achaian Government! de- tous of the . . \ Achaian termined that war should not be declared against Sparta. A @oyern- declaration of war would have required the summoning of a meat. Federal Assembly and the public discussion of the state of affairs. But it was determined to watch and to hinder the movements of Kleomenés. The mode of watching and hinder- Attempt ing was doubtless left to Aratos himself. He began to lay οἱ autos . . on Leges plans for gaining Tegea and Orchomenos by one of his usual πα Oycho- nocturnal surprises.2- The policy of such a scheme is clear. [f menos. Μὰ ι ἥν Tegea and Orchomenos were gained, Mantineia would be isolated, and the rebel city would be at his mercy. The justice of the scheme is another matter. The League was not at war with Tegea, with Orchomenos, or with Sparta, nor were those cities oppressed by Tyrants or occupied hy Macedonian garri- sons. But Tegea and Orchomenos contained a party favourable to the Achaian comnexion,® and this, or much less than this, was always enough to blind Aratos to every other consideration, when he had the chance of winning new cities for the League. 1 Pol, ii. 16, “Eyvw δεῖν εἰς ταῦτα βλέπων οὗτός re [ὁ “Aparos] kal πάντες ὁμοίως οἱ προεστῶτες τοῦ τῶν ᾿Αχαιῶν πολιτεύματος πολέμου μὲν πρὸς μηδένα κατάρχειν, ἐνίστασθαι δὲ ταῖς τῶν Λακεδαιμονίων ἐπιβολαῖς. The joint action of the President and his Cabinet is here well marked, In this particular year it is unlikely that Lydiadas was even in subordinate office. 2 T follow Bishop Thirlwall in the narrative (viii. 168, 9) which he seems to have put together by a comparison of Plutarch (KI. 4) and Polybios ; that is, of Phylarchos and the Memoirs of Aratos. There is no contradiction between the two, but each naturally dwells on different points in the story. Polybios tells us that the Achaian Government determined to hinder the further progress of Kleomenés ; Plutarch tells us in what way it was that they sought to hinder it. % Plutarch (KI. 4) calls them προδόται, a touch clearly borrowed from Phyl- archos. Kleomenés fortifies Athénaion, B.c, 227. Achaian Declara- tion of War. Aratos annexes Kaphyai to the League. General- ship of Aristo- HISTORY OF FEDERAL GREECE CHAP. 344 But Aratos had at last met with his match abroad as well as at home. Kleomenés found out what was going on, and, with the consent of ‘the Ephors, he fortified a place called Athénaion, in the frontier district which was disputed between Sparta and Megalopolis. At the same moment the night attacks on Tegea and Orchomenos failed; the party favourable to Achaia lost heart, and Aratos had to retire amid the jeers of his rival.! Kleomen¢s was anxious for a battle, or at least for what, with the numbers on both sides,? would rather have been a skirmish. For this of course Aratos had no mind, and Kleomenés was recalled by the Ephors. Aratos, on his return home, procured a declaration of war against Sparta, on the ground of the seizure of Athénaion. The passage of this proposal through the several stages of the General and his Cabinet, the Senate, and the Public Assembly, is, happily for our knowledge of the Achaian constitution, described by the historian with more than usual formality.® The language of Polybios would lead us to believe that the Assembly at which war was declared was an Extraordinary Meeting summoned for the purpose. It was probably not till after the declaration that Aratos was enabled once more to enlarge the League by the acquisition of a new, though not a very important, member. He got possession of the Arkadian town of Kaphyai.+ If, as seems likely, Kaphyai was then in the position of a subject district of Orchomenos, its citizens would doubtless embrace with delight the opportunity of enter- ing the Achaian Union as an independent state. War now began in earnest; but the first important campaign fell in a year when Aratos was not at the head of the Federal armies, It was the year when Aristomachos, the Iix-Tyrant of Argos, was General. The election of Aristomachos at such a moment 1 See the curious correspondence in Plutarch (u.s.). It would be a relief if diplomatic dispatches were more commonly written in so amusing a style. 2 Plut. us. Κλεομένει μετὰ ἱππέων ὀλίγων καὶ πεζῶν τριακοσίων ἐν ’Apxadia oTparomedevomery. 3 Pol, ii, 46. Τότε δὴ συναθροίσαντες τοὺς ᾿Αχαιοὺς ἔκριναν μετὰ THs βουλῆς ἀναλαμβάνειν φανερῶς τὴν πρὸς τοὺς Λακεδαιμονίους ἀπέχθειαν. + Plut. ΚΙ. 4. Plutarch does not mention the declaration of war, Polybios does not mention the taking of Kaphyai, but this seems the most natural order of events, if the Meeting at which war was declared was an Extraordinary one. If Kaphyai was taken before the declaration, it would be easier to suppose that ἢ was declared at the regular Spring Meeting, when Aristomachos was elected eneral, ὙΠ ARISTOMACHOS GENERAL OF THE LEAGUE 345 merits some consideration. There could not be a stronger proof machos, of the bitterness of the feud between Aratos and Lydiadas. ®° 22/-6. War had been declared on account of a violation of the Megalopolitan territory; a Megalopolitan citizen was one of the foremost men of the League; he had thrice filled the office of General; we cannot doubt that he aspired to it a fourth time; we cannot doubt that he would have the strong support of his own city, now that the main business of the General would be to defend the Megalopolitan territory. Everything, one would have thought, specially pointed to Lydiadas as the man fitted above all “others to be the General of this important year. But his claims were rejected, and the defence of Megalopolis and of all Achaia was entrusted to that very Aristomachos, the glory of whose admission to the League had been so unfairly snatched by Aratos from Lydiadas himself. Many men and many cities have deserted the cause of their country on much slighter provocation. We can well believe that Kleomen¢és would willingly have purchased the alliance or the neutrality of Megalopolis by the surrender of the petty territory in dispute. It is even possible that Kleomenés was, Designs in the plan of his campaign, partly guided by that subtle policy of Kleo- which has often led invading generals to spare the lands of ° their special rivals.) An attack on Megalopolis would seem the natural object for a Spartan commander in such a campaign, as indeed the later course of the war plainly shows. But KXKleomenés first carried his arms into the territory of Argos, the country of the newly-clected General, and though he seized on one point, Methydrion, in the Megalopolitan district, yet it was one in a remote part of the Canton, and which did not immediately threaten the capital. One can hardly avoid the suspicion that Kleomenés was expecting either to gain over Lydiadas and his countrymen, or at least to discredit them with the other members of the League. If so, his policy utterly failed; not a word of secession was breathed by the Megalopolitan leader or his countrymen. As for Aristomachos, his fault was that he was afraid to act independenly of Aratos.? 1 The most famous cases are those of Archidamos and Periklés, Thue. ii. 13 ; and of Hannibal and Fabius, Liv. xxii. 29. Plut. Fab. 7. Others are collected by the commentators on Justin, iii. 7. Tacitus (Hist. v. 28) calls it nota ars ducum. * The narrative has here to be made up from two accounts in Plutarch. Ar. 85 and Kl, 4. ΠΑ ΙΒ of Aristo- machos. Battle hindered by the in- terference of Aratos, Indigna- tion against Aratos. Lydiadas stands against Aratos for the 346 HISTORY OF FEDERAL GREECE CIAY. He took the field with an army far superior in number to the enemy,! whom he naturally wished to engaye. But he did not venture to do so without consulting his patron. Aratos was at Athens, on what business we know not, and he wrote thence strongly warning the General against running such terrible risk. Aristomachos was a brave man, and was now high in popular favour ;* he was anxious to distinguish his Generalship by some exploit, and even aspired to an invasion of Lakonia. The temptation to do something might have been too strong for Aristomachos to resist, had not Aratos now appeared in person, and, as it would seem, pretty well relieved? the constitutional chicf of the League of his command. The two armies met face to face near Pallantion, between Megalopolis and Tegea ; but Aratos seems to have thought that one Spartan would be more than a match for four Achaians, and the host of the League departed without striking a blow. constitutional forms; the lord of Corinth knew that his friend- ship or enmity was of vital moment to the League, and that any direct interference with its liberties would not repay the cost and the shame of the undertaking. Philip was young; the evil that was in him had not yet shown itself; he had accepted Aratos as his chief counsellor. The Sikydénian, with all his faults, was not a wilful traitor ; he had no pleasure in undoing his own glorious work; he had no temptation to sacrifice the dignity or the interest of his country, now that there was no Kleomendés to awaken national and personal rivalry. He had brought his country into what was practically a state of bondage, but he at least did what he could to lessen the bitterness of that bondage. As the adviser of the young King, he preached strict observance of justice and mercy, strict fidelity to treaties, strict respect for the rights of the Achaian League, and of every other power, allied or hostile. There were no more Tyrants whom it was lawful to get rid of at all hazards, and, when dealing with Com- monwealths or with lawful Kings, Aratos was as sensible as any man of the obligations of International Law. There was nothing galling in all this either to the mature prudence of Antigonos or to the youthful generosity of Philip. But to some of the Mace- donian courtiers such a state of things was eminently unpleasing. In their eyes the Macedonians were the natural masters of the world ; at all events they were the natural masters of Greece ; they had not come all this way to spend their blood and toil and VIII RELATIONS BETWEEN PHILIP AND THE LEAGUE 421 treasure, merely as the equal allies of a cluster of petty republics. The Achaian League was, after all, little more than an associa- tion of rebels against the Macedonian Crown; the restoration of Corinth had only put that Crown into possession of a part of its just rights ; no satisfaction had been made for the original insult and injury of its capture, or for all the other sins of the League and its chief against the dignity of Macedon. It was unworthy of the successor of Alexander to act on terms of equality with republican Grecks ; if the Achaians wished for Macedonian help, let them become Macedonian subjects. They might keep their constitutional forms, if they pleased; they might amuse them- selves by electing a General and meeting in a Federal Assembly. The Thessalians did something of the kind; they too fancied themselves a republic, and piqued themselves on their re- publican freedom.t. But they were practically Macedonian sub- jects all the same. The Achaians must be reduced to the same level. No one had thought of consulting a Thessalian Assembly as to any wrongs which Thessaly might have suffered from the Axtolians, nor must the King of Macedon be any longer exposed to the indignity of consulting an Achaian Assembly either. The Thessalians obeyed the royal will without dispute or examination, and the Achaians must learn to do the like. Such thoughts, we may be sure, passed through the mind of many a Macedonian courtier and captain, beside him to whom the historian directly attributes the scheme for upsetting the liberties of Achaia. This was Apellés, one of the great officers whom Plots of Antigonos had left as guardians of the young King, and who Apes naturally had great influence with him. With the view of chaian breaking in the Achaians to slavery, he began to encourage the freedom. Macedonian soldiers to insult and defraud their Achaian com- rades in all possible ways. Meanwhile he himself constantly inflicted corporal punishment on Achaian soldiers for the 1 Pol. iv. 76. Βουληθεὶς τὸ τῶν ᾿Αχαιῶν ἔθνος ἀγαγεῖν εἰς παραπλησίαν διά- θεσιν τῇ Θετταλῶν. . .. Θετταλοὶ γὰρ ἐδόκουν μὲν κατὰ νόμους πολιτεύειν καὶ πολὺ διαφέρειν Μακεδόνων, διέφερον δ᾽ οὐδὲν, ἀλλὰ πᾶν ὁμοίως ἔπασχον Μακε- δόσι καὶ πᾶν ἐποίουν τὸ προσταττόμενον τοῖς βασιλικοῖς. Cf. Thirlwall, viii. 255. We have seen already an illustration of their position in the fact that they were enrolled in the Macedonian Confederacy as an independent power, but that no one thought it necessary to ask for the consent of the Thessalians to any of its acts. See above, pp. 389, 400, 409. In another place (vii. 12) Polybios speaks of Thessaly almost as of an integral part of the Macedonian Kingdom ; mera τὸ παραλαβεῖν τὴν βασιλείαν τά τε κατὰ Θετταλίαν καὶ Μακεδονίαν καὶ συλλήβδην τὰ κατὰ τὴν ἰδίαν ἀρχὴν οὕτως ὑπετέτακτο, Κ. Τ. λ. His ill- treatment of the Achaian soldiers. Redress obtained by Aratos from Philip. Fresh schemes of Apellés against Aratos. Philip’s inter- ferences 422 HISTORY OF FEDERAL GREECE CHAP, slightest faults, and sent to prison any one who ventured to interfere. The free citizens of the Achaian towns had not been used to this kind of treatment, either at the hands of their own Generals or at those of Philip’s predecessor. We hear of no public remonstrance on the part of the League or of its Presi- dent ; but a party of young Achaians laid their wrongs before the elder Aratos, and the elder Aratos, in his private capacity as Philip’s adviser, laid the matter before the King. Philip’s heart was still sound, or the influence of Aratos was still paramount. He strictly ordered Apellés to abstain from his injurious con- duct towards the allies; he was to give no orders to the Achaian troops, and to inflict no punishment upon them, without the con- sent of their own General. It is as yet a just master who is speaking, but it 1s a master all the same. Apellés now saw that his course of action must be changed. Nothing could be done to effect his evil purpose as long as Aratos retained any measure of influence with the King. He therefore made it his business to do all he could to undermine him in the good opinion both of Philip and of his own countrymen. He im- pressed on Philip’s mind that, while he listened to Aratos, he could be nothing more than the limited chief of a free Confederacy ; he must treat the Achaians strictly according to the terms of the alliance. But if he listened to him, he might soon become absolute lord of Peloponnésos. A more honourable tribute to Aratos could hardly be paid; the old deliverer is avain appear- ing, though on a humbler and feebler scale, as the champion of Grecian freedom. Apellés also made common cause with the political opponents of Aratos—for such there were—in every city of the League. He diligently sought them out, he admitted them to his own friendship, and presented them to the King.! He prevailed on Philip so far as to induce him to appear at the Spring Mecting of the Federal Congress at Aigion, and to give his countenance to the party opposed to Aratos. This was not 1 Pol. iv. 82. ᾿Εξετάζων τοὺς ἀντιπολιτευομένους τοῖς περὶ τὸν “Aparoy, τίνες εἰσὶν, ἑκάστους ἐκ τῶν πόλεων ἐπεσπάσατο, καὶ λαμβάνων εἰς τὰς χεῖρας ἐψνυχα- γώγει «καὶ παρεκάλει πρὸς τὴν ἑαυτοῦ φιλίαν, συνίστανε δὲ καὶ τῷ Φιλίππῳ, προσ- ἐπιδεικνύων αὐτῷ παρ᾽ ἕκαστον ὡς ἐὰν μὲν ᾿Αράτῳ προσέχῃ, χρήσεται τοῖς ᾿Αχαιοῖς κατὰ τὴν ἔγγραπτον συμμαχίαν, ἐὰν δ᾽ αὐτῷ πείθηται καὶ τοιούτους προσλαμβάνῃ φίλους, χρήσεται πᾶσι Ἰ]ελοποννησίοις κατὰ τὴν αὑτοῦ βούλησιν. Were these opponents of Αγαΐοβ---ἦ ἐναντία στάσις, as Plutarch (Ar. 48) calls them—rem- nants of the oligarchic or tyrannical faction which appeared at Sikydén and else- where during the Kleomenic War ? vit PHILIP INTERFERES WITH THE ACHAIAN ELECTION 428 Philip’s first appearance before an Achaian Assembly; but with the hitherto he had only appeared, as personal sovereign of Mace- aan donia, to discuss matters of common interest with the many- May. headed sovereign of Achaia. To this there could be no more 8.0. 218. objection than to the appearance of a Macedonian Ambassador for the same purpose; it was a sign both of earnestness and of ability on the part of Philip, and the members of the Assembly were probably gratified at the opportunity of talking with their royal ally face to face. But it was another matter when the King of Macedonia appeared at the Meeting which was held for the purely domestic purpose of electing the Federal Magistrates. This secms to have been felt; and a rather lame excuse was made about the King being on his road through Aigion on his way to a campaign in Elis. Apellés himself was less scrupulous ; he busied himself about the election? with all the zeal of a native partisan. [or some reason which is not mentioned, the elder Aratos did not appear this time, according to custom, as a candidate to succeed his son. His interest was given to Timoxenos,? who had already twice held the seal of the League. He was an old partisan, and he had by this time apparently forgiven whatever wrong Aratos had done him two years before. When the Congress came to vote, Timoxenos was unsuccessful, there being a small majority * in favour of Epératos of Pharai. This is attributed by Polybios wholly to the intrigues General- of Apellés, but it must be remembered that Epératos was a sp οἱ ᾿ citizen of one of those Cantons which the neglect of the younger nie O18, Aratos had driven to the unconstitutional foundation of the 217. Sonderbund.? There can be little doubt that a wish to regain the confidence of the three western cities had something to do with the choice made by the Assembly on this occasion. These two views are in no way inconsistent with each other. Apellés, in influencing Achaian politicians, must have appealed to some 1 Pol. iv. 82, Πείθει Φίλιππον παραγενέσθαι πρὸς τὰς τῶν ᾿Αχαιῶν ἀρχαι- ρεσίας εἰς Αὔγιον ὡς εἰς τὴν ᾿Ηλείαν ἅμα ποιούμενον τὴν πορείαν. 2 Ib. Ilept τῶν ἀρχαιρεσιῶν εὐθὺς ἐσπούδαζε. Cf. Plut. Ar. 48. 3 Ib. Τιμόξενον . . . τὸν ὑπὸ τῶν περὶ Tov" Aparov εἰσαγόμενον. See Schorn’s note, p. 157. He remarks that this illustrates the forgiving temper of Aratos spoken of by Plutarch (ἐχθρὸς εὐγνώμων καὶ mpgos,—txOpas ὅρῳ καὶ φιλίας ἀεὶ τῷ κοινῷ συμφέροντι χρώμενος. Ar. 10), looking on Timoxenos as an opponent of Aratos, because of their dispute in B.c. 220. But surely this is making too much of a mere passing quarrel. ἀ Pol. iv. 82. Μόλις μὲν ἤνυσε, κατεκράτησε δ᾽ οὖν ὅμως. 5 See above, p. 417. Connexion of this choice with the events of the pre- ceding year. B.C. 221- 220. Philip recovers Teichos. Further schemes of Apellés. 424 HISTORY OF FEDERAL GREECE bribery on so gigantic a scale as to secure by that means a majority of votes in a majority of the cities. If he had some hired partisans, neither he nor they could well attack Aratos avowedly because he was the fricnd of Achaian freedom. But the neglect of the Western Cantons by the outgoing General would form an admirable ery for a dissatisfied party. A certain amount of genuine and reasonable discontent would doubtless exist, which Apellés and his creatures would turn to their own purposes. We can thus see also why Aratos did not stand him- self, but put forward Timoxenos as his candidate. The admini- stration of the two Aratos’, father and son, had, for two successive years, brought nothing but disgrace on the League. But the Generalship of Timoxenos, three years earlicr, had witnessed some little success in the form of the recovery of Klarion,! and he had appeared as an advocate of prudence during Aratos’ momentary fit of rashness.2 Altogether we can understand that Timoxenos was, just now, a better card for his party to play than Aratos himself. It was probably on the question of relief to the western cities that the division ostensibly turned, and we may believe that the majority of the Assembly, ignorant of the intrigues of Apellés, honestly meant the election of Epératos to be a deserved vote of censure on those who had neglected them. It falls in with this view that, immediately after the election, Philip marched to recover the fort of Teichos in the Dymaian territory.? It was small, but strongly fortified ;* but its defen- ders were Eleians and not A%tolians. They at once surrendered to the King, who gave over the fortress to its lawful owners, and then proceeded to lay waste the territory of Elis. The cause which had led to the discontent of the Western Cantons was now effectually removed. Apellés was naturally elated at his success. He had, as he thought, effectually poisoned the royal mind, and he had seen an Achaian President chosen at his own nomination.° He now made another attack on whatever influence Aratos may still have retained over the mind of Philip. He now charged him with treason to the Grand Alliance. Philip had, among other ΤΡ, 396. ΣΡ, 397. 3 See above, p. 416. 4 Pol. iv. 83. Χωρίον οὐ μέγα μὲν ἠσφαλισμένον δὲ διαφερόντως. ὅ ΤΌ, 84. Δοκῶν ἠνυκέναι τι τῆς προθέσεως τὸ Ov’ αὑτοῦ καθεστάσθαι τὸν τῶν ᾿Αχαιῶν στρατηγόν. VIII ACCUSATION OF ARATOS BEFORE PHILIP 425 Eleian prisoners, captured Amphidamos, the General of the Affair of Eleian commonwealth.! He dismissed him without ransom, 4™Phi- and employed him as a messenger to invite his countrymen to’ exchange the Aftolian for the Macedonian alliance, promising in such case to respect their liberties and constitution.? These offers were rejected at Elis, but the transaction seems to have awakened some suspicions against Amphidamos in the minds of his countrymen, for, shortly afterwards, while Philip was ravag- ing the Eleian territory, they determincd to arrest him and send him prisoner to Autolia. Meanwhile Apellés accused Aratos to Apellés the King as the cause of the refusal of the Elcians to treat, accuses He had, so his accuser said, dealt privately with Amphidamos, Aratos of and exhorted him to use his influence on the anti-Macedonian side, because it was against the common interest of Peloponnésos for Philip to become master of Elis.2 This last was certainly, in itself, a proposition too clear to be disputed by any patriotic Peloponnésian, and it was quite reason enough for keeping Philip out of Greece altogether, Still such arguments would not, in the actual position of Aratos, have justified him in underhand dealings contrary to the general interests of the Confederacy. On this charge, Aratos, the deliverer of Pelopon- nésos, the man who had been thirteen times President of the Achaian League, had to stand something like a trial before the Macedonian King. He and his country could not have been subjected to greater indignities, if they had made up their minds to submit to the Federal headship of Kleomenés. Apellés brought his accusation ; he even ventured to add that the King, having met with such ingratitude at the hands of Aratos, would 1 Pol. iv. 84. Ὁ τῶν ᾿Ηλείων στρατηγός. This need not necessarily imply that this General was the chief magistrate of Elis, and in earlier times the Eleian magis- trates bore other titles. See Tittmann, p. 366. Still it is not unlikely that the Eleians, though their constitution was not Federal, may now have so far imitated the practice of other Greek states as to place a single General at the head of their commonwealth. 2 Ib, Αὐτοὺς ἐλευθέρους, ἀφρουρήτους, ἀφορολογήτους, χρωμένους τοῖς ἰδίοις πολιτεύμασι, διατηρήσει. The words are nearly the same as those used in the decree of the Allies (c. 25) for liberating the cities in subjection to Atolia. They were probably a comimon formula for such occasions. 5. Ib. Adyew ὅτι kar’ οὐδένα τρόπον συμφέρει τοῖς Πελοποννησίοις τὸ γενέσθαι Φίλιππον ᾿Ηλείων κύριον. 4 Tb. 85. Td μὲν οὖν πρῶτον Φίλιππος δεξάμενος τοὺς λόγους καλεῖν ἐκέλευε τοὺς περὶ τὸν "Λρατον καὶ λέγειν ἐναντίον ἐκείνων ταῦτα τὸν ᾿Απελλῆν. The οἱ περὶ seem to include both father and son, for directly after ὁ πρεσβύτερος" Aparos speaks, Aratos restored to Philip’s favour. Influence retained by Aratos in the Achaian . Assembly, B.o. 218. 426 HISTORY OF FEDERAL GREECE CHAP. explain matters to the Achaian Assembly, and then retire from the struggle to his own kingdom. All that Aratos could do at the moment was to ask Philip not to condemn him on the mere assertion of Apellés, but to search into the truth by every possible means before he laid any such charge before the Assembly. Philip had justice and candour enough to suspend his judgement; Apellés could bring forward no evidence to support his charge, while Aratos was soon able to bring forward a most convincing witness to his innocence. This was no other than Amphidamos himself, who, at this opportune moment, took refuge with Philip at Dymé. The King now fully restored Aratos to his favour and confidence, and began to look with equal displeasure on Apellés. It was about the same time that the Achaians gave the King asignal proof of the influence which their old chief still retained over their minds. Unless Apellés wished, as he probably did, merely to weaken the League by giving it an incompetent head, the election of Epératos had proved a mistake. The Pharaian President was a man of no skill or daring in the ficld, and of no weight in the Assembly.! A special Meeting had been called by the Achaian Government at Philip’s request,? in which the King appeared and asked for supplies. The wishes of Epératos had no influence, and Aratos and his party, if they did not openly oppose, did not at all support Philip’s request.* In such a state of things no supplies were granted. Philip now perceived the importance of the friendship of Aratos. The Assembly had been held at Aigion, the usual place of meeting; the King persuaded the Achaian Government to adjourn it to Sikyén.4 This was in itself a compliment to Aratos, and in the interval he fully confessed his errors both to the father and the son.° He threw the whole 1 Pol. v. 1, Τὸν δ᾽ ᾿Επήρατον ἄπρακτον ὄντα τῇ φύσει Kal καταγινωσκόμενον ὑπὸ πάντων. We must allow ἃ little for Polybios’ admiration of Aratos. 2 The expression of Polybios (u.s.) is a strong ouc; ὁ δὲ βασιλεὺς Φίλιππος, ἐνδεὴς ὧν σίτου καὶ χρημάτων els τὰς δυνάμεις, συνῆγε τοὺς ᾿Αχαιοὺς διὰ τῶν ἀρχόντων εἰς ἐκκλησίαν. This last phrase is the formula used elsewhere (see above, p. 214) to express the calling of an Assembly by the Federal General. [Cf. the relations of the Swiss Federation with France in 1777, and the Diet at Solothurn, summoned at the instance of Louis XVI., Bluntschli, Gesch. des schweiz. Bundesrechtes, i. 293-4. ] 3 Pol. us. Ὁρῶν τοὺς μὲν περὶ τὸν “Aparov ἐθελοκακοῦντας διὰ τὴν περὶ τὰς ἀρχαιρεσίας γεγενημένην εἰς αὐτοὺς τῶν περὶ τὸν ᾿Απελλῆν κακοπραγμοσύνην. 4 Pol. ν. 1. ᾿Αθροισθέντος δὲ τοῦ πλήθους εἰς Αὔγιον κατὰ τοὺς νόμους. .. πείσας οὖν τοὺς ἄρχοντας μεταγαγεῖν τὴν ἐκκλησίαν εἰς Σικνῶνα. > Tb, Λαβὼν τόν τε πρεσβύτερον καὶ τὸν νεώτερον “Aparov εἰς τὰς χεῖρας. VIII TREASON OF APELLES AGAINST PHILIP 497 blame upon Apellés, and begged them to be his friends as of old. Such an appeal was irresistible. In the adjourned Congress at Sikyén the influence of Aratos was used on behalf of Philip, and a liberal money-bill was the result. Apellés now took to schemes which, in a Macedonian officer, Treason of were even more guilty than any of his former evil deeds. He Apellés . . . . against now entered on plans of direct treason against his own sovereign. phitip, He had already alienated the King’s mind from Alexander and Taurion, two of his best officers, and both of them among the guardians named by Antigonos. He now, in concert with the other two, Leontios and Megaleas, devised a plot by which all Philip’s enterprises might be thwarted, till he should at last be sufficiently humbled to put himself wholly under their guidance. The details of this vile scheme, and the general details of Campaign the campaign, belong rather to Macedonian than to Federal of 8.0. 218. history. Philip and the Achaians fitted out a fleet and attacked Kephallénia, which had long acted as the A¢tolian naval station. An all but successful assault on Palai, one of the towns in that island, was hindered by the arts of the traitors. Philip was as ubiquitous as usual; he invaded Lakdénia; he invaded A‘tolia, and avenged the destruction of Dion by the destruction of Thermon.? By rare prudence and forbearance he gradually Philip discovered, crushed, and punished the hateful plot of which he crushes had been the victim. Throughout, Aratos acted as his wisest the plot. counsellor, and was therefore made the constant object of insult, sometimes growing into personal violence,’ at the hands of the conspirators. It is interesting to trace, in the course of the The relations between Philip and the younger Aratos gives us one of those strange glimpses of Grecian manners which we come across ever and anon. δόκει δ᾽ ὁ νεανίσκος ἐρᾶν τοῦ Φιλίππου. (Plut, Ar. 50.) Compare the relations of Kleomenés with Xenarés (KI. 3) and with Panteus. (c. 37.) 1 Fifty talents down, as three months’ pay for his army, seventeen talents a month as long as he carried on the war in Peloponnésos, and corn in abundance (σίτου μυριάδας, Pol. v. 1). If the Federal Government, a year before, could not pay its mercenaries (see above, p. 417), where did it find the materials for such a subsidy now? But the passage is remarkable as showing the full power of taxation which was in the hands of the Federal Congress, It is a pity that we are not told how the money was to be raised. See above, p, 241. 2 Polybios (v. 9-12) censures this act at great length, and doubtless with good reason. Yet it is not fifty years since British troops destroyed the public build- ings of Washington, and much more lately we have heard the savage yells of English newspapers crying for the destruction of Delhi and Pekin. 9 Pol. v. 15. Plut. Ar. 48. Brandstiter’s comment (Ὁ. 374) is curious, Aratus wurde von der anti-achaischen Partei fast gesteinigt und nur durch des Weak adminis- tration of Epératos, B.c. 218- 217. Aratos General, B.C. 217- 216, 428 HISTORY OF FEDERAL GREECE CHAP, story, several notices of the substantial, though perhaps rather unruly, freedom which the Macedonians still enjoyed under their Kings. Polybios carefully points out the almost equal terms on which the Macedonian army, not of assumption but of ancient right, addressed their sovereign,! and we find one of the culprits, just as in the days of Alexander, tried and condemned by the military Assembly of the Macedonians.” It is more important for our subject to trace one or two points connected with the domestic history of the League. The Pharaian General did not secure the safety even of his own and the neighbouring cantons. His utter incapacity, and the general lack of discipline which prevailed during his year, are strongly set forth by Polybios.* Doubtless we here read the character of Epératos as given by his political opponents, but, though there may be some exaggeration, there must be some groundwork for the picture. The Attolians in Elis continued and increased their devastations in the western districts, and the cities in that quarter paid their contributions to the Federal Treasury with difficulty and reluctance. The expression however shows that they were paid, so that the most objectionable resolve of the Sonderbund of the year before must have been rescinded. At the next election the elder Aratos was chosen General,°>—we now hear nothing of Macedonian influence either way—and then things began to brighten a little. Incapable as Aratos was in the open field, his genius was admirably adapted for winning back men’s minds, and he seems easily to have allayed all discontents. He Konigs specielle Theilnahme gerettet ; iiber die Beweggriinde sind verschiedene Vermuthungen moglich.” 1 Pol. v. 27. Εἶχον yap ἀεὶ τὴν τοιαύτην ἰσηγορίαν Μακεδόνες πρὸς τοὺς βασιλεῖς, See above, p. 16. 2 Ib. 29. IlroNeuatov . . . κρίνας ἐν rots Μακεδόσιν ἀπέκτεινε. Cf. Diod. xvii. 79, 80. Arrian, iii, 26.2; iv. 14. 2. 1 have cut short these details, as not bearing immediately upon Federal history. The narrative is given at length by Polybios, and the English reader will, as usual, find the best of substitutes in the History of Bishop Thirlwall (viii. 258-68). 3 Pol. v. 30. Τοῦ δ᾽ ’Emnpdrou τοῦ στρατηγοῦ τῶν ᾿Αχαιῶν καταπεφρονημένου μὲν ὑπὸ τῶν πολιτικῶν νεανίσκων κατεγνωσμένου δὲ τελέως ὑπὸ τῶν μισθοφόρων, οὔτ᾽ ἐπειθάρχει τοῖς παραγγελλομένοις οὐδεὶς οὔτ᾽ ἣν ἕτοιμον οὐδὲν πρὸς τὴν τῆς χώρας βοήθειαν. Cf. ο. 91, Had Aratos or Timoxenos any hand in making it so ? + Ib. Al μὲν πόλεις κακοπαθοῦσαι καὶ μὴ τυγχάνουσαι βοηθείας δυσχερῶς πὼς εἶχον τὰς εἰσφοράς. Patrai is now mentioned as well as Dymé and Pharai. Cf. c. 91, where the same seems to be said of the cities generally. > Ib. 30, 91. VIII ARATOS’ MEDIATION AT MEGALOPOLIS 429 summoned an Assembly,! and procured a series of decrees for Decrees the more vigorous prosecution of the war. The number of troops the to be levied, both of citizens and mercenaries, was fixed, and the Assembly number and nature of the contingents from at least two of the πιο. 217. cities, namely Megalopolis and Argos, were made the subject. of a special decree? No reason is given for the special mention of these particular States, but we know that the troops of Megalopolis were in every way more efficient than those of any other city of the Union.’ But these decrees illustrate the Full thoroughly sovereign power of the Federal Congress in al] Mederal matters of national concern. At the same time another decree, relgnty passed apparently in the same Assembly, shows no less clearly combined how careful the Federal power was to abstain from any undue With stniet interference with the State Governments in matters properly State ‘9 coming within their own sphere. It was now that, as has been rights. mentioned in an earlicr chapter, Aratos went as mediator to Megalopolis. Violent local disputes had arisen; there was a Aratos’ dispute about the laws which had heen enacted by Prytanis ; mediation there was a still more dangerous dispute between the rich and lopolis. the poor, arising out of the restoration of the city after its destruction by Kleomenés. Aratos was sent, by decree of the Federal Assembly, to mediate between the contending parties, and he succeeded in bringing them to terms of agreement. He then returned to hold another Assembly; the ®tolians, as before,® watched this opportunity for an inroad, but this time Aratos was beforehand with them. He had entrusted the care of the exposed districts to Lykos of Pharai,® with a strong body of mercenaries, at whose head Lykos gained a complete victory over the invaders. He afterwards, when the Attolians had left Elis, retaliated the invasion by ravaging the Eleian territory in company with Démodokos the Federal Master of the Horse,’ at the head of the mercenaries, together with the citizen force of 1 Pol. v. 91. Παρακαλέσας τοὺς ᾿Αχαιοὺς, καὶ λαβὼν δόγμα περὶ τούτων. 2 See above, p. 242. 3 Pol, iv. 69. See Brandstiter, 365. 4 Pol. v. 98. See above, Ὁ. 199. 5 Ib. 94. “Os [Evpurldas] τηρήσας τὴν τῶν ᾿Αχαιῶν σύνοδον. See above, », 897. PG Polybios (v. 94) gives as a reason for this selection, διὰ τὸ τοῦτον ὑποστράτηγον εἶναι τότε τῆς συντελείας τῆς πατρικῆς. These words are not very clear, and their meaning has been disputed (see above, p. 193), but one can hardly avoid the suspicion that they have something to do with the late Sonderbund, See above, p. 418.| 7 Ib, 95. Tov τῶν ᾿Αχαιῶν ἱππάρχην. Philip’s success in Northern Greece. Mediation of Chios and Rhodes, B.C. 218-7. 430 HISTORY OF FEDERAL GREECE CHAP. Dymé, Pharai, and Patrai. Meanwhile Philip was dealing far severer blows at the A‘tolian power in Northern Greece. One great success was the capture of the Phthidtic Thebes ; but it is painful to read that, instead of liberating the city according to the agreement entered into at the beginning of the war,! he sold the inhabitants as slaves, planted a Macedonian colony in the town, and changed its name to Philippopolis. This was perhaps the first downward, step in a career which had hitherto promised so brightly. The Social War was brought rather suddenly to an end during this official year of Aratos. Before the year of Epératos had ended, Ambassadors from Chios and Rhodes appeared before Philip at Corinth, offering their mediation towards a peace.” Those islands were now independent and important states. Rhodes especially was governed by a prudent and moderate aristocracy, whose carcer is among the most honourable things in later Grecian history, and which preserved the independence of the island after that of continental Greece was lost. Pan- hellenic patriotism united with the natural interests of com- mercial republics? to prompt both Chians and Rhodians to desire the restoration of peace. Philip, in the full tide of success, had no real wish for peace; but he could not decently refuse the proffered mediation. He professed his willingness to treat, and bade the envoys go to A‘tolia and offer their mediation there. They returned with an Attolian proposal for a thirty days’ truce, and for a meeting at Rhion to discuss the terms of peace. Philip accepted the truce, and wrote to the several members of his Alliance to send deputies to a Conference.t The Aitolians were perplexed ; the whole war had taken a turn quite different from anything that they had expected ; they had looked upon Philip as ἵν mere boy,°® over whom victory would be easy; they had found 1 The words used by Polybios (v. 99, 100) certainly seemed to imply that the people of Phthidtic Thebes were entitled to its benefits ; κατεχόντων αὐτὴν τῶν Alrw\av—napédocay οἱ Θηβαῖοι τὴν πόλιν, These expressions certainly sound like the presence of an Atolian garrison in an unwilling city. 2 Pol. ν, 24. 3 See Thirlwall, viii. 265. + Pol v. 28. Τοῖς μὲν συμμάχοις ἔγραψε διασαφῶν πέμπειν eis ἸΙάτρας τοὺς συνεδρεύσοντας καὶ βουλευσομένους ὑπὲρ τῆς πρὸς τοὺς Αἰτωλοὺς διαλύσεως. 5 Ib. 29, ᾿Ἐλπίσαντες γὰρ ὡς παιδίῳ νηπίῳ χρήσασθαι τῷ Φιλίππῳ διά τε τὴν ἡλικίαν καὶ τὴν ἀπειρίαν, τὸν μὲν Φίλιππον εὗρον τέλειον ἄνδρα καὶ κατὰ τὰς ἐπιβολὰς καὶ κατὰ τὰς πράξεις, αὐτοὶ δὲ ἐφάνησαν εὐκαταφρόνητοι καὶ παιδαριώδεις ἔν τε τοῖς κατὰ μέρος καὶ τοῖς καθόλου πράγμασιν. VIII ATTEMPTS ON BEHALF OF PEACE 431 in him a great King and a successful general. But he was just now hampered by the conspiracy of his great officers, out of which they hoped that something might turn to their advantage. The result of their doubts and procrastination was that, when Failure of the appointed day came, no Aitolian representative appeared αὖ the pro- Rhion. This exactly suited Philip ; he could now continue the posed © _ war, without incurring the odium of refusing offers of peace.! He had done his part, and the impediment came from the other side. Envoys had already arrived from some at least of his allies, but, instead of discussing terms of peace, they received an exhortation to vigour in the war from the lips of their royal Commander-in-Chicf.? The Chians and Rhodians however did not at once give up their praiseworthy scheme of restoring peace to Hellas. Their second Ambassadors again appeared in Philip’ s camp, immediately after m!ssion his conquest of the Phthidtic Thebes. They were now accom- Chios, panied by the representatives of two other powers ; envoys from Rhodes, the King of Egypt and from the republic of Byzantion accom- Byzan- panied those of the islanders.? There is no reason to doubt that Fey nt nl Ptolemy Philopatér had strictly observed that neutrality which was all that the Allies had asked of him at the beginning of the war. He might therefore appropriately join his voice in favour of peace to that of the maritime republics. Philip, on this second occasion, made much the same answer as he had done upon the first ; he had no objection to peace; let the Ambassa- dors again go and try the mind of the Attolians.6 At that moment Philip had still no real mind for peace; in truth, a young monarch, in the full tide of success in a thoroughly just war, may be forgiven if in his heart he longed for still further triumphs. But before the matter could be discussed, before 1 Pol. v.29. Ὁ δὲ Φίλιππος ἀσμένως ἐπιλαβόμενος τῆς προφάσεως ταύτης διὰ τὸ θαρρεῖν ἐπὶ τῷ πολέμῳ, καὶ προδιειληφὼς ἀποτρίβεσθαι τὰς διαλύσεις, τότε παρακαλέσας τοὺς ἀπηντηκότας τῶν συμμάχων οὐ τὰ πρὸς διαλύσεις πράσσειν ἀλλὰ τὰ πρὸς τὸν πόλεμον, K.T.A. 2 T have not enlarged on Philip’s campaign in Phékis, or on his general rela- tions to the Phékian League. There are some good remarks in Schorn, p. 164, note. Between AXtolian enmity and Macedonian protection, it would seem that the Phodkians had pretty well lost their independence. They are reckoned among the States which needed liberation after Kynoskephalé, Liv. xxxiii, 82, Cf. c. 34 and Pol. xviii. 30. 3 Pol. v. 100. 4 See above, p. 409. 5 Schorn (169) remarks that the war injured Ptolemy by hindering him from hiring AXtolian mercenaries as usual. Cf. Pol. ν, 63, 4. Philip turns his mind towards Ttaly. B.C. 332- 326. B.C, 280— 274. Opening of a new period, Close con- nexion of the history of Eastern and Western Kurope from this date. 432 HISTORY OF FEDERAL GREECE CHAP. indeed the mediators returned, tidings had reached him which changed his purpose. He was as anxious for war, as ambitious of conquest, as ever; but his heart now began to be bent on war on a greater scale than the limits of Hellas could afford ; he began to dream of conquests greater than the destruction of Thermon or the colonization of Phthidtic Thebes. Other Greek Kings had before now sought glory and conquest on the other side of the Hadriatic. Alexander of Epeiros had lost his life in battle against the invincible barbarians of Italy. Pyrrhos him- self, after useless victories, had returned to confess that the Macedonian sarissa had at last found more than its match in the Roman broadsword. But the might of Philip was far greater than the might of either of the Molossian knights-errant. As King of Macedonia and Head of the Greek Alliance, he might summon the countrymen of Alexander and Pyrrhos as merely one contingent of his army. And Italy was now in a state which positively invited his arms. While he, the namesake of the great Philip, the successor of the great Alexander, the un- conquered chief of an unconquered nation, was wasting his strength on petty warfare with A‘tolia and Lacedeemon, Hanni- bal was advancing, in the full swing of triumph, from the gates of Saguntum to the gates of Rome. It is with a feeling of sadness that the historian of Greece turns at this moment to behold the mighty strife which was waging in Western Europe, the struggle between the first of nations and the first of men. He feels that the interests of Achaia and Aftolia, of Macedonia and Sparta, seem small beside the gigantic issue now pending between Rome and Hannibal. The feeling is something wholly different from that paltry wor- ship of brute force which looks down on “ petty states,” old or new. The political lessons to be drawn from the history of Achaia and Attolia are none the less momentous because the world contained other powers greater than cither of the rival Leagues. Still it is with a mournful feeling that we quit a state of things where Greece is everything, where Greece and her colonies form the whole civilized world—a state of things in which, even when Grecce is held in bondage, she is held in bondage by conquerors proud to adopt her name and arts and language—and turn to a state of things in which Greece and Macedonia form only one part of the world of war and _ politics, and that no longer its most important part. We have already VIII AFFAIRS OF ITALY 433 scen the beginning of this change; we have seen Roman armies cast of the Hadriatic; we have seen Greek cities receive their freedom as a boon from a Roman deliverer.! From this point the history of ‘the two great peninsulas becomes closely interwoven. Greece and Macedonia gradually sink, from the position of equal allies and equal enemies, into the position, first of Roman de- pendencies and then of ltoman provinces. We have now entered upon that long chain of events reaching down to our own times the History of Greece under Foreign Domination.?, Our guide gynehro- has already begun diligently to mark the synchronisms of Greek nisms of and Roman history. Hannibal first cast his eyes on Saguntum nek and at the same time that Philip and the Congress of Corinth passed history. their first decree against the Aitolians.? He laid siege to the city 8.0. 220. at the time that the younger Aratos was chosen General.* He Spring: 9 took it while Philip was on his first triumphant march through aytumn, fKitolia.” He crossed the Alps about the time that the first 5.6. 219. Chian and Rhodian envoys came to Corinth.® He defeated 8.0. 218. Flaminius at Lake Trasimenus while Philip was _ besieging B.c. 217. Phthidtic Thebes.’ The news was slow in reaching Grecce ; a Philip letter—from whom we know not—brought the important tidings ἃ A to the King; it was sent to him in Macedonia, and, not finding eGo at him there, followed him to Argos, where he was present at the Nemean Games.8 His evil genius was at his side; Démétrios of Influence Pharos, the double traitor to Illyria and to Rome, expelled from oan his dominions by the Romans, had taken refuge with Philip, and pharos, was gradually supplanting Aratos as his chief counsellor. To him alone the King showed the letter; the adventurer at once counselled peace with A‘tolia and with all Greece ; but he coun- selled it-only in order that Philip might husband all his strength for an Italian war. Now was the time, now that Rome was He falling,tfor the King of Macedonia to step in at once and to claim connse's his share of the prize. We could have wished to see the argu- onee in ments of the Pharian drawn out at greater length. He could Italy. 1 See above, pp. 326-328. 2 This subject is at last concluded in the two final volumes of Mr. Finlay’s great work, the most truly original history of our times. 3 Pol. iv. 28. + Tb. 37. 5 Tb. 66. 6 Ib. v. 29. 7 Tb. 101. 8 Ib. 101. The Nemean Games must therefore have been restored to Argos (see above, p. 313). When Argos became a city of the League, the Federal power could have no interest in asserting the rights of Klednai, one of the smallest members of the Union, against Argos, one of the greatest. QF Opening of the Congress of Nau- paktos, B.C. 217. 434 HISTORY OF FEDERAL GREECE CHAP. not have looked upon Rome as completely overthrown ; for in that case Macedonian intervention would have been mere inter- ference with the rights of conquest on the part of Carthage. Hannibal’s position must have seemed not so perfectly secure but that he would still be glad to accept of Macedonian help, and to yield to Macedonia a portion of the spoil. As Philip gave him- self out as the champion of Greek interests, the liberation of the Greek cities in Italy and Sicily would afford him an honourable pretext for interference.!. To unite them to his Confederacy, perhaps covertly to his actual dominion, would be a natural object of his ambition. The Greek cities of Italy, which Car- thage had never possessed, would naturally fall to the lot of Macedonia. Even Sicily would hardly prove a stumbling-block. The surrender of the old claims of Carthage to dominion in that island would hardly be thought too dear a price for an alliance which, by rendering Italy no longer dangerous, would effectually secure the Carthaginian dominion in Spain and Gaul. But the views of Philip at this time are mere matters of speculation. Before he actually concluded any treaty with Hannibal, the state of affairs had materially changed. When Philip was thus disposed, the negociation of peace was not difficult. Without, as it would seem, even waiting for the return of the mediating envoys, he entered into communication with the -tolian Government,” and gathered a Congress of his own Allies at Panormos.? But he was determined that no man should think that he sought peace because he dreaded war. He again ravaged the territory of Elis; and, while waiting for the arrival of the plenipotentiaries, he made the important conquest of Zakynthos. The Attohan Assembly ὁ met at Naupaktos ; the Congress of the Allies was assembled on the opposite shore of Achaia. Philip sent over Aratos ’—such is the language now used—with his own general Taurion ; their mission soon led to 1 See Flathe, Geschichte Makedoniens, ii. 279. hirlwall, viii. 278, note. See also the speech of Agelaos just below. 2 This was done through Kleonikos of Naupaktos, the πρόξενος of Achaia in A&tolia, who was therefore exempted from slavery. See above, p. 45, note 3. The employment of Kleonikos for such a purpose is like the similar employment of Amphidamus of Elis. See p, 425. 3 Pol. v. 102. Ilpds μὲν τὰς συμμαχίδας πόλεις γραμματοφόρους ἐξαπέστειλε, παρακαλῶν πέμπειν τοὺς συνεδρεύσοντας καὶ μεθέξοντας τῆς ὑπὲρ τῶν διαλύσεων κοινολογίας. 4 Ib, 108, Tots Αἰτωλοῖς πανδημεὶ συνηθροισμένοις ἐν Ναυπάκτῳ. 5 Ib, ᾿Βξέπεμψε πρὸς τοὺς Αἰτωλοὺς “Aparov καὶ Ταυρίωνα. VIII CONGRESS OF NAUPAKTOS 435 an .iitolian embassy, inviting Philip to cross with all his forces and to discuss matters face to face. He did so, and encamped near Naupaktos. The A’tolan Assembly—only distinguished from the tolian army by not being under arms!1—took up a position near him. The details of the neyociation required many meetings, many messages to and fro; but at last all seems to have been settled without any serious difficulty. The principle of the Uti Possidetis,? one highly favourable to Philip and his allies, was soon agreed to on both sides. The most remarkable event Speech of in the course of the Conference was a speech by Agelaos of 48°10. Naupaktos, the substance of which has been preserved to us by Polybios. It shows the strange union of elements in the “itolian character, that this very Agelaos, whom we have seen concerned in some of the worst deeds of AXtolian brigandage,? should now appear as a profound statesman, and even as a Pan- hellenic patriot. “Let Greece,” he says, “be united; let no Greek state make war upon any other; let them thank the Gods if they can all live in peace and agreement, if, as men in crossing rivers grasp one another’s hands,* so they can hold together and save themselves and their cities from barbarian inroads. [1 it 15 too much to hope that it should be so always, let it at least be so just now ; ἰοῦ Greeks, now at least, unite and keep on their guard, when they behold the vastness of the armies and the greatness of the struggle going on in the West. No man who looks at the state of things with common care can doubt what is coming. Whether Rome conquers Carthage or Carthage con- quers Rome, the victor will not be content with the dominion of the Greeks of Italy and Sicily ; he will extend his plans and his warfare much further than suits us or our welfare. Let all Greece be upon its guard, and Philip above all. Your truest 1 Pol. v. 108. Οἱ δ᾽ Αἰτωλοὶ χωρὶς τῶν ὅπλων ἧκον πανδημεί. 2 Ib. Ὥστ᾽ ἔχειν ἀμφοτέρους ἃ νῦν ἔχουσιν. 3 See ‘above, p. 403. It was worth noticing that the only two negociators mentioned on the Atolian side, Agelaos and Kleonikos, are both of them citizens of Naupaktos. It is thus clear that that city was now incorporated with the AKtolian League on really equal terms, but we can well believe that the arts of statesmanship and diplomacy were more flourishing among its citizens than among the boors and brigands of the inland country. Of the diplomatic powers of Agelaos we have seen something already when he persuaded Skerdilaidos to join the Aitolians. + Pol. v. 104. Συμπλέκοντες τὰς χεῖρας καθάπερ οἱ τοὺς ποταμοὺς δια- βαίνοντες. This curious comparison shows that we really have a genuine speech. 486 HISTORY OF FEDERAL GREECE CHAP. defence, O King,” he continued,! “ will be found in the character of the chief and protector of Greece. Leave off destroying Greek cities; leave off weakening them till they become a prey to every invader. lather watch over Greece, as you watch over your own body ; guard the interests of all her members as you guard the interest of what is your own. If you follow such a course as this, you will win the good will of Greece; you will have every Greek bound to you as a friend and as a sure sup- porter in all your undertakings; foreign powers will see the confidence which the whole nation reposes in you, and will fear to attack either you or them. If you wish for conquest and military glory, another field invites you. Cast your eyes to the West ; look at the war raging in Italy; of that war you may easily, by a skilful policy, make yourself the arbiter; a blow dealt in time may make you master of both the contending powers. If you cherish such hopes, no time bids fairer than the present for their accomplishment. But as for disputes and wars with Greeks, put them aside till some season of leisure ; let it be your main object to keep in your own hands the power of making war and peace with them when you will. If once the clouds which are gathering in the West should advance and spread over Greece and the neighbouring lands, there will be danger indeed that all our truces and wars, all the child’s play with which we now amuse ourselves,” will be suddenly cut short. We may then pray in vain to the Gods for the power of making war and peace with one another, and indeed of deal- ing independently with any of the questions which may arise among us.” 5 The way in which Polybios introduces this remarkable speech leaves hardly room for doubt that it is, in its substance at least, a genuine composition of the Naupaktian diplomatist.4 — It displays a Pan-hellenic spirit, sincere and prudent indeed, but lowered in its tone by the necessities of the times. The policy of 1 [ have thrown the somewhat lifeless infinitives of Polybios into the form of a direct address, but I have put in nothing, of which the substance is not to be found in his text. 2 Pol. v. 104. Τὰς ἀνοχὰς καὶ τοὺς πολέμους καὶ καθόλου τὰς παιδιὰς ἃς viv παίζομεν πρὸς ἀλλήλους. 3 It is amusing to see Justin’s version of this speech (xxix. 2, 3), which he puts into the mouth of Philip. ; 4 The mere use of the oratio obliqua throughout so long a speech would seem to show that it is not, like so many other speeches, a mere rhetorical exercise or an exposition of the historian’s own views. VIII POLICY OF AGELAOS 437 Agelaos is substantially the old policy of Isokratés ! a hundred and Policy of thirty years before. Let Greece, say both Agelaos and Isokratés, Agelaos lay aside her intestine quarrels, and arm herself, under Mace- compared donian headship, for a struggle with the barbarian. But the of Iso- policy which, in the days of Isokratés, was a mere rhetorician’s kratés. dream, had become, in the days of Agelaos, the soundest course which a patriotic Greck could counsel. In the days of Isokratés, the barbarians of Persia were not real enemies of Greece ; they in no way threatened Grecian independence; it was only a sentimental vengeance which marked them out as objects of warfare ; the real enemy was that very Macedonian whom Isokratés was eager to accept as the champion of Greece against them. In the days of Agelaos, the barbarians of Rome and Carthage were, if not avowed enemies of Greece, at least neighbours of the most dangerous kind, against a possible struggle with whom Greece was bound to husband every resource. As Greek affairs then stood, an union under Macedonian headship Union was probably the wisest course which could be adopted. But under such a course was now the wisest, simply because of the way ee in which Greece had fallen within a single generation. Thirty headship years before, but for AXtolian selfishness, all Greece might have ΠΟΥ͂ united into one compact and vigorous Federal commonwealth. 1"! Ten years before, but for Achaian jealousy, Greece might have been united under the headship of one of her own noblest sons, a King indeed, but a King of her own blood, a King of Sparta and not of Macedon. Both these opportunities had passed away, and an union under Philip was now the only hope. Philip at least spoke the tongue of Greece, and affected to regard himself as the Greek King of a Greek people.2 Macedonia had long been the bulwark of Greece against Gaulish and Thracian savages; she was now called upon to act in a yet higher character as the bulwark of Greece against the civilized barbarians of Rome and Carthage. But the scheme of Agelaos required greater patriotism and greater clearness of vision than 1 See the oration or pamphlet of Isokratés, called “ Philip,” throughout. * In Philip’s treaty with Carthage (Pol. vii. 9) we find throughout such phrases as Μακεδονίαν καὶ τὴν ἄλλην Ἑλλάδα, Μακεδόνες καὶ of ἄλλοι “Ελληνες. So, in his conference with Flamininus (Pol. xvii. 4), he says κἀμοῦ καὶ τῶν ἄλλων Ἑλλήνων. Cf. Arrian, ii. 14. 4. So in the speech of Lykiskos (Pol. ix. 37-8), we find the Achaians and Macedonians called ὁμόφυλοι, while the Romans are dis- tinguished as ἀλλόφυλοι and βάρβαροι. Soin Livy, xxxi. 29. Atolas, Acarnanas, Macedones, ejusdem lingua homines, ete. Peace of Naupak- tos, B.C. 217. Agelaos AAtolian General, B.c. 217- 918 438 HISTORY OF FEDERAL GREECE CHAP. was to be found either in Greece or in Macedonia. A noble career lay open before Philip, but he was fast becoming less and less worthy to enter upon it. He was fast obscuring the pure glory of his youth by schemes of selfish and unjust aggrandize- ment; he had already taken the first downward steps towards the dark tyranny of his later years. Agelaos’ own countrymen were even less ready than Philip to merge their private advan- tage in any plans for the general good of Greece. We shall soon see Altolia appearing in a light even more infamous than any in which she had appeared already. Achaia indeed presented more hopeful elements. We shall soon see her military force assume, when too late, an efficiency which, a generation earlier, might have been the salvation of all Greece. But that force was now to be frittered away in petty local strife, or in partnership with allies who took the lion’s share to themselves. Peace was concluded. For a few years Peloponnésos enjoyed rest and prosperity. Athens was delivered from her fears of Macedonia, and from the necessity of thinking at all about Grecian affairs. She and her demagogues, Eurykleidés and Mikién, had now abundant leisure for decrees in honour of King Ptolemy and of all other Kings from whom anything was to be got by flattery.! AXtolia at first rejoiced at the conclusion of a war which had turned out so contrary to her hopes; in a sudden fit of virtue the League elected Agelaos himself as its President, on the express ground of his being the author of the Peace. But the Aatolians, we are told, soon began to complain of a chief whose government kept them back from the practice of their old enormities, and who had negociated peace in the interest, not of /Atolia only, but of all Greece? But a vigorous chief of the League had much power, and, for once, power in AXtolia was placed in hands disposed to use it well. Agelaos had the honour of hindering, at least during his year of office, all violation of the repose of Hellas on the part of his countrymen. § 2. From the End of the Social War to the End of the First War with Rome B.C. 217-205 The Peace of Agelaos may be compared with the Peace of Nikias in the great Peloponnésian War. Each proved little more 1 Pol. v. 106. 2 Tb. 107. VII PEACE OF AGELAOS 439 than a truce, a mere breathing-space between two periods of Analogy warfare. Within a few years, the Leagues of Achaia, Akarnania, between Beeotia, and Epeiros were again engaged in war with Aftolia, tre Peace gelaos Sparta, and Elis. And, just as happencd in the second part of and the the Peloponnésian War, so, in what we may really look on as Peace of the second part of the War of the Leagues, new allies step in on ip. ©. 4911 both sides, and a wider field of warfare is opened. In the earlier instance, Athens, strengthened by the alliance of Argos, added Syracuse and nearly all Sicily to the number of her enemies, and saw the treasures of the Great King lavished to bring about her destruction. So now, Philip and his allies ran themselves into dangers greater still, and called mightier com- batants upon the stage than Greece had ever before beheld. Except so far as Persian gold came into play, the Peloponnésian War remained throughout a purely Hellenic struggle; but the war in Greece now sinks, in a general view of the world’s history, into a mere accessory of the mighty struggle between Hannibal and Rome. Macedonia and her allies enrolled them- Connexion selves on the side of Carthage, while Awtoha was supported of the by the alliance of Rome and Pergamos. But the bargain j. between Hannibal and Philip proved in practice ἃ rather and Punic one-sided one. I[t docs not appear that Philip and his allies Wars. were in the least degree strengthened by the friendship of Carthage, while they undoubtedly did Hannibal good service by calling off some portion of the Roman force to the other side of the Gulf. Rome indeed, while Hannibal was in Italy, was not able to carry on a Macedonian war with the same vigour as in aftertimes. But even a slight exertion of Noman power was Beginning enough to turn the scale in Grecian affairs ; and, what was of οἵ Roman far more moment than any immediate success, Macedonia and ence Greece were now fairly brought within the magic circle of Roman influence. It was now only a question of time, how soon, and through what stages of friendship or enmity, both Macedonia and Greece should pass into the common bondage which awaited all the Mediterranean nations. Nothing could be more impolitic 1 The gradual steps of the process by which Rome gradually and systematically swallowed up both friends and enemies is perhaps best set forth in the History of Mommsen. But the reader must be always on his guard against Mommsen’s idolatry of mere force. Rome seems never to have definitely annexed any state at once ; all had to pass through the intermeiliate stage of clientship or dependent alliance. See Kortiim, iii. 276. Impolitic conduct of Philip. Philip too late to interfere with effect, B.C. 216. 440 HISTORY OF FEDERAL GREECE CHAP, than the conduct of Philip throughout the whole business. With all his brilliant qualities, he was far inferior to his predecessor. Had Antigonos Désén survived,! we may feel sure that the course of Macedonian politics would have been widely different. So prudent a prince would feither have kept out of the struggle altogether, or else have thrown himself heart and soul into it. So now, Hannibal and Philip together might probably have crushed Rome. The Roman broadsword triumphed alike over the horsemen of Numidia and over the spearmen of Macedon. But it could hardly have triumphed over both of them ranged side by side. And where Hannibal was weak, Philip was strong.? Hannibal, unconquered in the open field, was baffled by the slightest fortress which had no traitors within its walls. Philip had the blood of the Besieger in his veins, and he had at his command all the resources of Greek military science. He could have brought to bear upon the walls of Rome devices as skilful as those with which Archimédés defended the walls of Syracuse. Aratos himself was not so old but that he might, on some dark night, have led a daring band up the steep of the Capitol, as he had, in earlier days, led a daring band up the steep of Akroko- rinthos. But Philip shrank altogether from vigorous action ; he did not deal a single effective blow for his Carthaginian ally or against his Roman enemy. He simply provoked Rome to a certain amount of immediate hostility, and caused himself to be set down in her account as one who was to be more fully dealt with on some future day. Probably Hannibal really cared but little for his aid. Whether by accident or by design, Philip did not conclude any treaty with the Carthaginian till after the crowning victory of Canne had made his assistance of far less value. Probably he waited to see the course of events, and waited so long as to cut himself off from any real share in their control. The adventures of his Ambassadors, as recorded by Livy,* form a curious story in themselves, and they supply an apt commentary on some points in the Law of Nations, which have lately ὅ drawn to themselves special importance. But they concern us less immediately than some points both of the form and of the matter of the Treaty. Of this Treaty we have what seems to be. the full copy pre- 1 See Kortiim, iii. 203. * See Arnold, iii, 158, 241, 265, 8 Thirlwall, viii. 277. Cf. Flathe, ii. 273. 4 Liv. xxiii. 88, 84, 39. App. Mac. 1. 5 January, 1862. VIII TREATY BETWEEN PHILIP AND HANNIBAL 441 served by Polybios,! and we have notices in Livy? and _ later Philip’s authors. It is an offensive and defensive alliance between Car- Treaty thage on the one side and Philip and his allies on the other. Namib Each party is to help the other against all enemies, except where πιο. 216. any earlier obligation may standjin the way. The Romans are an not, in any case, not even if they conclude peace with Carthage, Treaty in to be allowed to retain any possessions, whether in the form of Polybios. dominion or alliance, on the eastern side of the Hadriatic. This is simply all, as it stands in Polybios; and a treaty concluded on such simple terms seems to have somewhat puzzled later writers, both ancient and modern. As it stands, there seems so hittle for either party to gain by it. The person really to profit by its stipulations would seem to be Démétrios of Pharos, who would regain his lost dominions. Philip was to help Carthage in the war with Rome, and it is not said that he was to receive any payment for his labours. It has excited surprise? that no Various provision is made either for the independence of the Sicilian and *ttements . . and con- Italian Greeks or for their transference from Roman to Mace- jectures donian rule. On the other hand, later Greek writers* have of later supposed provisions for the annexation of Epeiros and the rest of “™?- Greece to the Macedonian Kingdom. But the explanation of Probable the Treaty as it stands does not seem difficult. The key to the explana. we . oye . ion of the whole position is that Philip was too late; he had missed the Treaty. favourable moment; he was negociating after Cann instead of before it. At an earlier time, Philip’s help might well have seemed worth buying at the cost of a considerable portion of Italy ; but, 11 it ever had been so, it was so no longer. Hanni- bal now deemed himself strong enough, perhaps absolutely to conquer Italy by his own forces, at all events to weaken Rome thoroughly and permanently. In the case of complete conquest, he would not be disposed to divide the spoil with an ally who stepped in only at the last moment. But if Rome were not to be conquered, but still to be dismembered, those parts of her empire which Philip would have the best claim for demanding as subjects or allies, namely Sicily and Greek Italy, were also exactly the parts which Carthage also would most naturally claim to have transferred to her dominion or protection. Still Philip, though not now of the importance which he once was, 1 Pol. vii. 9. 2 Liv. xxiii. 33. 8 Flathe, ii. 279. Cf. Thirlwall, viii. 278, note. _ 4 App. Mac. 1. Zénaras ap. Thirlwall, viii. 279, note. Position assumed by Philip ‘in the Treaty. 442 HISTORY OF FEDERAL GREECE CHAP. was not to be wholly despised. He was no longer necded as a principal ; still he might, especially with his fleet,! be useful as an auxiliary. For such services it would be reward enough if the Roman possessions in his own neighbourhood were to be transferred to himself or his friends, and if Carthage, in any future war, gave him such help as he was now to give Hannibal. This seems to be the simple meaning of the Treaty i in Polybios, and its terms agree very well with the position of things at the time. In this Treaty, Philip negociates as a Greck King, the head of a great Greek alliance. How far he was justified in so doing, that is, how far his negociations were authorized by the Federal Assemblies of Achaia, Epeiros, Akarnania, and Beeotia, we have no means of judging. We have now lost the continuous guid- ance of Polybios, and we have to patch up our story how we can from the fragments of his history combined with the statements of later and inferior writers. Happy it is for us when the Roman copyist: condescends to translate the illustrious Greek of whom he speaks in so patronizing a tone.2 But whether authorized or not, Philip speaks in this treaty as the head of a Greek alliance, almost as the acknowledged head of all Greece. As such, he demands that Korkyra, Epidamnos, and Apollonia be released from all dependence on Rome. Probably they were to be formally enrolled as members of the Grand Alliance ; practically they would most likely have sunk to the level of Thessaly, or even to that of Corinth and Orchomenos. As chief of such an alliance, Philip may not have been unwilling to stipu- late for Carthaginian aid in any future struggles with Aftolia. All this would practically amount to making himself something like chief of Greece, a chief who would doubtless be, in name, the constitutional head of a voluntary alliance, but a chief whose position might easily degenerate into practical Tyranny, or even, before long, into avowed Kingship. But no such schemes could possibly find a place in a public treaty concluded by Philip in his own name and in that of his Greek allies.? In the later 1 Liv. xxiii, 88, Philippus Rex quam maxima classe (ducentas autem naves videbatur effecturus) in Italiam trajiceret. 2 Tb. xxx. 45. Polybius, hawdquaquam spernendus auctor. Ib. xxxiii, 10. Polybium secuti sumus, non tncertum auctorem. 3 One of Philip’s envoys (Liv. xxiii. 39) was a Magnésian. Does this simply show the utter subjection of Thessaly to Philip, or was Sésitheos armed with any commission from an imaginary Thessalian League ? VII EXPLANATION OF THE TREATY 443 writers, the simple terms recorded by Polybios gradually develope into much larger plans of conquest. The Treaty in Polybios provides for a joint war with Rome, but it contem- plates the possibility of that war being ended by a treaty with Rome, and it provides that, in such a case, certain definite cessions shall he made to Philip or his allies. After this, if Philip ever stood in need of Carthaginian help, Carthaginian help was to be forthcoming. In the copy in Livy these terms Livy’s swell into something widely different. Italy is to be definitely version conquered for the benefit of Carthage by the joint powers of meaty Carthage and Macedonia; the allied armics are then to pass over into Greece; they are to wage war with what Kings they pleased, and certain large territories, somewhat vaguely expressed, are to he annexed to Macedonia. Philip is to take all islands and continental cities which lic anywhere near to his Kingdom.! All this has evidently grown out of the stipulated cession of Korkyra and the Greek cities in Illyria. Appian goes a step further. In his version the Carthaginians are to possess all Appian’s {taly, and then to help Philip in conquering Greece.2 This was YS!" just the light in which the matter would look to a careless Greek writer of late times, who probably had his head full of Démosthenés and Alexander and the earlier Philip, and who had no clear idea of the real position of the Greek states at this particular time. Philip no doubt aimed at a supremacy of some sort over Greece, but, when negociating in the name of a great Greek Alliance, he could not well have publicly asked for Carthaginian help for the subjugation of Greece. In Zénaras we Version | reach a still further stage; Hellas, Epeiros, and the islands are 2°": to be the prize of Philip, as Italy is to be the prize of Carthage. Now, in the genuine copy, Philip counts Macedonia as part of Hellas, and acts in the name of the Allied Powers, of which Epeiros was one. To ask for the subjugation of Hellas and Epeiros would have been quite inconsistent with his own language. There may of course have been secret articles, or the Romans may have tampered with the treaty ; these are questions to which no answer can be given. But the copy as given by ty. 1 Liv. xxiii. 33. Perdomita Italia, ms: zarent in Graciam, bellumque cum quibus Regibus placeret, gererent. Qua civitates continentis,“que insule ad Macedoniam vergunt, ex Philippi regnique ejus essent. 2 App. Mac. 1. Φίλιππος. . ἔπεμπε πρὸς ᾿Αννίβαν . . ὑπισχνούμενος αὐτῷ συμμαχήσειν ἐπὶ τὴν ᾿Ιταλίαν, εἰ κἀκεῖνος αὐτῷ συνθοῖτο κατεργάσασθαι τὴν Ἑλλάδα. 444 HISTORY OF FEDERAL GREECE CHAP. Polybios seems perfectly to suit the conditions of the case, and the variations of later writers scem to be only exaggerations and misunderstandings naturally growing out of his statements. Import- This Treaty had the effect of placing all the Federal States of ance of this Greece, except Adtolia, in a position of hostility towards Rome. Peony in It is therefore an event of no small moment in a general history History. οἱ Federalism. It was the first step towards the overthrow of the earliest and most flourishing system of Federal common- wealths which the world ever saw. From the moment that any independent state hecame either the friend or the enemy of Rome, from that moment the destiny of that state was fixed. ‘The war which 1 am about to describe made Achaia the enemy, and Attolia the friend, of Rome; but the doom of friend and of enemy was alike pronounced ; as it happened, the present friend was the first to be swallowed up. On the eve of sucha struggle, a struggle in which the republican Greeks had certainly no direct interest, one would be glad to know how far the different Federa- tions really committed themselves to it by their own act, and how far Philip merely carried out Apellés’ principle of dealing with Achaia and Epeiros as no less bound to submission than Thessaly herself. However this may be, the Treaty was, in its terms, one which Philip contracted on behalf of his allies as well as of himsclf; Rome therefore, as a matter of course, dealt with all the allies of Philip as with enemies. It was however some time before the war directly touched any of the states of Pelo- ponnésos. Philip’s immediate object was to secure those cities on the Illyrian coast which were in alliance with Rome. They were to be, in any case, his share of the spoil ; if he still cherished any thoughts of an expedition into Italy, their possession seemed Philip's | necessary as the first step. But he still found leisure to meddle relations jn the affairs of Peloponnésos, for which his possession of Corinth, with Pelo- . . 1 . ponntésos, Orchomenos, and the Triphylian towns! gave him constant : opportunities and excuses. His character was now rapidly cor- rupting; his adviser was no longer Aratos, but Démétrios of Affairs of Pharos. The first time that we hear of his presence is at Messtne, Messéné. In that city, the oligarchical government, which was B.C, 215. ς. . . © in possession during the last war,? had lately been overthrown by a democratic revolution.* But there was a powerful discontented 1 See above, p. 419. 2 See above, p. 401. * Pol. vil, 9, vil PHILIP’S INTERFERENCE AT MESSENE 445 party, and new troubles seemed likely to break out. Both the Interfer- King of Macedonia and the President of the Achaian League, a Phil of ἢ place now filled by Aratos for the sixteenth! time, hastened to or actos Messéné, both, we may suppose, in the avowed character of mediators. Certainly neither of them could have any other right to interfere in the internal quarrels of a city which was neither subject to the Macedonian Crown nor enrolled in the Achaian Confederation. Aratos, we may well believe, went with a sincere desire of preventing bloodshed, and not without some hope of persuading both parties that their safety and tran- quillity would be best secured by union with Achaia.2 With what views King Philip went was soon shown by the event. He arrived a day sooner than Aratos, and his arrival is spoken of in words which seem to show that he was anxious to outstrip him.? ‘The day thus gained he is said to have spent in working Disturb- on the passions of both parties, till the result was a massacre in 1068 . . oe . 4 caused by which the magistrates and two hundred other citizens perished. Philip. The younger Aratos did not scruple to express himself strongly about such conduct ;° but the father still retained influence Last in- enough to persuade Philip, for very shame, to drop an infamous uence of scheme, proposed to him by Démétrios, for retaining the Mes- over | sénian citadel in his own hands. The next year Philip’s crimes Philip. increase ; he sends Démétrios, on what pretence we know not, to Philip's attack Messéné, an attempt in which the perfidious adventurer °°o™4 - ep 7 . . . . , attempt on lost his life.’ We next find him charged with adultery with Messéng, B.C. 214, 1 Or fifteenth. See note at the end of the Chapter. 2 Plutarch’s (Ar. 49) expression of βοηθῶν may mean anything or nothing, 3 Pol. vii. 13. ᾿Αράτον καθυστερήσαντος. Plut. Ar. 49. Ὁ μὲν “Aparos ὑστέρει. Cf. above, p. 298. 4 It seems quite impossible to reconcile the details of Plutarch’s story (Ar. 49) with the direct statements of Polyhios (vii. 9). Plutarch makes Philip ask the magistrates (στρατηγοὶ) if they have no laws to restrain the multitude, and then ask the multitude if they have no hands to resist tyrants. A tumult naturally arises, in which the magistrates are killed. This story implies an oligarchie government, yet it is clear from Polybios that the government of Messé¢né was now democratic, and Plutarch himself gives the magistrates the democratic style of στρατηγοί, not the aristocratic style of ἔφοροι. Still it is perfectly credible that Philip played, in some way or other, a double part between two factions, and encouraged the worst passions of both. 5 Plut. Ar. 50. ‘O νεανίσκος ... . τότε λέγων εἶπε πρὸς αὐτὸν, ws οὐδὲ καλὸς ἔτι φαίνοιτο τὴν ὄψιν αὐτῷ τοιαῦτα δράσας, ἀλλὰ πάντων αἴσχιστος. (See above, p. 426, note 5.) Was the subsequent business of Polykrateia at all meant as revenge for this insult ? 8 See the story in Pol. vii. 11, Plut. Ar. 50, ? Pol, iii, 19. See Thirlwall, viii. 282, note. Cf. Paus, iv. 29, 1, who Death of Aratos, B.C. 213. Last days of Aratos, B.C. 213. 446 HISTORY OF FEDERAL GREECE CHAP. Polykrateia, the wife of the younger Aratos, and lastly, stung by the reproaches of her father-in-law for his public and private misdeeds, he filled up the measure of his crimes by procuring the death of the elder Aratos by poison.! Aratos himself believed that such was the cause of his death; he spoke of his mortal illness as the reward of his friendship for Philip.? Philip was no doubt, by this time, quite degenerate enough for this or any other wickedness; but one regrets to hear that his agent was Taurién, whose conduct has hitherto stood out in honourable contrast to that of the other Macedonian chiefs. Either now, or at some latcr time, Philip carried off Polykrateia into Mace- donia, and gave her husband drugs which destroyed his reason.? In short, the gallant young King and faithful ally has de- generated into a cruel tyrant and a treacherous cnemy. Thus died Aratos, the deliverer and the destroyer of Greece, while General of the League for the sixteenth or seventeenth time. His career had been spread over so long a space, it includes so many changes in the condition of Greece and of the world, that one is surprised to find that at his death he was no more than fifty-eight years of age.4 Sad indeed was the fall of Philip’s friend and victim from the bright promise of the youth who, thirty-eight years before, had driven the Tyrant out of characteristically confounds Démcétrios the Pharian with Démétrios the son of Philip. 1 Pol. viii. 14. Plut. Ar. 52. * Polybios (viii. 14) makes him say simply, ταῦτὰ τἀπίχειρα τῆς φιλίας, ὦ Κεφάλων, κεκομίσμεθα τῆς πρὸς Φίλιππον. In Plutarch (Ar. 52) this becomes, ταῦτ᾽, ὦ Κεφάλων, ἐπίχειρα τῆς βασιλικῆς φιλίας. Here there seems to be a slight touch of the rhetorical horror of Kings, which is hardly in character in the mouth of Aratos. On the probability of the story of the poisoning, see Thirlwall, viii. 283. Niebuhr, Lect. iii. 364. 3 Plut, Ar. 54, Liv. xxvii. 81. Uni etiam principi Achzorum Arato adempta uxor nomine Polycratia, ac spe regiarum nuptiarum in Macedoniam asportata fuerat. This comes in incidentally five years after. One is tempted to believe that Livy had never heard of either Aratos till he came to the events of B.c. 208. 4 Niebuhr (iii. 364 and elsewhere) talks of ‘‘old Aratos,’”’ So one is led to fancy both Philip himself in aftertimes, and still more the Emperor Henry the Fourth, as much older than they really were, because of the early age at which they began public life. Livy (xl. 5, 54) calls Philip senez, and even senio con- sumptus, when he was not above sixty ; he makes (xxx. 80) Hannibal, at forty- five, call himself senex, and talks (xxxv. 15) of the senectus of Antiochos the Great, at about the same age. So historians almost always lavish the epithets “old” and “aged” upon Henry, who died at the age of fifty-six. On the other hand Justin (xxx. 4) makes Flamininus call Philip puer immature wetatis, when he was about thirty-eight. VIII DEATH OF ARATOS 447 Sikyon. Yet, granting his one fatal act, his later years had been usefully and honourably spent, and he retained the affections of his countrymen to the last. His own city of Sikydn and the League in general joined in honours to his memory ; at Sikydén he was worshipped as a hero; he had his priests and his festi- vals, and his posterity were held in honour for ages.! He was cut off when he might still have hoped to keep his place for some years longer as at least a spectator of some of the greatest Com- events in the world’s history. But he made way for a nobler Pe” ος successor, though one possibly less suited for the coming time ang Philo- than he was himself. The crafty diplomatist, the eloquent poimén. parhamentary leader, the cowardly and incapable general, passed away. In his stead there arose one of the bravest and most skilful of soldiers, one of the most honest and patriotic of politicians, but one who lacked those marvellous powers of per- suasion by which Aratos had so long swayed friends and enemies, wnd had warded off all dangers except the poisoned cup of Macedonian friendship. The new hero of the League was Philopoimén, a hero worthy of a better age. He fell upon evil days, because the Fates had cast his lot in them. — If the days of Aratos were few and evil, they were so by his own choice. Meanwhile the Roman war had begun, though as yet the beginning Achaian League had no share in it. The storm first broke upon οὗ the the Federal States of north-western Greece, but 1t was not long oe before Achaia herself learned how terrible was the danger into z.c. 214, which her royal ally had led her. Philip began by attacking the towns of Orikon and Apollonia on the Illyrian coast. He took Orikon; but, while besieging Apollénia, he fled ignominiously before a sudden attack of the Roman Pretor Marcus Valerius Levinus.? This happened between Philip’s two interferences at Messéné, and this was doubtless the expedition in which Aratos, disgusted with the King’s conduct, refused to take any share.? Levinus continued for some years to command on the Illyrian station, and he effectually hindered Philip—if indeed Philip had any longer any such intention—from crossing over to Italy or giving any sort of efficient aid to Hannibal. But Rome had as yet no Grecian allies; her condition was still such as hardly to Roman make her alliance desirable. But to win allies in the neighbour- poy ὡς hood of any prince or commonwealth with whom Rome was at 1 Plut. Ar, 53, 54. 2 Liv. xxiv. 40. 3 Plut. Ar. 51. Position of Rome. B.C. 916. B.c. 211. 448 HISTORY OF FEDERAL GREECE CHAP, ------ ee --- - “ὠς ee ee — war was an essential part of Roman policy. No line of conduct was more steadily adhered to during the whole period of her conquests. In each of her wars, some neighbouring power was drawn into her alliance; his forces, and, still more, his local knowledge and advantages, were pressed into the Roman service ; he was rewarded, as long as he could be of use, with honours and titles and increase of territory ; and at last, when his own turn came, he was swallowed up in the same gulf with the powers which he had himself helped to overthrow. In the wars between Rome and Macedonia this part, alike dishonourable and dis- astrous, fell to the lot of Adtolia. The momentary fit of virtue which had placed Agelaos at the head of the League had now passed away. Skopas and Dorimachos were again in their natural place as the guiding spirits of the nation. Skopas was now General, and Dorimachos retained his old influence. It does not appear that Philip or his allies had done the Attolians any wrong, and the only intercourse between Rome and Aitolia up to this time had certainly not been friendly. A time had been when Rome had threatened Attolia with her enmity, if she did not scrupulously regard the rights of her Akarnanian neigh- bours.* But Rome had now forgotten the claims of Akarnania upon the forbearance of the descendants of the Trojans. Autoha bade fair to be a useful ally, and Rome was again giving signs of being a power which it was worth the while of Autolia, or of any other state, to conciliate.2 Rome had survived the defeat of Cann ; her prospects were brightening ; Fulvius had recovered Capua, and Marcellus had recovered Syracuse. Levinus now opened a negociation with Skopas and Dorimachos, possibly with other leading men in Aitolia,* and he was by them introduced to plead the cause of Rome before the Aftolian Federal Congress. He enlarged on the happy position of the allies of Nome ; Aitolia, the first ally beyond the Hadriatic, would be the most happy and 1 Liv. xxvi. 24, Scopas, qui tum pretor gentis erat, et Dorymachus princeps A&tolorum, Princeps, in Livy, as I have already observed, implies political influence, whether with or without official rank. 2 See above, p. 322. 3 The connexion between Rome and Mtolia is well summed up by Julian, Cesars, 324. Τούτων δὲ αὐτῶν [I'pacxev] ὀλίγον ἔθνος, Αἰτωλοὺς λέγω, τοὺς παροικοῦντας ὑμῖν, οὐ φίλους μὲν ἔχειν καὶ συμμάχους ἐποιήσασθε περὶ πολλοῦ, πολεμωθέντας δὲ ὑμῖν, ὕστερον δι᾿ ἁσδήποτε αἰτίας, οὐκ ἀκινδύνως ὑπακούειν ὑμῖν ἠναγκάσατε ; Alexander is speaking to Cesar. 4 Livy, us. Temptatis prius per secreta colloquia principum animis. VII ALLIANCE BETWEEN ROME AND ATOLIA 449 honoured among all the allies of Rome. No Samnite or Sicilian orator was present to set forth the dark side of Roman con- nexion, nor was there any envoy from Apollénia or Korkyra to assert the claims of his own city to be Rome’s carliest ally in the Hellenic world. A treaty was agreed upon, that infamous Alliance league of plunder which made the name of A®tolia to stink Petween throughout all Greece. Rome and Attolia were to make con- Aelia quests in common; Attolia was to retain the territory, and 8.0, 211. Rome to carry off the moveable spoil.!. But the great bait was Rome’s old ally, Akarnania. What in modern political jargon Plots for would be called “the Akarnanian question ” had always been ἃ the * matter of primary moment in the eyes of Attolian politicians. union” οἱ The moment of its solution seemed now to have come; the nia. gallant little Federation was to be swallowed up by its powerful and rapacious neighbour. The negociators of Rome and Attolia forestalled the utmost refinements of modern diplomacy. AXtolia revindicated her natural boundaries; the reunion of Akarnania was decreed upon the highest principles of eternal right.2. An end was to be put to the intolerable state of things which assigned to Aftolia any frontier narrower or less clearly marked than that of the Ionian and Afgan Seas. Elis, Sparta, King Attalos of Pergamos, and some [lyrian and Thracian princes,? might join the alliance if they wished. The Romans began in terrible earnest. They invaded Zakynthos, occupied all but the Roman citadel, captured the Akarnanian towns of Oiniadai and Nésos, von and handed them over to their allies. Karly in the next spring πο 910 the Lokrian Antikyra shared the same fate; the inhabitants were carricd off as slaves by the Barbarians, and the At‘tolians possessed the deserted city.4 Meanwhile the hosts of Aftolia set forth to take possession of the devoted land of Akarnania. The Invasion march of their whole force, while Philip was, as usual, occupied of 4kar- with his barbarian neighbours, seemed destined to bring this τον troublesome Akarnanian question to the speediest of solutions. 1 Pol. ix. 89. Liv. xxvi. 24. See above, p. 266. 2 Liv. u.s. Acarnanas, quos egre ferrent Aitoli a corpore suo diremptos, restituturum se in antiquam formulam jurisque ac dicionis corum. 3 Skerdilaidos we have met with already ; on Pleuratos, see Thirlwall, viii. 284. 4 Pol. ix. 89. Ἤδη παρήρηνται μὲν ᾿Ακαρνάνων Οἰνιάδας καὶ Νῆσον, κατέσχον δὲ πρώην τὴν τῶν ταλαιπώρων ᾿Αντικυρέων πόλιν, ἐξανδραποδισάμενοι μετὰ Ῥωμαίων αὐτήν. καὶ τὰ μὲν τέκνα καὶ τὰς γυναῖκας ἀπάγουσι Ῥωμαῖοι, πεισόμενα δηλονότι ἅπερ εἰκός ἐστι πάσχειν τοῖς ὑπὸ τὰς τῶν ἀλλοφύλων πεσοῦσιν ἐξουσίας" τὰ δ᾽ ἐδάφη κληρονομοῦσι τῶν ἠτυχηκότων Αἰτωλοί, 9G Heroism of the Akar- nanians. Retreat of the /Stolians. Condition of Sparta. Sedition of Cheildén, B.C. 218. 450 HISTORY OF FEDERAL GREECE CHAP. But the invaders met, at the hands of a whole people, with a resistance like that of the defenders of Numantia or of Mesolongi. Every inhabitant of Akarnania stood forth with the spirit of a Hofer or an Aloys Reding. Akarnania was a Federal Demo- eracy, but here at least Federalism did not imply weakness, nor did Democracy evaporate’ in empty vaunts. Women, children, and old men were sent into the friendly land of Epeiros; every Akarnanian from sixteen to sixty swore not to return unless victorious ; their allies were conjured not to receive a single fugitive ; the Epcirots were prayed to bury the slain defenders of Akarnania under one mound, and to write over them the legend, “ Here he the Akarnanians, who died fighting for their country against the wrong and violence of the A‘tolians.”! Not that this heroic frame of mind at all led them to despise more ordinary help; they sent messengers praying King Philip to come with all speed to their aid. The invaders shrank and paused when they found the frontier guarded by men bent on so desperate a resistance? When they heard that Philip was actually on his march, the invincible Aitolians, harnessed as they were, turned themselves back in the day of battle. They departed, apparently without striking a blow, to enjoy the easier prey which the Roman sword had won for them, and the difficulties and complications of Akarnania remained for the present unsolved. Among the Peloponnésian states, Elis and Messéné readily joined the Roman and Aitolian alliance : 5 but it was an important object with both sides to obtain the adhesion of Sparta. A series of revolutions had taken place in that city, some of them while the Social War was still going on, and some since its conclusion. One Cheilén, a member of the royal family, who deemed himself to be unjustly deprived of the kingdom, raised a tumult, begin- ning his revolution with what was now the established practice of killing the Ephors. But he failed in an attempt to surprise King Lykourgos, and, finding that he had no partisans, he fled to Achaia. A short time afterwards, the Ephors suspected King 1 Liv. xxvi, 25. Hic siti sunt Acarnanes, qui, adversus vim et injuriam AXtolorum pro patria pugnantes, mortem occubuerunt. Cf. Pol. ix. 40, 2 Liv. u.s. Atolorum impetum tardaverat primo conjurationis fama Acar- nanice ; deinde auditus Philippi adventus regredi etiam in intimos coegit fines, 3 Pol, ix, 30, 4 Th, iv, 81, VIII RESISTANCE OF AKARNANITA 451 Lykourgos himself of treason, and he escaped with difficulty into Banish- AKtolia.! Afterwards they found evidence of his innocence, and Ment and sent for him home again.” The other King Agésipolis is said to lyk of have been expelled by Lykourgos after the death of his guardian ourgos, uncle Kleomenés.? Certain it is that he is found as an exile and 8.0. 218- a wanderer many years after. Lykourgos left a son, Pelops,* 4 cesipolis, who seems to have retained a nominal royalty in common with Pelops. a certain Machanidas, who is of course branded by Achaian Macha- writers with the name of Tyrant.° We must remember that the nidas. same title is freely lavished on Kleomenés himself.6 It was Atolian during the reign of Machanidas that the Ambassadors of the and Akar- rival Leagues of Aftolia and Akarnania came to plead their jy ccies respective causes at Sparta. Machanidas, Tyrant as he was, at Sparta, must have respected popular forms, for it is clear that the 8.6. 210. specches given by Polybios on this occasion’ were addressed to a Popular Assembly. The Attolian envoys were Kleonikos,® of whom we have hefore heard, and Chlaineas, who was the chief speaker. He, sets forth the good deeds of Attolia, which are chiefly summed up in her resistance to Antipater and Brennus, and also the evil deeds of Macedonia, which fill up a much longer space. He tells the Lacedemonians that whatever Antigonos had done in Peloponnésos was done out of no love either for Achaian or Spartan freedom, but simply out of dread and envy of the power of Sparta and her victorious King. The speech of Speech of . Lykiskos, the envoy from the Federal Government of Akarnania,® Lykiskos. ’ pol. v. 29. It is worth notice that the νέοι, who always figure conspicuonsly in the Spartan revolutions of this age, appear on this occasion on the side of the Ephors, The young were the party of Kleomen¢s, and Lykourgos was suspected of unfaithfulness to his principles. 2 Ib. 91. 3 Such must be the meaning of Livy, xxxiv. 26. But he confounds this Kleomenés with the great Kleomenés; Pulsus infans ab Lycurgo tyranno post mortem Cleomenis, qui prinus tyrannus Lacedemone fuit. But what shall we say to a writer who tells us that Sparta had been subject to Tyrants per aliquot «tates? Livy’s several generations stretch from the great Kleomenés to B.c. 19%, about thirty years. 4 About Pelops, see Manso, iii. 869, 389. 1 donot however see the contradiction between the two passages, Livy, xxxiv. 32, and the fragment of Dioddéros, 570 (iii. 105, Dindorf). But the matter is of very little importance. 5 I can see no ground for the violent description of Machanidas given by Mr. Donne in the Dictionary of Biography. He seems to fancy that Machanidas was a Tarentine by birth, heedless of Bishop Thirlwall’s warning, viii. 298. 6 Pausanias (iv. 29. 10), by a strange confusion, makes Machanidas immediately succeed Kleomenés, 7 Pol. ix. 28-39. 8 Τῇ, 87. See above, pp. 45, note 8, 434, note 2. 9 Tb. 82, See above, p. 115. 452 _ HISTORY OF FEDERAL GREECE CHAP. is more remarkable. It is an elaborate accusation of Aftolia and eulogy on Macedonia. It is worth notice, as showing that there was, on every question, a Macedonian side, which was really taken by many Greeks, and that we are not justified in looking at the whole history purely with Athenian eyes. In the eyes of Lykiskos, the representative of one of the most honourable and patriotic states in Greece, Macedonians, Spartans, and Achaians are equally Greeks ;! the elder Philip is the pious crusader who delivered Delphi from the Phékian ;? Alexander is the champion of Hellas against the Barbarian, the hero who made Asia subject to the Greeks. Antigonos is of course the deliverer from the Tyranny of Kleomenés, the restorer of the ancient constitution of Sparta. The speaker sets forth with more force the services of Macedonia as the bulwark of Greece against [llyrian and Thracian Barbarians.° The old sins of Attolia against Akarnania, Achaia, Boeotia, Sparta herself, are all strongly put forward ;° the orator enlarges on the late infamous treaty with Rome, the capture of Oiniadai and Nésos and Antikyra, their inhabitants carried off into barbarian bondage, and their desolate cities handed over to A‘tolian masters.’ He warns his hearers against the common peril; war with Achaia and Mace- donia was, after all, a struggle for supremacy between different branches of the same nation; war with Rome is a struggle for liberty and existence against a barbarian enemy. The Attolians, in their envy and hatred against Macedonia, have brought a cloud from the west,® which may possibly overwhelm Macedonia first, but which will, in the end, pour down its baleful contents upon the whole of Grecce. The cloquence and the reasoning of Lykiskos were of no avail against that feeling of hatred towards Macedonia and 1 Pol. ix. 87. ᾿Εφιλοτιμεῖσθε πρὸς ᾿Αχαιοὺς καὶ Μακεδόνας ὁμοφύλους. Cf. above, p. 487. Cf. Dion. xi. 18, Μακεδόνων καὶ τῶν ἄλλων τῶν συστρατευόντων Ἑλλήνων. 2 Pol. ix. 33. 3 Ib. 34. ῬὙπήκοον ἐποίησε τὴν ᾿Ασίαν rots “Ἕλλησιν. 4 ΤΌ, 86, ᾿Εκβαλὼν τὸν τύραννον καὶ τοὺς νόμους καὶ τὸ πάτριον ὑμῖν ἀποκατ- ἔστησε πολίτευμα, 5 Ib. 86. Μακεδόνες of τὸν πλείω τοῦ βίου χρόνον οὐ παύονται διαγωνιζόμενοι πρὸς τοὺς βαρβάρους ὑπὲρ τῆς τῶν "Ελλήνων ἀσφαλείας. Cf. Pol. xviii. 20. 5 Ib. 84, See above, p. 306. 7 Tb. 89. See above, p. 449. 8 Τῇ, 37. ᾿Ἐπισπασάμενοι τηλικοῦτο νέφος ἀπὸ τῆς ἑσπέρας. The same metaphor is found in the speech of Agelaos αὖ Naupaktos seven years earlier. See above, p. 436, VIII DEBATE AT SPARTA 453 Achaia, which had been the ruling passion at Sparta ever since the Kleomenic War. Sparta joined the A‘tolian alliance ; under Sparta in her sole and enterprising King—I sce no reason to refuse him lliance the title—she soon began to take a vigorous share in the war. atolia Achaia was now pressed by Sparta and Elis, just as she had been in the Social War. But she soon found that she had also to deal with an enemy far more terrible than any that could be found on her own side of the Ionian Sea. Publius Sulpicius now Naval succeeded Leevinus in the command of the Roman fleet. He and yore οὗ Dorimachos first attempted to relieve Echinos, one of the Xtolian 5. 810, possessions on the Maliac Gulf, which was now besieged by Philip. The attempt failed, and the city soon after surrendered to the King.’ An easier enterprise was presented by the Achaian Desola- island of Aigina. The city was taken; by the terms of the thon of treaty, the moveables belonged to Rome, the real property to uN Aiitolia. Thus the whole Aiginétan population became slaves, and it was with a very bad grace that Publius allowed them even to be ransomed.? As for the soil and buildings of the island, those the Aitolians sold for thirty talents to their ally King Attalos.2 Thus did an illustrious Greek island, a Canton of the Achaian League, see its inhabitants carried away by barbarian conquerors, and its soil become an outlying possession of a half- barbarian King. Meanwhile Machanidas was attacking the Achaian territory from the south, and the Aitolians were, as usual, plundering the north-west coast. The President Euryledn, whatever may have been his political merits, was in warfare only too apt a disciple of the school of Aratos.° The League was once the more driven to ask help from Philip.® League Possibly they might have dispensed with his help altogether ; ass ne’p ς ς hilip, at all events they might have confined themselves to asking for 5.0, 209. a fleet to guard their coasts. The League was now fully able to contend single-handed against any enemies that Peloponnésos could send forth. If a new Kleomenés had arisen to threaten her southern frontier, that frontier was now guarded by a new Lydiadas, and there was no Aratos to thwart or to betray the plans of the new-found hero. Now that Aratos was dead, Philo- Philo- poimén had returned to his native land. He was at once elected Fre) of Cavalry. 1 Pol. ix. 42. “Ib. Cf. xi. 6. ᾿ 3 ΤΌ, xxiii. 8. “ 4 Liv. xxvii. 29, 5 Pol. x. 21 (24). Evpudéwy ὁ τῶν ᾿Αχαιῶν στρατηγὸς ἄτολμος ἣν καὶ πολεμικῆς χρείας ἀλλότριος, 6. Τήν, xxvii. 29. Abuses n the Achaian savalry. Philo- soimén’s ‘eforms. 454 HISTORY OF FEDERAL GREECE CHAP, to the office of Master of the Horse, or Commander of the Federal Cavalry,! a post which was generally understood to be a step to that of General of the League? The whole military system of Achaia had become utterly rotten during the long administration of Aratos, but the ease with which Philopoimén was able thoroughly to reform it shows that the nation must have had in it the raw material of excellent soldiers. He began, as a wise man should do, by reforming his own department. His predecessors had allowed every kind of abuse. Some had mis- managed matters through sheer incapacity, some through mis- guided zeal ;* some had tolerated lack of discipline to serve their own ambitious purposes. The cavalry was composed of wealthy citizens, of those whose favour had most weight in the disposal of political influence, and whose votes would commonly confer the office of General. Some Masters of the Horse had knowingly winked at every sort of licence, hoping to make political capital out of a popularity so unworthily gained. Men bound to personal service were allowed to send wretched substitutes, and the whole service was in every way neglected. Philopoimén soon brought the young nobles of Achaia toa more patriotic frame of mind. He went through the cities of the League ;° by every sort of official and personal influence he worked on the minds of the horsemen, he led them to take a pride in military service, and carefully practised them in the necessary lessons of their craft. An efficient body of Achaian cavalry seemed suddenly to have sprung out of the ground at the bidding of an enchanter.® 1 ‘Inmdpxns. See above, pp. 219, 429. 2 This is implied by Polybios, x. 22 (25) ; of δὲ τῆς στρατηγίας ὀρεγόμενοι διὰ ταύτης THs ἀρχῆς, κατιλ. Cf. Plut. Phil. 7. 3 Pol. x, 22 (25). Διὰ τὴν ἰδίαν ἀδυναμίαν. . . διὰ THY κακοζηλίαν, K.T.A. 4 See above, p. 230, note 2. 5 Plut. Phil. 7. Tas πόλεις ἐπιών. 6 Paus. viii. 49. 7. ᾿Επανήκων δὲ és Μεγάλην πόλιν αὐτίκα ὑπὸ τῶν ᾿Αχαιῶν npnro ἄρχειν [καὶ] τοῦ ἱππικοῦ καὶ σφᾶς ἀρίστους Ελλήνων ἀπέφαινεν ἱππεύειν. Philopoimén was more fortunate in his reform of the Achaian cavalry than Washington in his attempt to raise a volunteer cavalry of the same sort in 1778. “Sensible of the difficulty of recruiting infantry, as well as of the vast import- ance of a superiority in point of cavalry, and calculating on the patriotisin of the young and the wealthy, if the means should be furnished them of serving their country in a character which would be compatible with their feelings, and with that pride of station which exists everywhere, it was earnestly recommended by Congress to the young gentlemen of property and spirit in the several states, to embody themselves into troops of cavalry, to serve without pay till the close of the year. Provisions were to be found for themselves and horses, and compensa- tion to be made for any horses which might be lost in the service. This resolution VIII PHILOPOIMEN REFORMS THE ACHAIAN CAVALRY 455 The Achaians had placed the worthiest man of Greece in the King second place of their commonwealth, with every prospect of Attalos rising before long to the first. The rival League meanwhile made ©" δ 1S μὰ ΜΝ δὰ canw General of a stranger election. ‘The Achaians had once given to a Ptolemy Atolia, the nominal command of all their forces;! the Aetolians now 8:0: 209. invested Attalos with what seems to have been meant to be a more practical Generalship.? For, as the King of Pergamos was taking an active part in the war, his election was quite another matter from the purely honorary dignity which the Achaians had conferred upon Ptolemy Philadelphos. Attalos first sent troops into Phthidtis, and then came in person to what was now his own island of Aigina. Philip, on his march towards Pelopon- nésos, defeated near Lamia a combined Roman, Aitolian, and Pergamenian force, and compelled the defeated Aitolians to retreat into the city. Things had strangely turned about since 5,0. 323- the days when Lamia had been the scene of a war in which 322. Macedonians appeared as the oppressors, and A%tolians as the defenders, of Greece. Before Attalos had reached Aigina, Attempts ambassadors from Egypt, Rhodes, and Chios appeared in Philip’s medi 10n On We camp to offer their mediation ; and one almost smiles to read part of that the diplomatic body was on this occasion swelled by an Rhodes, envoy or envoys from Athens. We seem to be reading over &. again the history of the Social War. All parties seemed inclined for peace; men’s eyes began to open to the folly of letting Greece become the battle-ground of Macedonia, Rome, and Pergamos.= The Aitolians brought forward as a mediator a power of whom we have seldom before heard in Grecian affairs, Athamania and its King Amynander. This chief was the prince of a semi-Hellenic tribe, whose territories were surrounded by those of the Attolian and Kpeirot Leagues and of the Thessalian did not produce the effect expected from it. The volunteers were few, and late in joining the army.” Marshall’s Life of Washington, 111. 492. 1 See above, p. 302. 2 Livy’s statements are exceedingly confused. He says first (xxvii. 29), Attalum quoque Regem Asie, quid Attoli summum gentis suce magistratun ad eum proximo cuncitio detulerunt, fama erat in Huropam trajecturum. Presently (ὦ, 80) we find dtolt, duce Pyrrhia, qui pretor in eum annum cum absente A ttalo creatus erat. This might mean either that Attalos was chosen to be the regular General of the League, with Pyrrhias for his Lieutenant, or that Attalos was made στρατηγὸς αὐτοκράτωρ (cf. above, p. 377), Pyrrhias being the regular General of the year. Cf, Thirlwall, vill. 288. 3 Liv. xxvii. 80, Omnium autem non tanta pro Attolis cura erat... quam ne Philippus regnumque ejus rebus Greciw, grave libertaty futurwm, immisceretur. So, just after, Ve caussa aut Romanis aut Attalo intrandi Groeciain esset. Philip at Argos. Conference at Aigion, B.C. 209. 456 HISTORY OF FEDERAL GREECE CHAP. dependents of Philip. The Athamanians took a share on the patriotic side in the Lamian War,! but since then their name has not been mentioned. Probably the tribe rose to independence during the decay of the Molossian Kingdom, and, on its fall, continued to form a separate principality, instead of joining the Kpeirot League. Of Amynander himself we shall often hear again. Under his mediation, a truce was agreed upon, and a diplomatic Conference was appointed to be held at Aigion, simultaneously, it would seem, with a meeting of the Achaian Federal Assembly.2 Any treaty which might be agreed upon could thus be at once ratified by the two most important members of the Macedonian alliance, by Philip himself and by the Achaian League. Meanwhile King Attalos was to be warned off or hindered from an attack on Euboia, which he was supposed to meditate. Philip spent the time of truce at Argos. It would have been very hard for any member of the Antigonid dynasty to make out his descent from the old Macedonian Kings, but, on the strength of such supposed connexion, the Argeian origin of Philip was asserted and allowed. In compliment to this mythical kindred, Philip was chosen to preside both at the local festival of the Héraia and at the Pan-hellenic Games of Nemea.? The management of this great national festival was wholly a matter of Cantonal and not of Federal concern; it was a vote of the Argeian people, not of the Achaian Government or Assembly, which conferred this high honour upon Philip.* Between the two celebrations, the King attended the Conference at Aigion. But meanwhile Attalos had reached, not indeed Euboia, but his own island of Aigina; the Roman fleet also had reached Naupaktos ; the presence of such powerful allies drove away any feclings of Pan-hellenic patriotism which were beginning to arise in the minds of the A‘tolians. The war had certainly not been glorious for them; all that they had done had been to enter into possession of empty citics conquered for them by the 1 Diod. xviii. 11. [On the Athamanians cf, Strabo, ix. 4. 11.] “ This seems to be the meaning of the two expressions of Livy (xxvii. 30). De pace dilata consultatio est in concilium Achaworum ; concilio et locus et dies certa indicta. And, just after, Myium profectus est [Philippus] ad indictum multo ante sociorum concilium. 3 See above, pp. 318, 433. 4 As in the case of the Isthmian Games, when Corinth was Achaian. See above, p. 327, VIII INEFFECTUAL CONFERENCE AT AIGION 457 Roman arms. Philip had taken Echinos in their despite; he had beaten them and their allies before Lamia; their attack on Akarnania had been baffled by the heroism of the Akarnanians themselves. But, with the forces of Rome and Pergamos on either side of Greece, they recovered an even greater degree of presumption than usual. It was perhaps through an affectation Demands of disinterestedness that they made no demands for themselves, οἱ ἴδιο . a . Adtolians. but they made very inadmissible demands on behalf of their several allies. Besides some cessions of barbarian territory to their [llyrian friends, Atintania was demanded for the Romans, and Pylos for the Messénians. It is not very clear in whose hands Atintania then was; it was demanded for Rome as a ‘reunion,’ + yet it does not seem ever to have been in the possession of the Republic; at an earlier time it seems to have been Epeirot,? at a later time we shall find it Macedonian. At all events, Philip, who so ardently desired to expel the Romans from Apollénia and the neighbouring cities, and who had so lately defeated Romans, Attolians, and Pergamenians both in sieges and in the open field, was not willing to allow a strip of Roman territory to be interposed between himself and_ his Kpeirot allies. And, whichever Pylos is intended,’ it is hard to sce on what grounds Messéné could just now claim an increase, or even a restitution, of territory. A spontaneous offering on the part of Philip might have been a graceful atonement for former wrongs; but it was hardly a cession which could be demanded of a victorious prince at a diplomatic conference. It 1s not Negocia- wonderful that, on the receipt of such an ultimatum, Philip tons ar . sroken off, abruptly broke off the negociation. He retired to Argos, and there began the celebration of the Nemean Games, when he 1 Liv. xavii, 380. Postremo negarunt dirimi bellum posse, nisi Messeniis Ache Pyluin reddcrent, Romanis restitueretur Atintania, Scerdiledo et Pleurato Ardyai. * See Pol. ii. 5, 11. It was admitted to Roman friendship in B.c. 229 ; hardly ground enough for the phrase restitweretur twenty years later. 3 According to Livy, the Achavans were to surrender Pylos. But it is quite impossible that either the Triphylian or the Mess¢nian Pylos can now have been in the hands of the League. Philip had conquered Triphylia in the Social War, and he had not yet given it to the Achaians. (Liv. xxviii. 8.) It is quite possible that Philip may have seized on the other Pylos in one of his Mess¢nian expeditions, but it is still harder to conceive that this can have been an Achaian possession, Whichever Pylos is meant, it is clearly of Philip that the cession was demanded. Here, as throughout the period, we have to deplore the loss of the continuous narrative of Polybios. Schorn (p. 185) accepts the Achaian possession of the Messénian Pylos. Philip repulses the Romans. His alter- nate de- bauchery and ac- tivity. Exploits of Philip and Philo- poimen. 458 HISTORY OF FEDERAL GREECE CHAP, heard that Sulpicius had landed between Sikyén and Corinth. With that activity which he could always show when he chose, he hastened to the spot with his cavalry, attacked the Romans while engaged in plunder, and drove them back to their fleet, which retired to Naupaktos. He returned to Argos, finished the celebration of the festival, and then, casting aside his purple and diadem, affected to lead the life of a private citizen in the city of his ancestors. But, if he laid aside the King, he did not lay aside the Tyrant; he made his supposed fellow-citizens suffer under the bitterest excesses of royal lust and insolence.! He was roused from his debaucheries by the most threatening of all news for the Achaian cities, the news that an AXtolian force had been received at Elis?) The luxurious Tyrant was at once changed into the active King and the faithful ally ;? he marched to Dymé, where he was met by Kykliadas the General of the League, and by Philopoimén, who was still the Commander of the Federal Cavalry.* In a battle by the river Larisos, the /Eitolians were defeated, and Philopoimén slew with his own hand Damophantos, who filled the same post in the Eleian army which he himself did in that of Achaia.° In another battle, the allies unexpectedly found that they had Romans to contend with as well as Aftolians and Eleians, and after a sharp struggle, in which Philip displayed great personal courage, they had to retreat. The advantages of the fight however seemed to remain with the allies, who ravaged Elis without let or hindrance. One of the constant invasions of Macedonia by the neighbouring barbarians called Philip back to the defence of his own kingdom, 1 Pol. x. 26. Liv. xxvii. 81. Cf. Thirlwall, viii. 289. 2 Livy’s notions of Grecian politics may be estimated by his idea that Elis was a State which had seceded from the Achaian League; Hleorum accensi odio, quod a ceteris Achwis dissentirent. (xxvii. 31.) What can he have found and mis- understood in his Polybios? > “Durch die Verhiltnisse gezwungen erduldeten die Birger unwiirdige Schmach und Beschimpfung; denn Philipp war ihr Schutzherr gegen Feinde, denen der Staat die Spitze nicht bieten konnte.” Schorn, 189. 4 One is almost tempted to believe that Philopoimén filled the office of Master of the Horse for two years together, as we shall find that he afterwards did with the Generalship itself. But, if we accept the belief of Schorn (210-4), considered probable by Thirlwall (viii. 295), that the Achaian Federal elections were now (ever since B.c. 217) held in the Autumn, it is possible that all the reforms and exploits of Philopoimén may have taken place during the one Presidency of Kykliadas, from November, 210, to November, 209. There would not however be the same political objection to the re-election of the immdpyns which there was to that of the στρατηγός. 5 Plut. Phil. 7. Paus. viii. 49. 7. 6 Liv. xxvii. 32. VIII EXPLOITS OF PHILIP AND PHILOPOIMEN 459 and about the same time Sulpicius sailed to mect Attalos at Aigina. The two great Leagues were thus left to fight their own battles, and the Achaians had now learned how io fight theirs. In a battle near Messéné, the A‘tolians and Eleians were now defeated by the unassisted force of Achaia.! Such was the difference between Achaian troops commanded by Aratos and Achaian troops commanded, by Philopoimén. The war continued for about four years longer with various Character success. It is needless to recount all the gains and losses on both ye fhe Kast sides. The Attolians continued their ravages in Western Greece, the war, while the combined fleet of Rome and Pergamos cruised in the B.c. 208- e ° ° ‘) Aigean, descending on any favourable points, sometimes for 205: conquest, sometimes merely for plunder. Once or twice, on the other hand, we get a momentary glimpse of a Punic fleet making its appearance in the Grecian seas, as an ally ot Philip and the Achaians.2 Philip himself shines here and there like a meteor, now giving help to his allies in Greece, now defending his own frontier against the Northern Barbarians.? Notwith- standing all his crimes, it is impossible to refuse all sympathy to so gallant and active a prince, and one who was becoming more and more truly the protector of Greece against the Barbarians of the West as well as of the North. Only one of his many brilliant expeditions and forced marches need be recorded here. An Phiip’s fitolian Assembly, or perhaps only a meeting of the Senate,* eee met at Hérakleia to discuss the interests of the League with their , ¢, 907,’ ally and chief magistrate, King Attalos. The King of Egypt and the Rhodians were also renewing their praiseworthy attempts 1 Liv. xxvii. 33. 2 Th. 15, 803; xxviii. 7. 3 Polybios (x. 41) gives a vivid description of the various calls made upon Philip’s energies at one moment during the year 208. His own kingdom was threatened by lllyrians on one side and by Thracians on the other; he received at the same time applications for help from Achaia, Beeotia, Euboia, Epeiros, and Akarnania. Livy (xxviii. 5) translates Polybios. 4 Pol. x. 42. Πυθόμενος δὲ... τῶν Αἰτωλῶν τοὺς ἄρχοντας εἰς Ἡράκλειαν ἀθροίζεσθαι χάριν τοῦ κοινολογηθῆναι πρὸς ἀλλήλους ὑπὲρ τῶν ἐνεστώτων, ἀναλαβὼν τὴν δύναμιν ἐκ τῆς Σκοτούσης ὥρμησε σπεύδων καταταχῆσαι καὶ πτοήσας διασῦραι τὴν σύνοδον αὐτῶν. τοῦ μὲν οὖν συλλόγου καθυστέρει. Liv. xxviii. 5. Ko nuntiatum est, coneilium Aitolis Heracleam mdicturn, Regemque Attalum, ad consultandum de summa belli, venturum. Hune con- ventum, ut turbaret subito adventu, magnis itineribus Heracleam duxit. Et concilio quidem dimisso jam venit. Both Schorn (191) and Thir'wall (viii. 292, 293) take this meetin«, for a General Assembly. Certainly σύνοδος and Concilium are the regular words for such an Assembly, yet the words of Volybios seem to imply that the ἄρχοντες themselves formed the σύνοδος, and did not merely summon it. | Philip’s cessions to the Achaian League, B.C. 208, 460 HISTORY OF FEDERAL GREECE CHAP. to bring about a peace, and their envoys, as well as others from Rome, sent doubtless on an opposite errand, were present at the meeting at Hérakleia.! We have before seen the Adtolians select the time of meeting of the Achaian Federal Congress as the time best suited for a safe and profitable inroad into the Achaian territory.” Philip now sought to repay them in their own coin; he hoped to surprise them in the act of debate, as the Medeonians had once surprised them in the act of election.? He came however too late; the meeting, whether of the whole AXtolian body or only of the Senate, had already dispersed. The Egyptian and Rhodian ambassadors still continued to labour for peace, but it is almost impossible to follow their movements in detail,4 and as yet both the contending parties still preferred to make themselves ready for battle. We soon after find Philip at Aigion at an Achaian Assembly. He there made over to his allies certain Peloponnésian districts which had been in Mace- donian possession since the Social, some perhaps even since the Kleomenic, War. These were the Arkadian city of Héraia, which had once been a member of the League,® and the whole district of Triphylia,’ which had never before been part of the Achaian body. Philip also restored to the State of Megalopolis the town of Alipheira, which he had taken in the Social War. This was an old possession of Megalopolis, which Lydiadas, in the days of his Tyranny, had exchanged with the Eleians for some compensation which is not distinctly ex- plained.8 This increase of territory would extend the boundary 1 Liv. xxviii. 7. 2 See above, pp. 397, 429. 3 See above, p. 323. 4 Livy (w.s.) makes the Egyptian and Rhodian envoys meet Philip at Elateia ; he tells them that the war is not his fault, and that he is anxious for peace; the conference is broken up by the news that Machanidas is going to attack the Eleians during the Olympic Games. Philip goes to oppose him, Machanidas retreats, and Philip then goes to Aigion. Now this is evidently one of Livy’s confusions. The Elcians were allies of Machanidas and enemies of Philip. Livy’s narrative also gives no place for the speech of ‘the Rhodian envoys (Pol. xi. 5) addressed to an Aftolian Popular Assembly (of πολλοί, c. 6), which cannot be the one at Hérakleia, because the presence of Macedonian ambassadors (οἱ rapa τοῦ Φιλίππου πρέσβεις) is distinctly mentioned. [ can really make nothing of the account in Appian, Mac. ii. 1, 2. See Thirlwall, viii. 295. One thing however is clear; from about this time (Livy, xxix, 12) Rome, Pergamos, and Carthage take no active share in the war; it is reduced to the old Greek limits of the Social War. 5 Pol. ii. 54; iv. 77 et seqq. 6 See above, p. 314. 7 Liv. xxviii. 8. See above, p. 419. 8 Pol. iv. 77. ’HAeloe προσελάβοντο καὶ τὴν τῶν ᾿Αλιφειρέων πόλιν, οὖσαν VIII PHILIP’S CESSIONS TO THE ACHAIANS 461 ee --------............-- . ....--.-............, of the League to the Ionian Sea, and would interpose part of Achaia between Elis and Messéné. If it was really made over to the League at this time,! it was an important acquisition, and one made at an opportune moment. The League could now, as of old, afford to liberate Grecian cities, for 1t was now able to withstand any Grecian enemy hy its own unassisted force. Philopoimén was now at last chosen General of the League.? Philo- For the first time since Markos and Lydiadas the Achaians “had poimen at their head a man capable of fighting a battle. Aristomachos, ena it may be remembered, had once wished to fight one, but he was League, hindered by Aratos.3 During the long administration of Aratos, 3c. 208- pitched battles were rare, and victories altogether unknown. The Old-Achaian cities had never been distinguished for martial spirit ; and the Arkadian and Argolic members of the League seem generally, on becoming Achaian, to have sunk to the Achaian level. At Megalopolis and Argos indeed things were in a better state; we have seen the League, on one occasion, calling, in a marked way, for Argeian and Megalopolitan contingents ; 4 and the Megalopolitan phalanx had been, even in the days of the Kleomenic War, reformed after the Macedonian model.® Else- where, whatever military spirit there was had died away under Inefii- Aratos. His successors, Euryleén, Kykliadas, and Nikias, seem ¢lency of the to have been as incapable as himself of commanding in the Open 4 chaian field, and not to have redeemed the deficiency b his diplomatic army. ’ δὴ J powers or his skill in sudden surprises. Polybios® speaks with utter contempt of the Generals of this time, and we have seen ἐξ ἀρχῆς ὑπ᾽ ᾿Αρκαδίαν καὶ Μεγάλην πόλιν, Λυδιάδου τοῦ Μεγαλοπολίτου κατὰ τὴν τυραννίδα πρός τινας ἰδίας πράξεις ἀλλαγὴν δόντος τοῖς ᾿Πλείοις. 1 J speak thus doubtingly, because we find these towns, at a later time, again in the hands of Philip, and again ceded by him to the League. Liv, xxxil. 5 ; xxxili, 34, * See Schorn, 195; Thirlwall, viii. 295. That Philopoiinén commanded at Mantineia as General of the League is clear from the whole story, and follows from Plutarch’s words (Phil. 11), στρατηγοῦντα τὸ δεύτερον, which otherwise are not very clear. According to Schorn’s view, he would be clected in Novemher B.c. 208, so that he would be best called the General of the year B.c. 207 ; whereas, under the earlier system, the greater part of the oflicial year fell in the same natural year as the election. The succession seems to have been 211-0 Euryleén ; 210-9 Kykliadas ; 209-8 Nikias (Liv. xxviii. 8) ; 208-7 Philopoimén. 3 See above, p. 346. + See above, p. 429. 5 Pol. iv. 69. See Brandstater, p. 365. 6 He says (xi. 8) that there are three ways of attaining to military skill, by scientific study (διὰ τῶν ὑπομνημάτων καὶ τῆς ἐκ τούτων κατασκευῆς), by instruc- Philopoi- mén’s Reforms. 462 HISTORY OF FEDERAL GREECE CHAP. that one common path to the highest office in the state was a course of gross and wilful negligence in the administration of the post next in importance.! The League had learned, in the early days of Aratos, to trust to Egyptian subsidies, to diplo- matic craft, or, at most, to midnight surprises ; latterly they had trusted to Macedonian help,? and to mercenaries, who never fought with real zeal in the service of a commonweath.? But the League had now at its head a man who was a native of the most military city of the Union, who had given his whole life to the study of the military art, and whose most ardent desire was to see the League really independent. Philopoimén longed to see his country defended by the arms of her own citizens, not by mercenaries indifferent to her cause, or by foreign Kings who used the Achaian League only as an instrument for their own purposes. As Master of the Horse, he had reformed the Achaian cavalry ; as General, he determined to reform the whole military system of the League.* After so long a period of neglect, reform might have seemed almost hopeless. Philopoimén had first to carry proposals for improvement through a democratic Assembly ; he had then to impose a course of severe discipline upon men who were in the least favourable condition for it. He had not, like his contemporary Hannibal, to bring brave but untutored warriors under the restraints of military order ; he had the more difficult task before him of making soldiers out of the citizens of a highly-civilized and somewhat luxurious nation. The forms of the Achaian constitution probably helped him in his work. [1 he gained his first point, he gained everything. In the three days’ session of the Achaian Assembly, it was possible that his proposals might be wholly rejected ; it was not likely that they tion from inen of experience, and by actual experience of a man’s own. The Achaian Generals at this time were altogether unversed in any one of the three ; πάντων ἦσαν τούτων ἀνεννόητοι ol τῶν ᾿Αχαιῶν στρατηγοὶ ἁπλῶς. 1 See above, p. 454. 2 Plutarch (Phil. 8) gives a good picture of the state of things in these respects. 3 Pol. xi. 1858. Under a Tyranny, he tells us, mercenaries fight well, because their master will reward them, and will use them, if victorious, for future con- quests ; but citizens fight ill (cf. Herod. v. 78), because they fight for a master and not for themselves. Under a Democracy, on the other hand, citizens fight well, because’they fight for their own freedom, but mercenaries fight ill, because, the more successful the commonwealth is, the less it will need their services. 4 The admirable summary of Philopoimén’s reforms by Bishop Thirlwall (viii. 295-8) makes one almost shrink from going again over the same ground, I have tried to bring out a few special points into prominence. VIII PHILOPOIMEN’S REFORMS 463 should be criticized, spoiled, patched, and pared down in detail. When his proposals were agreed to, it was doubtless a hard task to carry out his scheme in practice ; yet his position had several marked advantages. He had already reformed the service which was filled by the highest class, and he had something like a model infantry to show in the contingent of his own city. And, when he had once received the necessary authority from the assembled People, he had almost unlimited powers for the execution of his plans. There was no King and no Ministry to thwart him ; there were no Councillors or Commissioners to meddle ; there was no mob of a metropolis to be cringed to; above all, there were no Special Correspondents to vex the soul of the hero.! He had simply to deal with a people whose intellect he had already convinced, a people who had themselves raised him to his high office, a people whose fault was certainly not that of disobedience, fickleness, or gratitude towards the leaders whom they placed at their head. One vigorous specch in the Assembly ” —probably at the Meeting where he was chosen General— settled everything. Let the Achaians, he told them, retain their fondness for elegance and splendour; but let it be turned towards fine arms rather than towards fine clothes and fine furniture ;° let men vie with one another, not in objects of mere luxury and show, but in those whose possession would of itself prompt them to vigorous and patriotic action. Hight months of severe training put Philopoimén at the head of an Achaian phalanx which he could really trust. Their short spears and small shields were exchanged for the full panoply and long sarissa of the Macedonians ; they were practised in every evolu- tion of the phalanx; and, before his year of office was over, Philopoimén assembled at Mantineia a force with which he did not dread to meet the power of Sparta in the open field. He did not wholly give up the use of mercenary troops, but strangers and citizens had now changed places. His mercenaries were now mainly [lyrian and other light-armed soldiers ; the real strength of his army lay in the native phalanx and_ native cavalry * of the League. 1 Contrast the good luck of Philopoimén in these respects with the position of a Spartan, Byzantine, Venetian, or Dutch General in past times, or of an English or American General in our own day. 2 pol. xi. 10. 3 Pol. xi. 9. Plut. Phil. 9. 4 As the Tarentines (Pol. xi. 12. Liv. xxxv. 28, 29. Thirlwall, viii, 298) on both sides were not natives of Tarentum, but only a particular sort of cavalry, The Three Battles of Mantineia ; B.c. 418. B.C. 362. Third Battle of Mantineia, B.C. 207. 464 HISTORY OF FEDERAL GREECE CHAP, With this new force the Achaian General met the Spartan King in a pitched battle near Mantineia.! It was the third great battle fought on the same, or nearly the same, ground.? Here, in the interval between the two parts of the Pelopon- nésian War, had Agis restored the glory of Sparta after her humiliation at Sphaktéria ; here Epameinéndas had fallen in the moment of victory ; here now was to be fought the last great battle of independent Greece. One regrets that, at such a moment, the forces of the two worthiest of Grecian states should have been arrayed against each other ; still it cannot be without interest that we behold the last act of the long drama of internal Hellenic warfare. Rome, Carthage, Pergamos,? even Mace- donia, had for a while withdrawn from the scene ; the struggle was to be waged, as of old, between Grecian generals command- ing Grecian armies. If there were foreigners engaged on either side, they were mere auxiliaries, like the barbarian troops which had appeared in Peloponnésos even in the days of Epameinéndas.* And we have no reason to doubt that Machanidas was a worthy foe, even of Philopoimén. His name of Tyrant he shares with the great Kleomenés; but he was as clearly a real national leader as Kleomenés himself. It is the old strife, the old hatred, between Sparta and the city founded by Epameindéndas. Machanidas marched forth, expecting a certain victory; like earlier chiefs of his nation, he looked upon Arkadia as_ his destined prey.” And no doubt it was with a special feeling of delight that Philopoimén, the follower of Epameindéndas,® stood ready, with the force of Megalopolis and the whole Achaian League, to engage a Spartan King on the ground on which his model had conquered and fallen. The details of the battle are given at length by Polybios,’ who probably heard them from there is no reason why they may not have been a citizen force on both sides. Polybios does not imply that they, but rather that the εὔξωνοι, were mercenaries. And, in any case, Philopoimén would have the native Achaian cavalry, which he had himself organized. 1 Polybios (xi. 10) uses the name Alantineia, which doubtless still remained in familiar use, and not the more formal title of Antigoneiu. 2 On the three battles of Mantineia, see Leake’s Morea, iii. 57-93. % Attalos had been called back to his own kingdom to repel an invasion of Prusias, King of Bithynia. Liv. xxviii. 7. 4 Dionysios sent Celts and Iberians to the support of Sparta. Xen. Hell. vii. 1. 20. 5 Herod. i. 66. ᾿Αρκαδίην p’ αἰτεῖς; μέγα μ' αἰτεῖς" οὔ τοι δώσω, κ. τ.λ. 8 Plut. Phil. 3. 7 Pol. xi. 11-18. Cf. Plut. Phil. 10. Pans. viii. 50-2. VIII BATTLE OF MANTINEIA 465 Philopoimén himself. It is enough for my purpose to say that, after a hard fought field, victory remained with the Federal army. At the battle of Larisos, Philopoimén, Master of the Complete Horse of Achaia, slew with his own hand the Master of the victory Horse of Klis; now, as General of the League, he slew with One as his own hand the King of Sparta. Had he been a Roman, he ὁ might have boasted of the Spolia Opima, like Romulus and Cossus and Marcellus. The death of Lydiadas was now avenged ; but we regret to find that the Achaians, in their day of victory, were far from showing the same respect to a fallen foe which Kleomenés had shown -to their own hero. The corpse of Lydiadas had received royal honours from his con- queror; the head of Machanidas was cut from his body, and held up as a trophy and an encouragement to the pursuers. [Ὁ was a victory indeed ; four thousand Lacedemonians lay dead ; ag many were taken prisoners ; the whole spoil remained in the hands of the victors; and all this was purchased by the most trifling loss on the Achaian side. In point of military glory, it was the brightest day in the history of the League. For a Lacedesmonian army to be defeated in a pitched battle, for Lakénia to be ravaged at will by an invader, were now no longer the miraculous events which they had seemed a hundred and sixty years before. But the fight of Leuktra and the Pelo- ponnésian campaigns of Epameinéndas were: hardly more wonderful than for a Spartan army, bred up in the school of Kleomenés, to be defeated by a native Achaian force, com- manded by an Achaian General, without the presence of a single Macedonian soldier, and without the help of a single Egyptian talent. The Achaian army, with its General at its head, now phito. marched as freely through Lakénia as had been done by Epa- poimén meindndas, by Pyrrhos, by Antigonos, or by cither Philip. A TiS. prouder moment in a soldier’s life can hardly be conceived than when Philopoimén crossed the hostile border at the head of the army of his fellow-citizens which he himself had trained to victory. The remaining events of the war may be hastened over. Nabis Machanidas was succeeded at Sparta by one Nabis, a Tyrant αὐτο ° in every sense of the word, but who did not as yet make him- Mm self formidable to the League. Philip, now that the Romans and Attalos were gone, easily drove the Aitolians to a separate er Peace between AXtolia and Mace- donia, B.C. 205. Conference at Phoi- nike, (General Peace, B.c. 205. 466 HISTORY OF FEDERAL GREECE CHAP ΒῪ peace, a proceeding on their parts which gave deadly offence at Rome. It was certainly a breach of the engagements towards Rome into which they had entered at the beginning of the war, but the fault lay with the Romans themselves, who had wholly neglected their Greek allies for two years.2 Shortly afterwards the Proconsul Publius Sempronius landed at Epidamnos. Unable to persuade the Aitolians to break the peace—a rare scruple, which shows how much they must have suffered in the war— and unable to contend against Philip without their help, he gladly listened to proposals of peace. They first came from the Kpeirots, who, if it be true that Philip had possessed himself of Ambrakia,® once the capital of their great Pyrrhos, had almost as much reason to complain of him as of Romans or Attolians. Conferences took place at Phoiniké in Epeiros between the Pro- consul Sempronius, the Kings Philip and Amynander, and the Magistratés of the Akarnanian and Epeirot Leagues. The lead In the negociation was taken by the Epeirot General Philip, supported by his two colleayues Dardas and Aeropos.* By the terms of the peace Rome obtained some Illyrian districts ; Philip obtained Atintania, hardly to the advantage of the mediating power; and 16 was probably now that he made over to King Amynander ὅ the island of Zakynthos, his own conquest during the Social War. The best modern guide to these times‘ marvels, and with reason, at this last “rectification” of territory. Amynander’s kingdom lay wholly inland, and he could not possibly visit his new dominions without the goodwill of the possessor of Ambrakia. It was even stranger than for a Duke of Savoy, who was at least master of Nizza, to he made King of Sicily or Sardinia.® The other allies seem to have had no repre- sentatives in the Conference, but they were equally included in the treaty. Philip stipulated for his own Thessalian dependents, for Prusias of Bithynia, whom it was needful to secure against his neighbour Attalos, and for the Leagues of Achaia and Beotia, as well as those of Kpeiros and Akarnania. The allies on the 1 Cf. Pol. xviii. 21. Liv. xxxi. 29. * Liv. xxix. 12, 3 See App. Mac. ii. 1. The Autolians had taken it some time before. 4 Liv. xxix. 12. See above, p. 118, note 8. 5 Liv. xxxvi. 31. It was the price of a free passage through Athamania. § Pol. ν, 102, See above, p. 434. 7 Thirlwall, viii. 300. It was as if the Prince of Montenegro should receive one of the Greek Islands still in Turkish bondage, as compensation for the Turkish military road through his dominions, 8 VII PEACE OF EPELIROS 467 Roman side were Elis, Athens, Messéné, King Attalos, King Pleuratos in Illyria, Nabis the Tyrant,! and Rome’s metropolis Ilion. This last piece of mythical diplomacy rivals the claims which Akarnania had once made for Roman support. The Ziitolians were enrolled on neither side; Philip had granted them peace, but not alliance ; Rome looked on allies who had made peace without her sanction as unworthy of her protection or care. This was the first great lesson which the Greeks learned in the school of Roman diplomacy. To become the ally of Rome was the first step towards becoming her subject ; 1t in- volved the entire sacrifice of independent action. The peace was confirmed by the Roman Senate and people; it was accepted, tacitly at least, by the allies on both sides, and the land had rest for a short space. 1 It was afterwards pretended that the treaty was concluded, not with Nabis, but with the lawful King Pelops. Liv. xxxiv. 32. 468 HISTORY OF FEDERAL GREECE CHAP, NOTE ON THE GENERALSHIPS OF ARATOS Ir is not easy to reconcile the number of Generalships attributed to Aratos by Plutarch with the distinct assertion (see above, p. 237) of the same writer that Aratos was elected General in alternate years, because the Law did not allow the retiring General to be immediately re-elected. Droysen (ii. 438) holds that the Law was broken in favour of Aratos, and that he served for several consecutive years. Schorn (107) rather suspects an error in Plutarch’s enumeration. Aratos was first elected General in p.c. 245 :1 in 226 he was, according to Plutarch (Ar. 35), General for the twelfth time ; in 2138 he died, according to the same authority (c. 53), in his seventeenth Generalship. Among the inter- vening years, there are some whien Aratos is mentioned as General, some when other persons are mentioned, and some where the name is not preserved. The statement that he died in his seventeenth Generalship would, in itself, present no difficulty ; if he was elected in alternate years beginning with 245, then 213 would be his seventeenth year. But it is certain that his alternate re- election, though the common rule, was not adhered to so strictly as to exclude occasional deviations (see Plut. Ar. 38 and Pol. iv. 82 compared with iv. 37), and the twelfth Generalship in 226 cannot possibly agree with a system of alternate elections beginning with 245. Aratos was General in 245, 243, and 241. We then lose the succession for some years, and recover it in 294, From that date onwards we have as follows: 234 Aratos (vill. ) 229 Lydiadas (iii. ) 233 Lydiadas (1.) 228 Aratos (xi.) 232 Aratos (ix.) 227 Aristomachos. 231 Lydiadas (11.) 226 Aratos (xil.) 230 Aratos (x.) If 226 were Aratos’ twelfth Generalship, it follows that 234 was his eighth. But, as 241 was his third, the six intervening years, 240, 239, 238, 237, 236, 235 do not give room for the four required Generalships (fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh), in alternate years. If Plutarch be right in calling 226 the twelfth Generalship, it follows that Aratos must have held office for four out of those six years, a clear violation of the law as stated by Plutarch himself. Droysen (ii. 4385. 8)? truly adds that in those years, only one General besides Aratos, namely Dioitas, is mentioned.? Again, though the seventeenth 1 By the year of a General, I mean the year B.c. in which he was elected ; his official year took in parts of two years of our reckoning. Thus the Generalship of B.c. 234 extends into B.c. 2338, and so throughout. 2 [fiii. 2. 33, 2nd edition. } 3 Polyainos (ii. 36, see above, p. 315, note 1) mentions Dioitas as General, but gives no clue to the year to which his Generalship should be referred. VIL NOTE ON THE GENERALSHIPS OF ARATOS 469 Generalship in 213 would agree perfectly with a system of alternate re-election throughout the whole time, yet the first three Generalships are in odd years, 245, 243, 241, while the series beginning with 234 are in even years. Aratos must therefore, between 241 and 234, have either been in office or out of office for two years together. Again, he was not regular General in 224, nor General at all in 218, which, on the alternate system, he should have been. He certainly was General in 220, 217, 213. In 221, 219, 218, 216, we find other names. If then Plutarch be right in calling 226 his twelfth, and 213 his seventeenth, Generalship, we must not only supply two more Generalships in the years 222 and 215, but we must also suppose four Generalships between 241 and 234, that is, we must suppose, as Schorn says, that Aratos held the Generalship for three years together, in manifest breach of the law. But, by supposing two slight and easily-explained errors in Plutarch’s reckoning, it is possible to arrange the years, so as not to imply any breach of a Law so distinctly stated by Plutarch himself. His mention of a seven- teenth Generalship in 213 may have been a mere careless inference from the number of years and the common practice of alternate election. Or it may be explained in another way. The twelfth Generalship in 226 is the great difficulty. If for δωδέκατον, in Plut. Ar. 35, we might substitute δέκατον, we should then have to suppose that, between 241 and 234, Aratos, instead of being in office for three years together, remained once out of office for two years together,! as we know that he once did at a later time. We have then to suppose that Plutarch counted Aratos’ Extraordinary Generalship in 224-3 ? (Ar. 41) as one of his regular years, and we have, between 224 and 213, to place Generalships in those years where it is allowable, namely in 222 and 215. This gives sixteen Generalships without any two being in consecutive years. Now in 219 the younger Aratos was General, and Plutarch may easily, in running his eye over a list, have mistaken his year of office for another year of his father’s, and so have made the whole number seventeen. The whole list would then stand thus : 1 That this should be the case is not at all unlikely, when we remember (sce above, pp. 309, 310) the indignation excited by his attempt on Peiraieus during the truce with Antigonos. That attempt must have been made either late in the official year B.c. 241-0 or early in B.c. 239-8. It is not an improbable conjecture that it was made when Aratos was General in 289, and that, in consequence of the popular feeling against him, he remained out of office during the years 238 and 237, and was elected for the fifth time in 236. On the other hand it should be remarked that the time to which Droysen attributes the illegal elections of Aratos, and to which, if they occurred at all, they must be attributed, is precisely that when the power of Aratos was most unbounded. From 241 to 234, from the acquisition of Corinth to the acquisition of Megalopolis, Aratos was, with the exception of his temporary discredit about Peiraieus, at the very height of his glory. Earlier, he was merely growing into power, later, he had rivals in Lydiadas and others. 2 Aratos’ election as στρατηγὸς αὐτοκράτωρ (see above, Ὁ. 377) was in the natural year B,C. 223, but before the expiration of the official year 224-3. 470 HISTORY OF FEDERAL GREECE CHAP, VIII 245 Aratos (i.) 228 Aratos (ix. ) 244 -- 227 Aristomachos. 243 Aratos (11.) 226 Aratos (x.) 242 — 225 Hyperbatas. 241 Aratos (iii. ) 224 Timoxenos (i.) 1240 -- 224-3 Aratos (στρατηγὸς αὐτοκράτωρ) (xi.) 239 Aratos (iv.) ? 223 Timoxenos (ii. ) 238 — 222 Aratos (xii.) ? 237 — 221 Timoxenos (iii. ) 236 Aratos (v.) ? 220 Aratos (xili.) 235 -- 219 Aratos the Younger, 234 Aratos (vi.) 218 Epératos. 233 Lydiadas (i.) 217 Aratos (xiv.) 232 Aratos (vii. ) 216 Timoxenos (iv. ) 231 Lydiadas (ii. ) 215 Aratos (xv.) ? . 230 Aratos (Vili. ) 214 — 229 Lydiadas (iil.) 213 Aratos (xvi. ) The question reduces itself to this. Was Plutarch more likely to go wrong in a reckoning of figures or in a distinct statement of constitutional practice ? To me the former supposition certainly seems the easier of the two. That Plutarch is by no means infallible in his chronology of the life of Aratos is plain from his strange remark that Aratos had been, in 224, for thirty-three years* an Achaian politician (τριάκοντα ἔτη καὶ τρία πεπολιτευμένος ἐν rots ’Axatots, Ar. 41), whereas, in 224, only twenty-seven years had elapsed since the very beginning of his career in the deliverance of Sikyén. The only marked period of thirty-three years in the life of Aratos is that between his first Generalship in 245 and his death in 213; this is probably what Plutarch was thinking of. A mistake in reckoning up the Presidential years is one of exactly the same kind, and it is one, I certainly think, far more likely to occur than a direct and often-repeated blunder on a point of constitutional law, committed by one who had the Memoirs of Aratos before him. 1 The Generalship of Dioitas would come in one of the years 240, 238, 237 or 235, but I know of no evidence to fix it to any particular year, 2 I do not at all know what Mr. Fynes Clinton means (iii. 36) by transferring this remark from the year 224 to 222, and adding ‘ The thirty-three years of Aratos must’ be computed from the first pretor Marcus, s.c. 255."’ What have the years of Markos and Aratos to do with each other. CHAPTER IX HISTORY OF FEDERAL GREECE, FROM THE PEACE OF EPEIROS TO THE DISSOLUTION OF THE ACHAIAN LEAGUE. B.c. 205 --1 406 ᾿ WITH the interference of Rome in Grecian affairs, the main Character interest of our Federal history ceases. Hitherto we have seen οὗ the Greek Federalism in the days of its glory; we have seen Greek period. Federal commonwealths acting as perfectly independent powers, and we have seen them acting in close union with Greek states possessing other forms of Government. What is now left to us is to trace Greek Federalism in its decline ; a decline, indeed, in no way peculiar to the Federal states, but one which they shared with all powers, whether kingdoms or commonwealths, which once came within the reach of Rome’s friendship or enmity. The chief importance of this period for our purpose 15 indirect. We have now come within the life-time of Polybios ; we shall soon come within the range of his personal memory. His narrative of events which he had seen himself, or had heard of from his father, is naturally much fuller than his narrative of events which rested on the traditions or the written records of a past genera- tion. Unfortunately we now have his history only in fragments, but the fragments are often of considerable length, and there are also several narratives in Livy which are evidently translated from Polybios to the best of Livy’s small ability. As these later transactions were recorded by Polybios at great detail, the frag- Import- ments of his history of these times contain a great mass of ance of the we qe . oa . - 1 period in political information, and supply many constitutional details which fregeral we might otherwise never have known. We have several vivid History pictures of debates in the Achaian and AXtolian Assemblies, such ofieby , as we do not get in the history of earlier times. Still, when we read minute reports of debates in which Aristainos and Kykliadas, or Kallikratés and Archén, were the chief speakers, we cannot Agegres- sive pro- ceedings of Philip, B.C. 202- "200, B.c. 202, His dealings with the Achaian League. 472 HISTORY OF FEDERAL GREECE CHAP, restrain a wish to exchange them for equally minute reports of the parliamentary combats of Aratos and Lydiadas. I shall therefore touch comparatively lightly on this last period of Greek Federal history, leaving, as before, the details of warfare to the general historians of Greece and Rome, and stopping only at those points where the narrative affords us any important constitutional information. 8 1. From the Peace of Epevros to the Settlement of Greece under Flamininus B.C. 205—194 We left Greece at peace; that she did not long remain so was again the fault of the King of Macedonia. Philip, whose youth- ful promise had been so bright, was gradually sinking from bad to worse. It was open to him to play the part of Piedmont in Greece ; he preferred, of his own choice, to play the part of Austria. Every step that he took alienated some old friend, or provoked some new enemy. In defiance of his treaty with Rome, he still continued his dealings with Hannibal, and Mace- donian soldiers are said to have fought for Carthage at Zama.! In defiance of his treaty with AXtolia, he attacked various cities, in Asia and elsewhere, which were allies or subjects of the League,* and, by his cruel treatment of his conquests, he de- graded himself, in the eyes of all Greece, almost below the level of the AXtolians themselves? He seems to have defrauded his old allies of Achaia of the Peloponnésian districts which he had professed to cede to them during the Roman war ;* he is even charged with an attempt to poison Philopoimén,° as he was believed to have poisoned Aratos. He engaged in hostilities, which seem to have been altogether unprovoked, with the Rhodian Republic,® with Ptolemy Epiphanés of Egypt, and with 1 Liv, xxx. 26, 33, 42. But Polybios does not mention them. 2 Lysimacheia, Kalchédén, Kios. See Pol. xv. 22; xvii. 2, 3. 3 See Pol. xvii. 3. Cf. the somewhat later siege of Abydos, Pol. xvi. 29-34. Liv. xxxi. 16, 17. 4 See above, p. 460. That they were detained or recovered by him is clear by his again restoring, or pretending to restore, them at a later time. Liv. xxxii. 5. 5 Plut. Phil. 12. “Επεμψεν els “Apyos κρύφα τοὺς dvaiphoovras αὐτόν. This need not imply that poison was the means to be used. δ Philip’s war with the Rhodians produced several important sea-fights. See the description of those of Ladé and Chios. Pol. xvi.,1-9. ΙΧ SECOND MACEDONIAN WAR 473 Attalos of Pergamos, the cherished ally of Rome. He engaged Philip’s in a war with Athens, for which something more like an vaste excuse could be pleaded ;' but he shocked the universal feeling 4 ttica, of Greece by practising the same barbarous and useless kind of B.c. 200. devastation of which he and his AXtolian enemies had alike been guilty during the Social War.? Athens, politically contemptible, was already beginning to assume something of that sacred and academic character which she enjoyed in the eyes of the later Greeks and Romans. The destruction of Athenian temples and works of art doubtless aroused a feeling of general indignation even stronger than that which followed on the like sacrilege when wrought at Dion and Thermon. It was this attack on Athens which finally drew Rome into the strife. The justice of Justice of the Roman declaration of war cannot be questioned. Philip had the war clearly broken the Treaty ; he had helped the enemies of Rome Roman and he had injured her allies. He had put himself in a position side. which enabled the Romans to assume, and that, for a while, with some degree of truth and sincerity, the character of the libera- tors of Greece. It was wholly Philip’s own fault, that a Roman, a Barbarian, was able to unite the forces of nearly all Greece against a Macedonian King, and to declare, at one of the great Greek national festivals, that all Greeks who had been subject to Macedonia received their freedom from the Roman Senate and their Proconsul. There is no need to suspect the Senate, Phil- still less to suspect Flamininus personally, of any insincerity in pevenic the matter. That liberty received as a boon from a powerful of Femi. stranger can never be lasting is indeed true. But it does not ninus and follow that the philhellenism of Flamininus was a mere blind, a other mere trap for Greek credulity, or that the gift of freedom was τος deliberately designed from the beginning to be only a step towards bondage. One might as well suppose that the servants of the East India Company who first mingled in Indian politics and warfare deliberately contemplated the Affghan war and the annexation of Oude. The second Macedonian War—the second Roman War, as we Second may call it from our point of view—was carried on by three yee . . ee . onlan successive Roman commanders, Publius Sulpicius, Publius war, B.c. 200- 1 Two Akarnanians were put to death at Eleusis for an unwitting profanation 197. of the mysteries. The Akarnanian League complained to their ally King Philip, who invaded and ravaged Attica. Liv, xxxi. 14. * See above, pp. 419, 428, Real good- will of Flami- ninus towards Greece. 474 HISTORY OF FEDERAL GREECE CHAP. Villius,! and Titus Quinctius Flamininus.2 Of these three, Titus became something like a Greek national hero. Plutarch? does not even stop to argue whether Titus or Philopoimén deserved the larger share of Grecian thankfulness ; the merits of the Roman allow of no dispute or comparison. Titus* shone alike as a diplomatist and as a warrior; he showed him- self as superior to Philip in the conference of Nikaia° as he did upon the hill of Kynoskephalai. His real goodwill towards Greece there seems no just reason to doubt. He lived at a time peculiarly favourable to the growth of such a feeling. In earlier times the Romans despised the Greeks with the contempt of ignorance. In later times they despised them with the con- tempt of conquerors, Even Titus himself lived to change from the friend into the patron, and from the patron there are very few steps to the master. But, just at this moment, all the pro- ducts of Grecian intellect were, for the first time, beginning to be opened to the inquiring minds of Rome. Greece was a land of intellectual pilgrimage, the birthplace of the art, the poetry, and the science, which the rising generation of Romans were beginning to appreciate. The result was the existence for a time of a genuine philhellenic feeling, of which the carly conduct of Titus in Greece is the most illustrious example.® Titus Quinctius was a Roman, and we may be quite certain that he would never have sacrificed one jot of the real interests of Rome 1 T take Villius, in Greek Οὐέλλιος, to be the name intended by the Ὀτίλιεος of Pausanias (vii. 7, 9). See Schorn, 240. 2 For Φλαμινῖνος, Pausanias (u.s.) and Appian (Syr. 2) have Φλαμίνιος ; Aurelius Victor (c. 51) and, after him, Orosius (lib. iv. f. iii. ed. Venice, 1483) turn the nomen Quinctius into the pranomen Quintus, so as to change Titus Quinctius into Quintus Flaminius. Aurelius moreover makes him the son of Caius Flaminius who died at Trasimenus. This is not very wonderful in a late and careless compiler, but it is wonderful to find the error repeated by a scholar like Schorn, p. 237. 3 Comp. Phil. et ΕἸ. 1. 4 One can hardly help, when writing from the Greek side, speaking of him by his familiar prenomen, as he is always called by Polybios and Plutarch. It is not every Roman who is spoken of so endearingly. 5 See Pol. xvii. 1-10. 6 Mommsen, in his Roman History, very clearly brings out this fact, but he is very severe both on Flamininus and on his countrymen for yielding to such foolish sentimentality. I confess that I cannot look on a generous feeling as dis- graceful either to an individual or to a nation. But Mommsen’s history of this period, as of all periods, is well worth reading, if the reader will only reserve the right of private judgement in his own hands. A truer and more*generous estimate of Flamininus will be found in Kortiim, iii. 251. ΙΧ PHILHELLENIC FEELINGS OF FLAMININUS 475 to any dream of philhellenism. But, within that limit, he was disposed to be more liberal to Grecian allies and less harsh to Grecian enemies than he would have been to allies or enemies of any other nation. He would have Greece dependent on Rome ; but he would have her dependent, not as a slave but as a free ally ; the Greeks should be Plataians and not Helots; the con- nexion should be one, not of constraint, but of affection and gratitude for real favours conferred. He wished in short to make Rome become, what Macedonia ought to have become, the chosen head of a body of free and willing Greek confederates. For a few years he really effected his object. Macedonia did not Union of retain a single ally, except the brave League of Akarnania, ever Greek faithful to its friends in their utmost peril. The two great States Leagues of Achaia and Attolia did good service to the Roman Rome. cause ; Epeiros and Beeotia, though not friendly in their hearts, did not venture openly to oppose it. Consistently with his whole system, Titus never pushed any Greek state to extremi- ties. Philip received what, after such provocations as his, may be called favourable terms. When the Aitolians, like the General Thebans after Aigospotamos, called for the utter destruction of modera- Macedonia, Titus showed them how expedient it was that Mace- mon of donia should remain independent and powerful, the bulwark of ninus. Greece against barbarian inroads. Philip was deprived of his conquests, and prevented from injuring the allies of Rome, but the original Kingdom of Macedonia suffered no dismemberment. Nor do we hear of the exercise of any severities against Philip’s gallant allies of Akarnania, a marked contrast to the later treat- ment of the Epeirot cities after the fall of Perseus. “Then I am one who come % Xen. under the charge ; I have been General of the Achaians; yet I have never done any wrong to Rome or shown any favour to 1 Pol. xxx. 10. So Livy, xlv. 31. 2 Tb. Ὁ στρατηγὸς [Λεύκιος Αἰμίλιος]. . . . οὐκ εὐδοκούμενος κατά γε τὴν αὑτοῦ γνώμην ταῖς τῶν περὲ τὸν Λύκισκον καὶ Καλλικράτην διαβολαῖς. 3 Paus. vii. 10. 7. Ἕνα δέ τινα ἐξ αὐτῶν, ἄνδρω οὐδαμῶς ἐς δικαιοσύνην πρόθυμον, τοῦτον τὸν ἄνδρα προσεποιήσατο ὁ Καλλικράτης ἐς τοσοῦτον ὥστε αὐτὸν καὶ ἐς τὸ συνέδριον ἐσελθεῖν τὸ ᾿Αχαιῶν ἔπεισεν. On συνέδριον see above, p. 205, note 1. 4 ΤΌ, 10.9. ᾿Απετόλμησεν εἰπεῖν ws of ἐστρατηγηκότες᾽ Αχαιῶν ἐνέχονται πάντες τῇ αἰτίᾳ. But it must be meant, as Bishop Thirlwall (vili. 466) says, of those only who had been Generals since the beginning of the war. Kallikratés himself had filled the office. 5 See above, p. 526, note 1. Depor- tation of the Thousand Achaians, B.c. 167. Embassies on behalf of the exiles, B.c. 164— 151, Insidious reply of the Senate. 532 HISTORY OF FEDERAL GREECE CHAP. — Perseus; I am ready to be tried on sucha charge by the Assembly of the Achaians or even by the Romans themselves.” The conscious innocence of Xendén had carried him too fart The Roman caught at the imprudent challenge; he demanded that all whom Kalhkratés named should be sent for trial to Rome. Sent to Rome they were, above a thousand of the best men of Achaia ; whether they were carried off by sheer force, or whether the Assembly was so cowed as to pass the required vote, does not clearly appear. Most probably some sort of vote was passed ; for the Senate had the mean hypocrisy to reply to one—pcerhaps the first—of the many Achaian embassies sent on their behalf, that they wondered at the Achaians applying in favour of men whom they had themselves condemned? Now the Achaian Assembly had most certainly not condemned these men ; it had at most sent them to Rome for trial, though indeed to send them to Rome for trial might be looked on as much the same thing as condemning them. Still such an answer seems to imply an Achaian vote of some kind; even the diplomatic impudence of the Roman Senate could hardly have ventured on such an assertion, if the victims had been carried off by mere Roman violence. It is clear that the Achaians were simple enough to believe that their countrymen would receive some sort of trial ; nay, as there was really nothing whatever to compromise them, they seem to have gone so far as to hope that a trial would prove their innocence, and that they would be restored to their country. Instead of this they were quartered—under what degree of restraint does not appear—in various Etruscan towns, in a dull provincial solitude, out of the reach of either Greek or Roman political life. Several embassies applied in vain for their release. One, which is described by Polyhios, pleaded, in rejoinder to the Senate, that the exiles had never been condemned, and directly begged that the Senate would either bring them to trial itself, or allow the Achaians to try them. Nothing could less suit the Senate’s purpose. A fair trial, whether at Rome or in Achaia, could only lead to an acquittal; and a release of the victims, whether after trial or without, was held to be dangerous to the interests alike of Rome herself and of the Roman party in Achaia. The Senate, thus driven to unmask itself, distinctly declared that their release was inexpedient both for Rome and for Achaia. 1 Paus. vii. 10. 10. Ὁ μὲν δὴ ὑπὸ συνειδότος ἐπαρρησιάζετο ἀγαθοῦ. 2 Pol, χχχί, 8. ΙΧ POSITION OF POLYBIOS Ry 533 } ; But, in the very form of its answer, it took gare to strike another blow at that Federal unity which it so deeply hated and dreaded. The legal description of the Union was carefully avoided, and a form of words! was employed which could only be meant as another insidious attempt to stir up division. At this answer the people everywhere mourned, not only in Achaia but throughout all Greece.? But Kallikratés, Charops, and their fellows rejoiced, and ruled everywhere still more undisturbed, while the flower of the Greek nation languished in their Etruscan prisons. One only among these victims of Roman treachery seems to Position have been Jess harshly dealt with than his fellows. Polybios, οἵ Polybios . : .1: ι. at Rome. through the friendship of Amilius and his son the younger Scipio, found a shelter in that great patrician house,’ and there, by familiar intercourse with the greatest men of Rome, he had those wide views of politics and history thrown open to him of which we reap the fruit in his immortal work. But by thus becoming a citizen of the world, his patriotism as a citizen of Achaia was somewhat dulled. He still loved his country ; he lived to do her important services ; but, from this time onwards, his tone becomes Roman rather than Achaian. He looks at Greek affairs rather with the eye of a Roman philhellen, a Flamininus or an A‘milius, than with the national patriotism of Philopoimén or Lykortas or himself in his earher days. The Senate refused his release and that of Stratios,t when they were the only men of importance surviving. Yet it was at last through his influence® that, in the seventeenth year of their bondage, after many fruitless embassies,° such of the exiles as Release still survived, now less than three hundred in number, were οἷ the . exiles allowed to return to their homes.’ pc. 16]. The treatment of these kidnapped Achaians was probably the most brutal and treacherous piece of tyranny of which a civilized state was ever guilty towards an equal ally which had faithfully 4 Pol. xxxi. 8. “Eypaway ἀπόκρισιν τοιαύτην, ὅτι ἡμεῖς οὐχ ὑπολαμβάνομεν συμφέρειν [οὔτε ἡμῖν) οὔτε τοῖς ὑμετέροις δήμοις τούτους τοὺς ἄνδρας ἐπανελθεῖν εἰς οἶκον, Now οἱ ὑμέτεροι δῆμοι can only mean the several cities separately. But the interest of the several Achaian cities was no affair of the Roman Senate. It was only with the ἔθνος or κοινὸν τῶν ᾿Αχαιῶν that they could have any lawful dealings. 2 Pol. us, Kara δὲ τὴν Ἑλλάδα διαγγελθείσης τῆς ἀποκρίσεως τῆς Tots ᾿Αχαιοῖς δεδομένης ὑπὲρ τῶν καταιτιαθέντων, τὰ μὲν πλήθη συνετρίβη ταῖς διανοίαις, K.T.X. 3 Ib. xxxii. 9. 4 Tb. 7. 5 Plut. Cat. Maj. 9. ὁ Paus. vii. 10, 11. Pol. xxxiii. 1, 2, 13. 7 Paus. vii. 10. 12. Dealings of Rome with foreign nations. Fresh intrigues of Rome. Dispute between Sparta and Mega- lopolis. 584 ΜΠ STORY OF FEDERAL GREECE CHAP. discharged all the duties of alliance! Rome, in her dealings with foreign nations, .knew neither mercy nor justice. It is in this unfavourable light that the City and most of her citizens appear to a student of Grecian history ; but it must not be for- gotten that Roman vices and Roman virtues sprang from the same source, and that the men who sacrificed the rights of other nations to the interests of Rome were often equally ready to sacrifice themselves and all that they had in the same cause. The man who, in dealing with strangers, appeared only as a brutal conqueror or a base intriguer, often retained every old Roman virtue at the hearth of his own house and in the forum of his own city. It had long been held to be the duty of every Roman to use every means to break the power of any state which still retained strength or independence inconsistent with Rome’s claim to universal dominion. The deportation of the Achaian patriots was only one act, though the basest, in a long series of treacherous attempts against the union and freedom of the League. It is even possible that it was only with a sinister purpose that the Senate at last consented to their release. Their advocate Cato obtained their enlargement by an appeal to the contemptuous pity of his hearers rather than to any nobler feeling.” It may be that the Senate foresaw what would come, and set free its victims mainly in order to secure fresh oppor- tunities for intrigue and for final conquest. Even while the flower of the nation was thus detained in Italy, Rome did not cease from her intrigues against the integrity of the Achaian Union. It is impossible to conceive a greater tribute to the importance and benefit of the Federal tie than these constant attempts to dissolve it on the part of the enemy of all Grecian freedom. The discontent of Sparta, never perhaps fully appeased, once more furnished the occasion. There was a dispute about frontiers between the Cantons of Sparta and Megalopolis,* perhaps the old dispute which Philopoimén had 1 Mommsen, who cannot understand that a weak state can have any rights against a strong one, does not forsake his friends even in this extremity. The deportation of the Achaians is recorded by him (i. 596) without a word of dis- approval ; indeed he seems to think it all right and proper ; the object was ‘‘ die kindische Opposition [is that German ?] der Hellenen mundtodt zu machen.” 2 Plut. Cat. Maj. 9. 3 Pol. xxxi. 9. Pausanias (vii. 11. 1) makes it a dispute between Sparta and Argos. See Schorn, 377. Considering that the maritime towns of Lakénia were ΙΧ CHARACTER OF ROMAN FOREIGN ROLICY 535 7] somewhat arbitrarily decided in favour of his own city.1 Caius Mission Sulpicius Gallus, one of the most distinguished Romans of his nae _ time, was going into Asia to collect accusations against King Gallus, * Eumenés ;? for friendly Kings, when they had served their turn, s.c. 166- fared no better at the hands of Rome than friendly common- 199: wealths. He was ordered to stop and settle this little matter on his way, and also, if report says truly, to detach as many cities as he could from the Achaian League.’ Sulpicius thought it beneath him personally to decide a matter which, as Pansanias remarks,* the great Philip had not thought beneath him ; he bade Kallkratés judge between the two contending Cantons. The other part of his commission almost wholly failed. All the cities of Peloponnésos—Sparta, it would seem, included—knew their interest too well to listen to any intrigues against an Union to which they owed whatever amount of freedom and prosperity they still retained. The Paus. vii. 11. 4. 4 See above, p. 473. 1X CAUSES OF FINAL WAR WITH ROME 537 political action, contrary to the constitution of the League. At a later stage in the dispute, the injured Ordépians brought their wrongs directly before the Federal Assembly. The Assembly had no wish for a needless war with Athens, and declined to interfere in the matter. But the League had now fallen so low that its Chief Magistrate was open to a bribe. The present General was a Spartan named Menalkidas, a fact A Spartan which shows that there was at least no open dispute at this time “eneral between Sparta and the Federal power. The Ordpians promised League, this man ten talents, as the price of his bringing an Achaian army to their help; Menalkidas prudently promised half his Achaian gains to Kallikratés ; and, by the joint influence of the two, a interfer- decree was passed for assisting Ordpos against Athens. Menal- Ordpos kidas however, Spartan as he was, proved a General of the school 8.6. 150. of Aratos rather than of that of Kleomenés. Like Aratos in Beotia,? Menalkidas came too late ; the Athenians had’ pillaged Orépos before he got there. Then Menalkidas and Kallikratés wished to invade Attica, but the troops, especially the Lacede- monian contingent, refused to serve for such a purpose. They might well plead that a defensive alliance with Orépos, which was probably all that the Assembly had decreed,? did not justify offensive operations against Athens. The army thus returned without doing anything ; but Menalkidas took care to exact his ten talents from the Ordpians, and took equal care not to pay the five which he had promised to Kallikratés.4 | As soon as Menalkidas’ official year was over, Kallikratés impeached him before the Assembly on a charge of treason.” He had, so his Novem- accuser said, gone as an Ambassador to Rome—doubtless a ber? private Ambassador from Sparta—and had there acted against ἢ 190. the interests of the League, by trying to separate Sparta from 1 Paus. vii. 11. 7. * Sce above, p. 293. * Compare the relations between Athens, Korkyra, and Corinth. Thue. i. 44, + Ttell the story as I find it in our only authority (Paus. vii. 11. 7-—12. 3). But narratives of secret corruption, though probable enough in the main, are always suspicious in their details, and are likely to contain as much of gossip as of real history. It is especially hard to understand how Menalkidas could have exacted the money from the Ordpians against their will—épws ὑπὸ Μεναλκίδα τὰ χρήματα ἐξεπράχθησαν. 5 Paus. vii. 12. 2, Παυσάμενον τῆς ἀρχῆς Μεναλκίδαν ἐδίωκεν ἐν τοῖς ᾽᾿Αχαιοῖς θανάτου δίκην. It is dangerous to draw political inferences from the language of Pausanias in the way that we do from that of Polybios. Do the words παυσάμενον τῆς ἀρχῆς imply something like an Attic εὐθύνη at the end of the Presidential year, or are we to infer that the President could not be impeached while he remained in office ? General- ship of Diaios, B.c. 150— 149. Disputes with Sparta, B.c. 149. 538 HISTORY OF FEDERAL GREECE CHAP, it. Now, as Menalkidas could hardly have done this during his term of office, it would have been more seemly to have brought these charges a year sooner, as reasons against electing him to the Generalship. Diaios of Megalopolis succeeded Menalkidas as General ; his predecessor now gave him three of his talents to get him off the charge. This the new General did, and incurred much unpopularity by so doing. The impeachment of Menalkidas seems to have stirred up once more the old Spartan dislike to the Achaian connexion. We now hear of yet another Lacedemonian embassy to Rome about the disputed frontier. The real rescript of the Senate is said to have ordered Sparta to submit to the judgement of the Federal Assembly on all matters not touching life and death.! This answer must have been pleaded on the Spartan side at a meeting of the Assembly. Diaios then affirmed that the excep- tion was not genuine ; he maintained that the lives of the Lacede- monians present were at the mercy of the Assembly, and he seems to have called upon them at once to stand their trial ona charge of treason.” The Spartans proposed to appeal to the Roman Senate; the President quoted that great and primary article of the Federal Constitution, engraved no doubt on every pillar in every city, which forbade any single State to hold diplomatic intercourse with foreign powers.2 War now broke out between the League and its troublesome member, though Diaios took care to aftirm that he made war, not on Sparta, but on the disturbers of her peace. The Spartans, unable to resist the whole force of the Union, sent private embassies to the General and to the several cities. They got the same answer everywhere ; no city could refuse its contingent to an expedition lawfully ordered by the Federal General.® Diaios now advanced on Sparta. By this time any real Unionist sentiment which existed there must have been pretty well stifled; the State 1 Paus, vii. 12. 4. Karagpevyouat δὲ αὐτοῖς προεῖπεν ἡ βουλὴ δικάζεσθαι τὰ ἄλλα πλὴν ψυχῆς ἐν συνεδρίῳ τῷ ᾿Αχαιῶν. 2 Tbh. 5. Οἱ μὲν δὴ δικάζειν Λακεδαιμονίοις ἠξίουν καὶ ὑπὲρ τῆς ἑκάστον ψυχῆς. 3 Ib. ᾿Αχαιοὶ δὲ ἀντελαμβάνοντο αὖθις ἄλλου λόγου, πόλεις ὅσαι τελοῦσιν ἐς ᾿Αχαιοὺς μηδεμίαν ἐφ᾽ ἑαυτῆς καθεστηκέναι κυρίαν ἄνεν τοῦ κοινοῦ τοῦ ᾿Αχαιῶν παρὰ Ῥωμαίους ἰδίᾳ πρεσβείαν ἀποστέλλειν. See above, p. 204, 4 ΤΌ, 6.. "Εφασκεν οὐ τῇ Σπάρτῃ τοῖς δὲ ταράσσουσιν αὐτὴν πολεμήσων 5 Tb. Αἱ μὲν δὴ κατὰ τὰ αὐτὰ αἱ πόλεις ἐποιοῦντο τὰς ἀποκρίσεις, οὔ σφισιν ἔξοδον ἐπαγγέλλοντος στρατηγοῦ παρακούειν εἶναι νόμον. Ix WAR WITH SPARTA 539 Government! however did not venture on open _ resistance. They asked the General to name the guilty persons; he named Diaios twenty-four of the chief citizens of Sparta. One Agasisthenés, before a leading Spartan, then suggested an ingenious way of at least parte. staving off the danger. Let the twenty-four at once fly to Rome, where they would undoubtedly find means of restoration. When they are gone, let the Spartan Government condemn them to death, and so save appearances with the League. So they did ; and Diaios and Kallikratés were sent to Rome after them by the Federal Government. Kallikratés died on the road; Pausanias Death of doubts whether his death at such a moment was a gain or a loss Kalli- to his country.2 It is at least possible that he might have pre- Ao. vented some of the evils which followed. Diaios and Menalkidas disputed before the Senate, and carried off a rescript, which either must have been singularly ambiguous, or else one party or the other must have lied even beyond the usual measure of diplo- matists. According to Pausanias, the real answer was simply that the Senate would send Ambassadors to settle all differences on the spot. But Diaios affirmed in the Federal Assembly that the Lacedsemonians were ordered to submit to the Federal power in everything. Menalkidas meanwhile affirmed in the State Damo- Assembly of Sparta that the Senate had decreed that Sparta Krites, should be wholly separated from the League.? Damokritos now General, succeeded Diaios in the Generalship, and made vigorous pre- November, parations for war with Sparta. ’ B.C, 149. Rome was just now engaged in a fourth Macedonian War. Fourth The four Republics, as might be expected, did not answer ;* a tee claimant of the crown, a real or pretended Philip, arose, and ran way, through a brief alternation of victory and defeat, much like those 5.0. 149- of the other Philip and of Perseus. The war ended in the 14°: 1 Pausanias (vii. 12. 7) calls them οἱ yépov7es. 1 one could feel sure that he found this word in Polybios, one would infer that the old Spartan constitution had been partially restored since the innovations of Philopoimén. 2 Ib. 8. Οὐδὲ οἶδα εἰ ἀφικόμενος ἐς Ῥώμην ὠφέλησεν ἄν re’ Axaods ἢ κακῶν σφίσιν ἐγένετο μειζόνων ἀρχή. Dr. Elder (Dict. Biog. art. Callicrates) some- what oddly translates this, “ His death being, for aught I know, a clear gain to his country.” 3 Ib. 9. Tovs μὲν δὴ [᾿Αχαιοὺς] παρῆγεν ὁ Δίαιος ws Ta πάντα ἕπεσθαι Λακεδαιμόνιοί σφισιν ὑπὸ τῆς Ρωμαίων βουλῆς εἰσὶν ἐγνωσμένοι" Λακεδαιμονίους δὲ ὁ Μεναλκίδας ἠπάτα παντελῶς τοῦ συνεδρεύειν ἐς τὸ ᾿Αχαϊκὸν ὑπὸ Ρωμαίων αὐτοὺς ἀπηλλάχθαι. 4 Pol. χχχί. 12. Συνέβαινε yap τοὺς Μακεδόνας ἀήθεις ὄντας δημοκρατικῆς καὶ συνεδριακῆς πολιτείας στασιάζειν πρὸς αὑτούς. See above, p. 516, note 1. Mediation of Q. Cecilius Metellus. Victory and banish- ment of Damo- kritos, B.c. 148, Second General- ship of Diaios, B.c. 148- 147. 540 HISTORY OF FEDERAL GREECE CHAP. reduction of Macedonia to a Roman Province. Just at this moment, the Pretor Quintus Cecilius Metellus, who fills in this war the place of Flamininus and Af‘milius in the former wars, entered Macedonia. Mcetellus was a man of much the same stamp as his two great predecessors, a brave and skilful soldier, a faithful servant of Rome, but evidently disposed to deal as gently with Grecian enemies as he could. As some homan Ambassadors were passing by on their road to Asia, they turned aside, at his request, and asked the Achaian Government?! to suspend hostilities till the Commissioners should come from Rome to settle the differences between Sparta and the League. Damokritos would not hearken, and by this time the old Spartan spirit was aroused. A pitched battle took place; the Spartans, far inferior in numbers, were utterly routed ; Damokritos, it was thought, might have taken the city if he had chosen. He was tried as a traitor, perhaps when his year of office had expired,? and was condemned to a fine of fifty talents. He went into exile, and Diaios succeeded him as General. Metellus now sent another embassy, again asking the new General to refrain from any further action against Sparta till the Roman Commissioners should come. He promised to obey, and he did obey so far as not to carry on any open hostilities ; but he left Federal garrisons in those Lakénian towns which were now independent members of the League, and which were doubtless the bitterest enemies of Sparta to be found in the whole compass 6f the Union.2 We may well believe that neither the citizens of these towns nor the Federal garrisons placed in them were very strict in observing the armistice. Menalkidas was now General of the seceding State ; he took and plundered Iasos, one of these free Lakénian towns, and thus was guilty of a more direct breach of the truce 1 Paus. vii. 18, ἢ, Tots ἡγεμόσι τοῖς ᾿Λλχαιῶν ἐς λόγους ἐλθεῖν. If this were in Polybios, I should take this to mean that a message was delivered to the Achaian Cabinet without summoning the Assembly ; but it is dangerous to make inferences from Pausanias. On the word ἡγεμών cf. p. 234, note 1. 2 See lb. 5. Thirlwall, viii. 486. 3 This must be the meaning of the words of Pausanias (vii. 13. 6), τὰ ἐν κύκλῳ τῆς Σπάρτης πολίσματα és τὴν ᾿Αχαιῶν ὑπηγάγετο εὔνοιαν, ἐσήγαγε δὲ és αὐτὰ καὶ φρουρὰς, ὁρμητήρια ἐπὶ τὴν Σπάρτην ᾿Αχαιοῖς εἶναι. Pausanias pre- sently speaks of Tasos as subject to the Achaians—Ayxady ἐν τῷ τότε ὑπήκοον. See above, p. 485, note 3. Of this Tasos I can find no mention elsewhere. Probably it was one of the six Eleutherolakénic towns which were reannexed by Sparta, and which therefore do not appear in the list given by Pausanias. ΙΧ EMBASSY OF AUREUIUS 5 than Diaios himself! Popular indignation was aroused against Suicide of him at Sparta, and he put himself out of the way by venal- poison. _ ΝΕ B.C. 147. At last the Roman ministers arrived. By this time the Embassy Macedonian War was ended, and its successful conclusion, just oan i like those of the wars with Antiochos and Perseus, enabled the Orestes, Romans to take a higher tone than ever with their Greck allies. 8,0. 147. Hitherto the Senate had clearly temporized, and had_ used designedly ambiguous language. It now spoke out plainly enough. The Ambassadors — judges? they are called by Pausanias—came to Corinth, the head of the legation being Lucius Aurelius Orestes. They began, if the words of our informant are to be taken literally, by a more daring breach of all Federal right than any on which they had yet ventured. Instead of communicating their errand, first to the Federal Government, and then to the Federal Assembly, they summoned an utterly unconstitutional mecting of the magistrates of the several cities? who had no sort of authority to receive com- munications from foreign powers. The message with which Extra- they were charged was the most daring attack on the integrity v#8ent demands of the Union ‘that had yet been made. The Roman Senate o¢ the thought it good that neither Lacedemon nor Corinth nor Argos Romans. nor Hérakleia nor Orchomenos should any longer form part of the League. None of them were really Achaian cities ; all were 1 Pausanias (vii. 13. 8) thus sums up his character; Mevadxida μὲν τέλος τοιοῦτον ἐγένετο, ἄρξαντι ἐν τῷ [ἑαυτοῦ νῷ] τότε μὲν Λακεδαιμονίων ὡς ἂν ὁ ἀμαθέστατος στρατηγὺς, πρότερον δὲ ἔτι τοῦ ᾿Αχαιῶν ἔθνους ὡς ἂν ἀνθρώπων ὁ ἀδικώτατος. There was not however much to choose between the Secessionist and the Federal commander. [Ὁ must have been shortly before this time that Diaios caused one Philinos of Corinth and his young sons to be tortured till they died, on a charge of dealing with Menalkidas. (Pol. xl. 5.) These horrors are quite unknown in the better days of the League, unless in the single doubtful case of Aristomachos. See above, p. 384, note ὃ. 2 Paus. vii. 14. 1. Οἱ ἀποσταλέντες ἐκ Ρώμης Λακεδαιμονίοις δικασταὶ καὶ ᾿Αχαιοῖς γενέσθαι. 3 Τῇ, Tovs τε ἐν ἑκάστῃ πόλει τῶν ᾿Αχαιῶν ἔχοντας τὰς ἀρχὰς καὶ Δίαιον ἐκάλει παρ᾽ αὐτόν. Justin, xxxiv. 1. Omniuin civitatium princtpibus Corinthum evocatis. It is hard to see who can be meant by this description, except the local magis- trates. Of course to address them, instead of the Federal Cabinet, would be quite in the spirit of the Roman policy. Τὺ was doubtless hoped, by the compliment thus paid to State, at the expense of Federal, authority, to awaken any lurking Seces- sionist tendencies which might exist among the cities. The proceeding itself, in point of constitutional right, was as if a foreign power, in transacting business with the United States, should address itself to the several State Governors. Cfumult at ΠΟΥ ἢ, 540 HISTORY OF FEDERAL GREECE CHAP, late additions to the Confederation.1. The cause for the selec- tion of these particular cities is not quite obvious. If we count the accession of Corinth and Argos from their recovery in the days of Flamininus,? all these cities were late acquisitions, and, in a certain sense, they were all Roman gifts. But so, in the same sense, were Klis, Messéné, and the Triphyhan and Lakdénian towns, none of which are mentioned. It may be that the Senate counted on a lurking feeling of disloyalty in Ehs and Messéné, while to cut away Argos and Corinth was to cut away the very vitals of the League. At Argos and Corinth any tendency to Secession had yet to be awakened ; the Corinthians especially, though their fathers had fought valiantly against forcible reunion,? were now equally strenuous against forcible separation. The irregular Assembly which the Romans had got together knew not “how to act or how to answer; they could hardly bear to hear the insolent barbarian to the end of his speech. They then rushed into the streets, and gathered together what they called an Assembly of the Achaian People, hut which was really an Assembly only of the Corinthian mob.* Its fury spent itself in ucts of violence against all Spartans who chanced to be present in Corinth, and seemingly against some persons who were falsely taken for Spartans. The Roman envoys themselves were not actually hurt, but they were at any rate frightened, and the sanctity of their domicile was violated, Spartans or supposed Spartans being dragged from the house where Aurelius lodged. These breaches of International Law formed an adinirable handle for the Romans, and Aurelius did not fail to warn and_ protest. When the people came a little to their senses, the real Lacede- monians were put in prison, while the strangers who had merely the ill luck to wear Lacedeemonian shoes® were ἰοῦ go free. Presently an embassy, headed by Thearidas, was sent to Rome ; 1 Paus, vii. 14. 2. Schorn (389) observes that all these cities had been under the power of Philip, which is hardly true of Sparta. * See above, p. 485. 3 See above, p. 480. 4 Paus. vii. 14. 2. Ταῦτα ᾿Ορέστου λέγοντος, of ἄρχοντες τῶν ᾿Αχαιῶν, οὐδὲ τὸν πάντα ὑπομείναντες ἀκοῦσαι λόγον, ἔθεον ἐς τὸ ἐκτὸς τῆς οἰκίας καὶ ἐκάλουν τοὺς ᾿Αχαιοὺς ἐς ἐκκλησίαν. Of course such an Assembly was utterly illegal, as no notice had been sent to the several cities. But it may be observed that, if the magistrates of each city were really present, there was something like a repre- sentation of the several members of the League. 5 Ib. Συνήρπαζον δὲ πάντα τινά, καὶ ὃν Λακεδαιμόνιον σαφῶς ὄντα ἠπίσ- ταντο, καὶ ὅτῳ κουρᾶς ἢ ὑποδημάτων εἵνεκεν ἢ ἐπὶ τῇ ἐσθῆτι ἣ Kar’ ὄνομα προσ- γένοιτο ὑπόνοια. ΙΧ “? TUMULT AT CORINTH 543 —possibly ful Assembly had been got together in the meanwhile, ..e Achaian envoys met yet another Roman embassy on the το. Aurelius had taken care to represent the insults which he had received, not as the sudden act of an excited mob, but as a deliberate and preconceived affront to the majesty of Rome.2 Sextus Julius Cesar? now came, with in- Embassy structions to use very mild words. The last Punic War was οἷ eoxta still dangerous,* and it was desirable that an Achaian War should Crosan, at least be put off till that was finished. B.c. 147 Thearidas and his colleagues returned to Peloponnésos with Kritolao Sextus. The Roman envoys were introduced to an Assembly at elected Aigion, perhaps that in which Diaios was succeeded in the vweneral, Generalship by Kritolaos, a still more bitter and unreflecting μι. 147 enemy of Rome.® Sextus used very conciliatory language, which had more effect upon his hearers than suited the schemes of Diaios and Kritolaos.6 They then hit upon a strange stratagem. Tt was agreed that a Conference of some kind or other should be held at Tegea, at which representatives of Rome, Achaia, and Sparta should mect and decide matters. The language of Poly- bios—for we have now happily for a little time recovered his guidance—does not distinctly imply who were to appear on the Achaian side, but it seems most probably to have heen the Council of Ministers. It was determined by Kritolaos and his Sham party, seemingly in a session of that Council,’ that nobody should conker: go to Tegea except Kritolaos himself. Thus the President Tegea, appeared at the Conference as the sole representative of the 8.0. 147 1 Pol. xxxviii. 2. Paus. vii. 14. ὃ. * Pol. xxxviii. 1. 3 He and Orestes had been Consuls together, B.c. 157. 4 It is clear from Polybios (xxxviii. 1, 2) that the general belief in Achaia attributed the apparent lenity of the Romans to this cause, though he himself holds it to have been genuine. But, in all these later fragments, Polybios seems mainly to speak the language of his Roman friends. And of course it is quite possible that men of more generous minds, such as his friends were, might now and then be able to carry through the Senate a vote less brutal and treacherous than usual. But that the abiding policy of Rome was to break up the League by every sort of intrigue, however base, is too plain a fact to be evaded. Men like Scipio, Amilius, and Metellus could at most only stop the torrent for a moment. See Thirlwall, vili. 488. 5 Paus. vii. 14. 4, Todrov δριμὺς καὶ σὺν οὐδενὶ λογισμῷ πολεμεῖν πρὸς ‘Pwualous ἔρως ἔσχε. 6 Pol. xxxviii. 2. (‘The whole chapter. ) 7 ΤΌ, 8, Συνεδρεύσαντες οἱ περὶ τὸν Κριτόλαον ἔκριναν, x.7.A. This seems to be the most probable meaning. See p. 548. The word σύνεδρος and its cognates are constantly used by Plutarch and Pausanias to express the Assembly, but not by Polybios. See above, pp. 205, note 1, 220, note 1. Uncon- stitutional proceed- ings of Kritolaos, B.C. 147- 146. Tumul- tuous Meeting at Corinth, May, B.C. 146. 544 HISTORY OF FEDERAL GREECE CHAP. League, and told Sextus that he had no power to act without the Assembly, and that he would refer matters to the next Meeting to be held six months hence.’ This was mere mockery, and the Romans naturally departed in great indignation. Kritolaos himself spent the winter in proceedings almost as unconstitutional as anything that the Romans themselves had done. He went through the several cities of the League ;? he held local Assem- blies in each, nominally to announce what had been done at Tegea, but really to excite the people everywhere against Rome. He even went so far as to order the local magistrates? to stop all proceedings against debtors till the war was over. No wonder the President and his war policy were highly popular. At this stage of the proceedings it is almost as hard to sympathize with the Achaians as with their enemies. It is one of those cases in which a nation or a party, whose cause is essentially just, contrives, by particular foolish and criminal actions, to forfeit the respect to which it is otherwise entitled. Now, in its last moments, the Federal Government of Achaia had, for the first time, fallen into the hands of a mere mob, led by a President who showed himself a demagogue in the worst sense of the word. The class of men who had hitherto directed the affairs of the League, the old liberal aristocracy, leaders and not enemies of the people, men who had both character and property to lose, were no longer listened to. They were naturally averse to a war in which success was hopeless, and it was therefore easy for Kritolaos to hold them up to popular hatred as traitors. At the next Spring Meeting, held at Corinth, an Assembly was gathered together such as had never before been seen. It was attended by a multitude of low handicrafts- men, both from Corinth and other cities, such as seldom 1 Pol. xxxvili. ὃ. See above, p. 214. Pausanias (vii. 14. 4, 5) makes this answer of Kritolaos he preceded hy a request of Sextus that a regular Assembly might be summoned at once. This Kritolaos pretends to do, but, together with his formal summons, he sends secret instructions, in conformity. with which nobody came. ‘This is not easy to believe, and it reads like a misconception of Polyhios’ account, as if Pausanias had been led astray by the ambiguous word συνεδρεύσαντες. It would be easier to believe, though still very unlikely, that the Meeting at Tegea was to be a full Mceting of the Assembly, and that Kritolaos prevented it in this way. Polybios clearly makes the sham summons—to what- ever kind of meeting—take place before Kritolaos reached Tegea, while Pausanias places it afterwards. 2 Pol. u.s. ᾿Επιπορενόμενος κατὰ τὸν χειμῶνα τὰς πόλεις, ἐκκλησίας συνῆγε. 3 ΤΌ, Παρήγγειλε τοῖς ἄρχουσι. This must mean the local magistrates, ΙΧ EMBASSY OF SEXTUS CASAR 545 ey ee ne appeared in the Federal Congress! At this Meeting Metellus Efforts of made yet one more effort. Cneus Papirius and three other μοῦσα Roman envoys” appeared at Corinth, and addressed the peace, Assembly in the same conciliatory tone as had been employed by Sextus. Hitherto the Achaian Assemblies seem to have been fairly decorous parliamentary bodies, but such a multitude as had now come together was not disposed to listen to any one but its own leaders. The place of meeting made matters worse, as the Corinthian people were the fiercest of all,? doubt- Jess through indignation at the proposal to separate them from the League. The Roman Ambassadors were received with a storm of derision, and left the Assembly amid the shouts and insults of the multitude.* The Achaian People then went on in due order to discuss the proposals of the envoys to which they had not listened. Pol. xl. 4. Paus. vil. 15. 11. We know this mission ouly in its results. The words ὅτι προστατήσαι τοῦ διαβουλίου (Pol. xl. 5), which imply the putting of a question to an Assembly, show that Andrénidas was sent by the authority of some deliberative body or other, under the presidency of Sésikratés. Possibly Sdésikratés may have collected the Senate, or have done his best, however un- successfully, to summon a regular Assembly. 8 Paus, vii. 15, 10, 11. 7 Pol, xl. 4. Καθεσταμένου στρατηγοῦ διὰ τῶν πολλῶν. After Polybios’ clear exposition of the law in c. 2 this seems a needless ceremony, and it is impossible to suppose that we have reached the Autumn Meeting of B.c. 146, and this was a regular election to the Generalship of s.c. 146-5. This supposi- tion would drive all the remaining events of the war far too late in the year. (See Clinton, in an.) Considering the whole story, the suggestion presents itself whether Sdsikratés had not been set up by his party as Provisional General in opposition to Diaios, so that a formal confirmation would be desirable. 8 Pol. xl. 4. Suvedpevcavres. See above, p. 543. These Ministers were ( ΙΧ CRUELTIES OF DIAIOS 549 Damokritos, and Alkamenés—the real traitor, if any one. The result of their deliberations was to drag the Vice-General before some High Court of Justice or other. He was accused of Cruelty treason, and condemned to death, and he died under the tortures #24 cor- which were inflicted upon him to extort a confession. This rei toe. spectacle roused the indignation of the people; their patriotism Death was unreflecting and unruly, but they were not prepared for οἵ Sosi- 2’, . Ae kratés, such monstrous cruelty and injustice. Andrénidas and the other intended victims were spared on payment of bribes to Diaios. By this time the Achaians had no longer to deal with Metellus, but with a very different foc. Mummius was now at their gates. Mummius He was far from being a Roman of the school of Flamininus and ἣΝ the Aimilius. He was a plebeian, a man of no hereditary distinction, sthmuus. with a character marked by many of the virtues and vices of the old plebeian character. He was rough and ignorant, but devoid neither of native cloquence nor of a certain practical skill in administration; ferocious in war, while war lasted, but not inclined to needless oppression when conquest was once secure. Mummius now came to the Isthmus with the Roman army, and with some Pergamenian auxiliaries, led against the Achaian League by an officer who, strangely enough, bore the name of Philopoimén.? He was, it 15. said, joined by the inhabitants of the Corinthian territory of Tenca,? apparently a subject district glad to throw off the yoke of the capital. A slight advantage Battle puffed up Diaios and his troops ;4* he marched forth to a pitched me oe battle at Leukopetra ;° the cavalry fled without a blow;° the sack of infantry fought bravely, but in vain. JDhiaios fled to his own Corinth, city of Megalopolis, killed his wife, perhaps set fire to his house, °¢P- . . > tember ? and lastly poisoned himself.’ Of the rest of the army many 5.0. 148. perhaps elected at the violent Spring Meeting at Corinth, which accounts for their being mere creatures of Diaios, while their predecessors (see above, p. 546) did what they could to restrain Kritolaos. ‘he time of election of the Ministers need not have been changed with that of the General. 1 pol. xl. 5. Καθίσαντες δικαστὰς τοῦ μὲν Σωσικράτους κατεδίκασαν θάνατον. 2 Paus. vii. 16. 1. 3 Strabo, viii. 6. 22. See above, p. 200, note 3. This district must have somehow escaped the liberalizing reforms of Philopoimén and Lykortas. + Paus. vii. 16. 2. Yet it is impossible to believe the tales of their excessive presumption in Justin, xxxiv. 2, See Thirlwall, viii. 496. 5 Aurelius Victor, ce. ΙΧ. 6 They were, as Bishop Thirlwall says (viii. 496), “all belonging to that class which was opposed to the measures of Dieus.” Yet it is an inglorious ending for a service which had shone so under Lydiadas and Philopoimeéen. 7 Paus, vii. 16. 4-6. Aur, Vict. u.s. See Thirlwall, u.s. note. Achaia not yet formally reduced toa Province. Settle- ment of the country, B.c. 146- 145. HISTORY OF FEDERAL GREECE 550 CHAP. took refuge in Corinth, and thence escaped in the night along with a large portion of the Corinthians themselves. The city, though it offered no resistance, was sacked and burned; of the few people who were left in it, the men were slanghtercd, the women and children were sold. The history of the Achaian League, as an independent power, was over. It is commonly said that Achaia was now reduced to the form of a Roman Province. It would seem that this assertion is not strictly accurate.| No Roman Pretor was sent into Greece till a much later time ;? but the Governor of Macedonia continued to exercise the same sort of protectorate over the country which we have seen Metellus exercising for some years past. In fact it was not the policy of Rome to reduce any conquered state to the form of a province at the conclusion of the first war against it. This we may see by the history of Carthage, Macedonia, and Adtolia. But Achaia was reduced to a state of dependence which differed only in form from the provincial condition, and which makes it quite needless for me to continue my history any further. Achaia now surrendered herself to the will of Rome,’ as Aftolia had done forty years before. And the arm of the conqueror fell more heavily upon Achaia than it had done upon Aftoha. That Achaia, like Attolia, sank to the level of acknowledged dependency 1s involved in the nature of the case ; and the Roman interference with internal institutions was incomparably greater than it had been in the case of Mtolia. Mummius of his own authority, before the usual Board of Commissioners arrived frum Rome, imposed a fine upon the League for the benefit of Sparta,* and destroyed the walls of all 1 See Dr. Smith, Dict. Geog. art. Achaia. Momunsen, ii. 46. Kortian, iii, 838. 2 Pintarch (Cim. 2) says, of the time of Lucullus, ἡ κρίσις ἣν ἐπὶ τοῦ στρατηγοῦ τῆς Μακεδονίας, οὔπω yap els τὴν ᾿Ελλάδα Ρωμαῖοι στρατηγοὺς διεπέμποντο. Compare also the language put by Appian (Mithrid. 58) into the mouth of Sulla towards Mithridatés: Μακεδονίαν re ἡμετέραν οὖσαν ἐπέτρεχες, καὶ τοὺς Ἕλληνας τὴν ἐλευθερίαν ἀφήρου" οὐ πρίν τε ἤρξω μετανοεῖν, οὐδ᾽ ᾿Αρχέλαος ὑπέρ σου παρακαλεῖν, ἢ Μακεδονίαν μέν με ἀνασώσασθαι, τὴν δὲ ᾿Βλλάδα τῆς σῆς ἐκλῦσαι βίας. Here is a marked distinction drawn between the position of Macedonia and that of Greece, one which a late and careless writer like Appian would hardly have introduced, if he had not found it in his authorities. But see Thirlwall, viii. 503. 3 Liv. Epit. 111. Omni Achaia in deditionem accepta. 4 Hither now, or in the arrangements of the next year, the Lakénian towns (see above, p. 485) must have been reunited to Sparta. They remained subject to Sparta till the reign of Augustus ; they therefore had no share in the nominal ΙΧ LEGISLATION OF POLYBIOS 551 the cities which had taken a share in the war !—that is, of all except Elis, Messéné, and perhaps Patrai. When the Com- Disso- missioners came, they entirely abolished the Federal Constitution, ven with its Assemblies and Magistracies, and, in each particular city League the constitution was changed from Democracy to what the Greeks called Timocracy, that is, that species of Oligarchy in and aboli- which wealth, and not birth, is the qualification.2 Everywhere tion of else throughout Greece, whatever vestiges of Federal Union still cracy in survived were swept away in like manner.’ Greece was. to the Cities. contain only separate cities, each of them a dependent and tributary ally of Rome. Each city was to be wholly isolated from its neighbours; no common Assemblies were to bring men of different cities together, nor could the citizen of one city any longer hold land in the territory of another.* | But, when they had thus rooted up the dangerous elements of Federalism and Democracy, when every city was condemned to weakness and isolation, when each was reconstructed with a form of government which was sure to make it the humble slave of Rome, neither Mummius nor his colleagues seem to have been disposed to push the rights of conquest to any specially tyrannical extreme. ‘They called in Polybios as the law-giver of the new Polybios commonwealths ;° no man could have been better suited for the jeeistates ΜῈ . . νὰ for the office. [16 alone was equally familiar with Achaian and with Achaian Roman politics; he alone, in his calm and capacious intellect, Cities, combined a sincere wish to benefit his country with an utter *% 145. absence of all merely sentimental patriotism. He did not shrink from making the best of a bad bargain, nor refuse to serve his country because she had fallen from the position which she had held in his youth. During the crisis itself, he was better away ; he could not have hindered the war, and he might have been tortured to death like Sdsikratés and Philinos. But now, in his peculiar position, the friend alike of the living Scipio and of the dead Philopoimén, he could mediate, as no otherman could, between the conquerors and the conquered. Freedom, greatness, glory he could not restore to his country; but it was something to revival of the League. Augustus separated twenty-four towns, but six of them had been recovered by Sparta before the visit of Pausanias. U Paus. vii. 16. 9. 2 Τὸ, «λημοκρατίας μὲν κατέπαυε, καθίστα δὲ ἀπὸ τιμημάτων τὰς ἀρχάς. * Ib. . See above, p. 144, + Ib, See above, p. 201. 5. Pol. xl. 10. Paus. viii. 30. 9. Nominal revival of the League. Devotion of the Pelo- ponnésian people. Later parallels. B.c. 146. A.D. 1454. 552 HISTORY OF FEDERAL GREECE CHAP. give to her cities such laws as secured to them internal peace and as high a degree of well-being as their condition allowed. And we may well believe that it was owing to his influence that, after a while, both the Achaians and the other Greeks were allowed to resume something like the forms of their old Federal institutions.! The Romans, perhaps the Greeks too, called it a restoration of liberty,2 when the Achaian League once more arose, with its Federal General, its Federal Cabinet, and as near an approach to its Federal Assembly? as the new oligarchic State-constitutions allowed. But its existence was now purely municipal, or rather it was something less than municipal. Town-Autonomy and Federalism, Aristocracy and Democracy, were now, all alike, shadows and pageants. The League lingered on in this shape for some centuries; the exact moment of its final dissolution it would be hard to fix, and it would be useless for my purpose to inquire. It is enough that the history of the Achaian League, as a contribution of the slightest value to political knowledge, ends with the last and most unhappy Presidency of Kritolaos and Diaios. Achaia fell ingloriously ; in her last years there is nothing to admire, except the determined, even if misdirected, patriotism of the mass of the people. They may well be pardoned if Krito- laos and Diaios seemed to them as Lydiadas and Philopoimén. They listened to constitutional leaders who had at least the formule of patriotism on their lips, and they fought to the death against the invader, when the aristocrats of the cavalry fled without striking a blow. Thrice in the world’s history have the gallant people of Peloponnésos risen like a nation of heroes, and found no leaders worthy of them. They faced the Roman beneath the headland of Leukopetra; they died sword in hand upon their mountains when Byzantine priests and nobles cringed before the conquering Ottoman; and, in our own day, 1 Paus. vii. 16. 10. See above, p. 144, note 3. The expression of Polybios (xl. 10) that he gave the cities τοὺς περὶ τῆς κοινῆς δικαιοδοσίας vdwousseems to imply that some part of his legislation took place after the restoration of Federal forms. 2 See Boeckh, C. I. i. 712, Thirlwall, viii. 502. 3 The title of the oligarchic Assembly of the revived League seems to have been συνέδριον. This accounts for the constant use of that word and its cognates by Plutarch and Pausanias to express the Democratic Assembly of the old League. In Polybios, as we have seen (see p. 220, note 1), they are applied to meetings, not of the Assembly, but of the Cabinet Council. ΙΧ GENERAL RESULTS OF THE ACHAIAN LEAGUE 5 cr jer) they have wrested their independence from the same enemy, in a.p. 1821- spite of, rather than by the help of, the native rulers and 1827. captains of their land. And, at the very moment that I am a.p. 1862. thus summing up the long history of Greece, a new Revolution, as pure and glorious as any that expelled Macedonian or Otto- man from her soil, has again made Greece the centre of the admiring gaze of Europe. Let us hope that, this time at least, Greece may find leaders worthy of her people, and that her fourth struggle for freedom and good government may be crowned with a more lasting success than any that has gone before it. It at least augurs well for Greece that her Revolu- tion has not been the work of the mob of a capital, but is, if ever revolution was, the deliberate expression of the will of a whole people. And a historian of Federal Greece may be -allowed to rejoice when he hears the revived voice of Grecian freedom first sounding from the lands of his old love. The homes where Greek freedom lingered longest have been those where it has been the first to rise again; Achaia, Akarnania, Attolia, have been foremost in the good work, and the name of Roufos of Patrai bids fair to win a place alongside of that of Markos of Keryneia. Through the days of Bavarian corruption, just as through those of Roman conquest and of Turkish tyranny, the heart of the Achaian people has still been sound. And, in all cases alike, the most blameworthy points in the character of the oppressed have been mainly the work of the oppressor. That the Achaian League fell, in its last days, from Errors its ancient dignity—that the place of some of the noblest of men the was filled by some of the most contemptible—that the seal which mainly the had been borne by Markos and Lykortas had passed into the result of hands of the traitor Menalkidas and the coward Damokritos—all Roman this was mainly the fruit of Rome’s own insidious policy. Her tntrigue. arts had tried, and tried in vain, to divide a people which had so well learned the benefits of union. When those arts failed, she shut up the best life of the nation in her Etruscan prisons, and so cut off that stream of uninterrupted political tradition which alone can be trusted permanently to maintain the needful succes- sion of statesmen and of captains. If Achaia died ill, it was mainly the fault of her murderer ; and, if she died ill, she had at least lived well. For a hundred and forty years—no short 8,0. 281- space in any nation’s life, and a very long space among the few 146. centuries which we call Ancient History—the League had given General results of the Achaian League. Roman opposition a witness to its value, The Achaian League the natural model for liberated Greece. 554 HISTORY OF FEDERAL GREECE CHAR, to a larger portion of Greece than any previous age had seen, a measure of freedom, unity, and general good government, which may well atone for the lack of the dazzling glory of the old Athenian Democracy. It was no slight achievement to weld together so many cities into an Union which strengthened them against foreign Kings and Senates, and which yet preserved to them that internal independence which was so dear to the Hellenic mind. Jt was no slight achievement to keep so many cities for so long a time free alike from foreign garrisons, from domestic mobs, domestic Tyrants, and domestic oligar chs. How practically efficient the Federal principle was in maintaining the strength and freedom of the nation is best shown by the bitter hatred which it aroused, first in the Macedonian Kings and then in the Roman Senate. It was no contemptible political system against which so many Kings and Consuls successively conspired ; it was no weak bond which the subtlest of all diplomatic Senates ex- pended so many intrigues and stratagems to unloose.! And, if the League fell ingloriously, it at least fell less ingloriously than the kingdoms and commonwealths around it. Better was it to be conquered in open hattle, even with a Diaios as its leader, than to drag on the contemptible hfe of the last Kings of Bithynia and Pergamos or of the beggar Democracy of Athens. The League did its work in its own age by giving Peloponnésos well nigh a century and a half of freedom ; it does its work still by living in the pages of its own great historian as the first attempt on a large scale to reconcile local independence with national strength. Ages must pass away before the course of our history will show us another so perfect and ilustrious an example of a true Federal Constitution. And never, up to our own day, has Federalism, the offspring of Greece, appeared again in its native land. Yet, when we look at the map of Greece, and see each valley and peninsula and island marked out by the hand of nature for an independent being—when we think of the varied origin and condition of the present inhabitants of its several provinces—when we think of the local institutions, democratic here, aristocratic there, which preserved the life of 1 A remarkable passage of Justin (xxxiv. 1) gives a clear and forcible summary of the whole Roman policy towards the League; ‘‘ Achzi nimis potentes Romanis videbantur, non propter singularum civitatium nimias opes, sed propter conspirati- onem universarum. Namque Achwi, licet per civitates, veluti per membra, divisi sint, unum tamen corpus et unum imperium habent, singularumque urbium petri- cula mutuis viribus, propulsant.” ΙΧ FUTURE OF SOUTH-EASTERN EUROPE 555 the nation through ages of Turkish bondage—we may well ask whether ancient Achaia or modern Switzerland may not be the true model for regenerate Greece, rather than a blind imitation of the stereotyped forms of European royalty. It may be that the favourable moment has passed for ever; it may be that it is now too late to dream of a Federal Republic in a land where thirty years of Bavarian corruption have swept away those relics of ancient freedom which the very Ottoman had spared. How- ever this may be now, there can be little doubt that, a genera- tion back, the blood of Botzarés and the life of Kanarés would have been better given to found a free Hellenic Federation than to establish the throne of any stranger King. And let us pass Future of beyond the bounds of Greece herself, to look at that whole group ρα of nations of which Greece is only one among many, although in Europe. some respects the foremost. We may be sure that a day will come when the rod of the oppressor shall be broken; we need no prophet to tell us that wrong and robbery shall not always be abiding, that all the arts of Western diplomatists cannot for ever maintain the Barbarian on the throne of the Caesars and the Infidel in the most glorious of Christian temples. A day will come when the Turkish horde shall be driven back to its native deserts, or else die out, the victim of its own vices, upon the soil which it has too long defiled. Then will Greek and Serb and Albanian and Rouman and Bulgarian enter upon the full and free possession of the Jand which is their own. Already does Greece, free and extending her borders, Servia and Wallachia held in only nominal vassalage, Montenegro, if crushed for a moment, yet unsubdued in heart, all point to the full accomplishment of the glorious dream. And, when the full day has dawned, are those lands to remain utterly separate and isolated, or are they, so many peoples, nations, and languages, to he fettered down by some centralizing Monarchy which would merely substitute a Christian for an Infidel master? Here would be the grandest Monarchic field that the world has ever seen for trying the great experi- Federalism ment of Monarchic Federalism. ‘The nations of the Byzantine probably peninsula, differing in origin, language, and fecling, are united solvent. by common wrongs, by a common religion, and by the common reverence of ages for the Imperial City of the Basils and the Constantines. For nations in such a position, the Federal tie, rather than either more complete separation or more close con- nexion, seems the natural relation to each other. But the tradi- 556 HISTORY OF FEDERAL GREECE CHAP, IX tions of Servia and Bulgaria are not Republican ; the mere size of the several provinces may seem, in the Old World at least, to surpass the hmits which nature has in all ages marked out for European commonwealths. One sect of circumstances points to Federal Union, another set of circumstances points to princely government. A Monarchic Federation on such a scale has never yet existed, but it is not in itself at all contradictory to the Federal ideal. When the day of vengeance and of freedom shall have come, it will be for the people of those noble and injured lands—not for Western mediators or Western protectors—to solve the mighty problem for themselves. CHAPTER X OF FEDERALISM IN ITALY IN the foregoing pages I have traced the history of the Federal Recapitu- system of Government, alike in its rudest forms and in its most /@tion. perfect developement, both in Greece itself and in those countries whose political institutions were evidently formed after Grecian models. In the Achaian League we saw one of the four great Confederations of history stand forth as the restorer of freedom in the Grecian world; we beheld its work alike in the deliver- ance of Peloponnésos from foreign Kings and local Tyrants and in the establishment of the most formidable obstacle which the encroaching power of Rome ever encountered. In Lykia we beheld a Federal state to which circumstances denied the same prominence as that of Achaia, but which, like Achaia, long pre- served an oasis of freedom in the midst of surrounding bondage, and which possessed a constitution still more perfect, forestalling some of the subtlest inventions of modern political science. In carrying the history of Achaia and Lykia down to their absorp- tion into the dominion of Rome, we finished for ever, as far as the past is concerned, the History of Federal Government in the land east of the Hadriatic. The Hellenic and Hellenized states formed a world of their own, and their political life has had but little direct effect upon the later history of mankind. The Indirect indirect influence of Grecian politics, as of Grecian literature and fluence Saar . . . . of Greece ; art, it is indeed impossible to overrate. But no direct chain of gircot in.’ cause and effect connects with Greece in the way in which all fluence of medieval and modern history is connected, as an uninterrupted Rome. continuation, with the history of the Republic and Empire of Rome.! There is no reason to believe that the constitution of 1 [ have to thank the writings of Sir Francis Palgrave for first opening my eyes to this all-important truth, without which all medixval history is an in- soluble puzzle. Notwithstanding the constant eccentricity and frequent one- Connexion of Italian history with the subject of Federal- iso Italian history a transition between the Greek and the mediaval Federal- ism. 58 OF FEDERALISM IN ITALY CHAP, any state of Western Europe was ever directly derived either from the Athenian Democracy or from the Achaian Confeder- ation. It is this very lack of direct connexion which gives to their later reproductions a value which could never have attached either to worn-out traditions or to conscious imitations. In closing the history of Greek Federalism we draw a wider line than will separate any other two portions of our subject. Switzerland, Holland, the United States, the lesser Feder- ations which I shall have to group around them, all belong to one world, to one political system, to that system which arose out of the fusion between the Roman Empire and its Teutonic conquerors. Before, then, we enter upon the history of any of these later commonwealths, we must look back to the common source of all European history, the Roman Empire and the Roman Republic. tome indecd never formed a Federal state, but many of her institutions approached the borders of the Federal idea, and there can be little doubt that to these quast-Federal clements Rome owed no small share of her great- ness. And in the shght glimpses which Roman history gives us of the older Italian states, we can sec that the rude germs of Federalism were no less widely spread in Italy than in N orthern xrecece, and that, in some cases at least, these rude germs grew up in something coming very near to a true Federal common- wealth. Again, in the medieval history of Italy there is at least one moment when a Federal Union would have been the true remedy for the evils of the time, when a large portion of Italy seemed on the very brink of forming such an Union, though, like the projected Unions of Tonia and Chalkidiké,! the scheme, if it ever amounted to a scheme, never took effect. And, lastly, in our own day, the plan of an Italian Confederation has been, with different objects and with different meanings, proposed ulike by friends and by enemies of Italy as the proper mode of uniting the different portions of that so long divided land. Thus, though no true Federal Government has ever existed in Italy in strictly historical times, still a Chapter on the history of Federalism in that country forms a natural branch of my general subject, and it will act as a sort of transition from the purely Hellenic to the purely medieval portions of the work. sidedness of his writings, Sir Εν, Palgrave deserves the gratitude of every student for having done more than any other man to demonstrate the true unity of history. 1 See above, pp. 145, 147. x CAUSES OF FEDERATION IN ANCIENT ITALY 559 Sl. Of the Federations of clneient Italy The same causes which made Federal Government, or some Prevalence approach to it, common in the ruder parts of Greece, seem to of Federal- have had the same effect in many parts of the Italian peninsula.) 4 ent A number of small neighbouring communities, politically in- Italy. dependent, but closely allied in blood, language, and religion, Its causes. retained, among whatever amount of local differences, some general sense of national unity; the feeling of brotherhood was kept up by common sacrifices in a common temple, by occasional common deliberations on matters of common interest, and by occasional help given to one another when threatened by foreign enemies. Such a group of kindred towns or districts naturally forms a religious Amphiktyony; the religions Amphiktyony easily grows into a lax political League, and the Jax political League may, if fortune favours, casily grow into a regular Federal Government. Indeed we have no reason to suppose that the operation of these causes was at all confined to Greece These and Italy ; they are causes of universal application in every land of weneral which is cut up into small independent communities. And the applica. further the people are removed from the perfection of city life, tion. the stronger is the inducement towards national union, and the slighter the repugnance towards the necessary sacrifice of full local imdependence. It was easier for the rural cantons of AXtohia and Samnium to enter into a Federal bond than it was for the great cities of Athens and Milétos or Rome and Capua. It therefore almost necessarily follows that, in the less civilized countries of Kurope, where the approaches to city life were in- comparably feebler than in the rudest parts of Greece or Italy, the Federal principle, in some of its laxer forms, is likely to have Mstances made considerable advances in very early times. Wherever we of Confede- find several towns or districts acting together as a single people, Devond especially when, as among many peoples of Spain and Gaul, the Greece and Italy. 1 Cantt, Histoire des Italiens, i. 82 [Storia degli Italiani, i. 118, ed. 1874]. ) “Les (tats gouvernes par un seul ou plusieurs... continuent entre eux les luttes commenceées entre les tribus ; Jes plus forts envahissent les plus faibles ; les montagnards se précipitent sur les habitants des plaines, et les uns pour se dé- fendre, les autres pour attaquer, forment des confédérations, Cette forme, trés ancienne en Italie, est uaturelle dans un pays divisé par des inontagnes et des fleuves ; aussi n’y trouve-t-on pas les conditions propres aux vastes empires qui furent pour |’Asie une cause de servitude, ni Punité nationale qui a rendu puis- sants quelques peuples modernes.” Greater importance of the Italian Leagues, Uncer- tainty of the ethnology of Ancient Italy. 560 OF FEDERALISM IN ITALY CHAP, government clearly was republican, it is impossible not to suspect the presence of some sort of an approach to Federal union! In this way we may get glimpses of rude Confederations in many parts of the ancient world, any special examination of which the political historian may be content to leave to the minuter researches of the antiquaries of the several countries. We have no evidence for any constitutional details, and the common- wealths themselves are of no direct importance in history. It is enough for my purpose barely to record their existence, as illus- trations of the working of a general law. But the Federations of Ancient Italy stand on a different footing. It is indeed almost as impossible to recover any political details as in the obscure commonwealths of Gaul and Spain; still the fame, even if partly mythical, of Etruria, Latium, and Samnium, and their intimate connexion with the history of Rome, and thereby with the history of the world, make some slight mention of those Leagues, at once so famous and so obscure, an appropriate portion of a general survey of the progress of Federal ideas. I must, once for all, decline all inquiries into the ethnology of the early Italian nations. On no subject have more daring and more unprofitable speculations been hazarded ; on no subject have they more fully met with their due reward. Ingenious men have striven to reconstruct a lost history from their own power of divination, and to reconstruct a lost language from a single unintelligible inscription. But their crude theories have been scattered to the winds by the wit and wisdom of the same hand which has since dashed in pieces the still frailer fabric of 1 Thus the Aidui in Gaul had a Republic under a yearly President with large powers, called a Vergobret (Cesar, Bell. Gall. i. 16), and Mr. Merivale (i. 302) does not hesitate to apply the name of Confederation both to their commonwealth and to that of the Arverni. Cesar also speaks of a Concilium Galliw (vi. 3) and even totius Gallie@ (i. 80), Here we have the familiar Federal formula. Doubt- less, as Mr. Merivale says, the word ¢otius is not to be construed very strictly, but the expression at least points to some sort of union, however lax, among several Gaulish states. The Druidical religion seems also to have united a con- siderable portion of Gaul in a religious Amphiktyony (Ces. vi. 13), which might easily form the germ of a political League. Of course when I apply the words “ Federal” and “ Union” to these obscure commonwealths, I do so in the laxest sense of the words, not as implying the existence of regular constitutions, like those of Achaia and Lykia, It is hero important to mark any approaches, however distant, to the Federal system, just as when treating of the Delphic Amphiktyony, it was important to distinguish between such mere approaches and a perfect Federation. Χ EARLY FEDERATIONS IN ITALY 561 Egyptian and Babylonish delusion.!. It is but lost labour to dispute, and it is profoundly indifferent to my subject if ascer- tained, whether the Etruscans were Lydians, Rheetians, or Armenians”; whether the Tyrrhénians were the same people as the Rasena or a subject Pelasgian race. All that concerns me is that, in the course of Roman history, we find glimpses which Early are quite enough to convince us that a near approach to Federal ὌΝΩΝ ideas was made, at an early time, by more than one Italian pations people. We see clear indications of the existence of Leagues of in Italy. some kind among the Etruscans, Samnites, Hernicans,? and Vol- scians,* while we can hardly doubt that the Thirty Cities of Latium were united by a tie which came nearer still to our con- ception of a true Federal Government. Our evidence indeed Nature comes immediately from the suspicious records of half-mythical of the times, records which it is impossible to trust for details, and evidence. whose testimony must at once be cast aside whenever it bears the stamp of falsification in the interests of national or family pride. But incidental testimonies to the constitution of foreign states are far less suspicious; such accounts are more open to unconscious error, but much less so to wilful misrepresentation. And we must not forget that these early constitutions did, in Late pre- some sort, survive far down into strictly historical times. The servation Italian states were not incorporated with Rome; they remained y,ajian distinct, though dependent, commonwealths as late as the wars Constitu- of Marius and Sulla. 'T hey were in much the same position as tions. the dependent commonwealths of Greece, and retained much the ὅδ 1-8 same sort of shadow of their ancient freedom. Etruria, till her conquest by Sulla, retained her internal constitution and her native literature. Samnium, in the very last stage of the war, 8.0. 82. brought Rome nearer to destruction than she had been brought 1 Sir 6, C. Lewis, Credibility of the Early Roman History, 1855. Historical Survey of the Astronomy of the Ancients, 1862. 2 The Armenian Origin of the Etruscans, by Robert Ellis, B.D., London, 1861. 3 Of the Hernicans Livy uses exactly the same formulas which he applies to the Federal states of Greece. Concilium populorum omnium habentibus Anagninis in circo quem Maritimum vocant, preter Aletrinatem, Ferentina- temque, et Verulanuim, omnes Hernici nominis populo Romano bellum indixe- runt. Liv. ix. 42. Cf. the Beeotian dissensions, xlii. 38 (above, p. 521). 4 Dionysios (viii. 4) describes a Federal Congress of the Volscians, from which Niebuhr, Roman History (ii. 28, Eng. Tr.), endeavours to extract some details as to the Volscian constitution. In this I cannot follow him; but that Dionysios looked on the Volscians as a Federal state is clear beyond doubt. 9 ade League of ETRURIA. The Twelve Cities. 562 OF FEDERALISM IN ITALY CHAP. by Hannibal himself. Even the Latin commonwealths in the later sense, Roman colonies and dependencies as they were, still kept up a faint shadow of the famous Latin League of earlier days. The historians who serve as our authorities had therefore in their hands better materials than might at first sight appear for a knowledge of the constitutional antiquities of the old Italian states. Livy indeed was too careless, and Dionysios too wedded to preconceived theories, ever thoroughly to understand what they saw or what they read; still Livy and Dionysios wrote with carlier and better informed writers before them, writers who had themselves seen Etruria and Samnium in the condition of separate, although dependent commonwealths. We may therefore fairly look in their writings for occasional hints which may give us some general notion of the constitution of these ancient republics. Minute details it would of course be hopeless to expect. I pass by the traditions of Ktruscan settlements, and indeed of Etruscan Confederations, in Campania and in Cisalpine Gaul.} These traditions are indeed highly probable in themselves, but they belong to an age before the faintest approaches to authentic history. I confine myself wholly to the well-known Etruria on the banks of the Tiber and the Arnus. Here we find a picture, the general outlines of which are surely trustworthy, of twelve cities, each forming an independent commonwealth, but all united by a Jax Federal bond. The number twelve is so con- stantly given* that there can be no doubt of its accuracy ; “the Twelve Cities” was evidently a familiar formula, and it is con- firmed by the existence of twelve as a political number in the most remote parts of the world.2 And it derives confirmation from the fact that the number twelve is one not easy to recon- cile with the lists of the Etruscan towns as handed down to us. 1 Liv, v. 38. Polyb. ii, 16, 17. See K. O. Miller, Etrusker, i. 131, 186, 345, Niebuhr, 1. 88, 95. 2 Liv. us. So iv. 23, where duodecim popiuli is used as equivalent to the Etruscan State. See also Dionys. Hal. vi. 75; cf. ix. 18 and Niebuhr, i. 94 sqq. The Federal style of popudt remained in use in the Hannibalian War both in Etruria and Umbria. Liv. xxviii. 45. It remained even in Imperial times, when we meet with Jetrurie quindecim popult (see Miller, i. 858), an increase reminding one of the Augustan Reform of the Amphiktyonic Council. See above, p. 105. 3 As in Palestine, Egypt, Achaia, Ionia. We might add the “Twelve Peers” of medieval or romantic France, . Χ LEAGUE OF ETRURIA 563 More than twelve towns are spoken of in our narratives ; either then the number must, as in some other Federations, have fluctuated from time to time, or the twelve sovereign members of the League could not in every case have consisted of a single Constitu- city only.! Either the several States may have themselves con- “on of the . . ws states, sisted of smaller Confederations, or the great cities may have had smaller towns attached to them, whether as subjects, as dependent allies, or as municipalities sharing in the franchise of the capital. Our Greek experience has supplied us with examples of all these various relations.2 The States, however constituted, scem to have preserved strict Federal equality among themselves ; cxcept in the mythical days of Lars Porsena, we hear nothing of any predominant capital. Indeed the Federal Meetings, like those of Phékis and of Akarnania in early times,® seem not to have been held in a town at all, but within the precincts of a venerated national sanctuary. The Amphi- Etruscan League has every appearance of being one of those ktyonic f political Unions which grew out of an earlier religious Amphi- ye ktyony.* The religious centre of Etruria was the temple of League. Voltumna,° a place whose site is uncertain, and there the poli- tical assemblies of the nation were held also. The religious synod was doubtless held at stated times; whether every religious synod involved also a political Congress, or whether secular affairs were dealt with only from time to time as occasion served, is a question which it would be dangerous to determine elther way. But it seems that a power was vested somewhere to summon special meetings, as we find them held both at the request of particular cities® and at that of foreign allies.’ Of the constitution of the Federal Assembly we can say nothing, Constitu- except that it doubtless was, like the constitutions of the several non οὗ ὕδὸ 1 This is suggested by Miiller, i. 352, 360. Assembly. 2 See above, pp. 126, 200, 489. 3 See above, pp. 118, 114. + Mommsen (i. 86) calls Volsinii the “ Metropole” of Etruria, but he explains it to be so only in a religious sense, “namentlich fiir den Gitterdienst,” and he strongly asserts the independent position of the States. 5 Liv. iv. 23, 25; vi. 2. He regularly uses Conciltwm for the Federal As- sembly and popili for the States, just as he does when speaking of Achaia. 6 Ib. iv. 23. Cum due civitates, legatis circa duodecim populos missis, impetrassent ut ad Voltumne fanum indiceretur omni Etruria concilium. 7 ΤΌ. x. 16. (Samnites) Etruriam pulsi petierunt; et quod legationibus nequicquam sepe tentaverant, id se tanto agmine armatorum, mixtis terrore precibus, acturos efficacius rati, postulaverunt princippm Etrurie concilium. The Assembly is held, the Samnites address it, and we read presently after (c.418), Tusci fere omnes consciverant bellum. Traces of Federal Kingship. B.c. 400? Laxity of the Federal tie. Power of war and peace in the League, 564 OF FEDERALISM IN ITALY CHAP. ne meme ee - cities, strictly aristocratic. In mythical times we hear of Kings in the several cities, and of a sort of a Federal King, at least in war time, attended by a lictor from cach of the Confederate towns.2 This is a state of things which is by no means im- probable in itself, though it would be dangerous to set it down as a piece of authentic history. We may feel sure that, in Etruria, as well as in other parts of Italy and Greece, kingly government existed before Aristocracy ; the further change from Aristocracy to Democracy seems in Etruria never to have been made. There is a remarkable story in Livy that the Veientines, weary of the excitement of annual elections, fell back upon Kingship, and thereby offended the other cities. The rest of the League at once dishked royalty and had personal objections to the particular King chosen.? This is a sort of story which neither Livy nor any other Roman annalist was likely to insert ; we doubtless have here, however much spoiled in the telling, a genuine bit of internal Etruscan history. The Federal tie between the several States seems to have been lax. If we may venture so far into detail, it would seem that the relations among the Etruscan cities with regard to peace and war were nearly the same as those among the members of the Lacedsemo- nian Confederacy. They were however modified by the absence of any city possessing the presidential and pre-considering powers of Sparta. War might apparently be decreed by the Federal body, in which case every city would doubtless be bound to send its contingent.® In such a case it seems to have been held to be a breach of Federal Law for any city to conclude a separate 1 See Miller, i. 356, 862. Livy constantly uses the word Princeps, with which we have been so familiar in the history of Federal Greece, to designate the members of the Etruscan Assemblies. Dionysius (iii. 5) speaks of an ἐκκλησία at Tarquinii in mythical times, and it has been thought, by a very doubtful refinement, that this ἐκκλησία is opposed, like the Romen Plebs, to the γένη or Patrician houses. See Niebuhr, i. 99. Miuiller, i. 362. But nothing can be plainér than that Dionysios, as Niebuhr himself suggests, merely transferred Roman language to Tarquinii. 2 Dion. iii. 61. Τυρρηνὸν γὰρ ἔθος ἐδόκει, ἑκάστου τῶν κατὰ πόλιν βασιλέων ἕνα προηγεῖσθαι ῥαβδοφόρον, ἅμα τῇ δέσμῃ τῶν ῥάβδων πέλεκυν φέροντα᾽ εἰ δὲ κοινὴ γίνοιτο τῶν δώδεκα πόλεων στρατεία, τοὺς δώδεκα πελέκεις ἑνὶ παραδίδοσθαι τῷ λαβόντι τὴν αὐτοκράτορα ἀρχήν. 3 Liv. v. 1. Veientes contra tedio annue ambitionis, que interdum dis- cordiarum causa erat, Regem creavere. Offendit ea res populorum Etrurie animos, non majore odio regni, quam ipsius Regis, 4 See above, p. 357. 5 Dion. iii, 57. Ψήφισμα ποιοῦνται πάσας Τυρρηνῶν πόλεις κοινῇ τὸν κατὰ Ῥωμαίων πόλεμον ἐκφέρειν" τὴν δὲ μὴ μετέχουσαν τῆς στρατείας ἔκσπονδον εἶναι. Χ LAXITY OF FEDERAL TIE IN ETRURIA 565 peace with the enemy.! But it is clear that the several cities retained, under all other circumstances, the right of separate diplomatic and military action. If the Federal body neglected to take up the quarrel of any particular city, that city might, aud also alone or with such cities as chose to join it, carry on war on its mane own account.2 One narrative, if we may trust it, describes the ὁ Federal body as, on one occasion, refusing to declare war in the 8.0. 479! name of the League, but expressly authorizing the service of volunteers from any Confederate city, seemingly whether such city itself declared war or not.? Altogether, the picture which Diony- 5105 and Livy give us of the state of things in Etruria must be The taken at what it may be worth, according to the amount of aecounts authentic materials which we may hold to be preserved in their authorities writings. ‘They are of course not to be received as containing a how far trustworthy narrative of events which are placed before the ees beginning of authentic history. The question is, How far did » the annalists whom they followed carry back into these times the real constitution of Etruria in later times? The general picture which they draw is quite consistent with what we know of other states in a similar position, and does not need to be pieced out by any random conjectures or attempts at divination. It sets before us the perfectly probable spectacle of twelve cities, Probable united by a strong religious and national feeling, fully accus- seneme tomed to common political action, but among which the Federal League. tle was not strong enough to extinguish the separate action of the States or to weld Etruria together into a perfect Federal commonwealth like Achaia. The Etruscan Union, as described to us, was laxer even than that of the United States under their first Confederation ; but it may well have been as strong as that which unites the members of the existing Confederation of Germany, or even as strong as the union of the Swiss Cantons in some of its earlier and laxer forms. Of the Samnites, the worthiest foes whom Rome ever met 1 Dion. ix. 18. Τυρρηνῶν al wh μετασχοῦσαι τῆς εἰρήνης ἕνδεκα πόλεις, ἀγορὰν ποιησάμενοι κοινὴν, κατηγόρουν τοῦ Οὐϊετανῶν ἔθνους, ὅτι τὸν πρὸς Ῥωμαίους πόλεμον οὐ μετὰ κοινῆς γνώμης κατελύσαντο. * This seems clear from several of the passages already quoted from Livy, and indeed from the whole history of the wars between Rome and Veii. 3 Dion. ix. 1. Συνήχθη els κοινὴν ἐκκλησίαν τὸ ἔθνος᾽ Kal πολλὰ Οὐΐετανῶν δεηθέντων συναίρεσθαι σφίσι τοῦ κατὰ Ῥωμαίων πολέμου, τέλος ἐξήνεγκαν ἐξεῖναι τοῖς βουλομένοις Τυρρηνῶν μετέχειν τῆς στρατείας. League of SAMNIUM, Absence of details. The Samnite Cantons. 566 OF FEDERALISM IN ITALY CHAP. within her own peninsula, we know even less than we know of the Etruscans. There can be little doubt that they possessed a Federal Constitution, but of its details we can say absolutely nothing. There was, in war-time at least, a military head of the League, with the title of Honbratur or Imperator ;} but we know not whether he was merely a Commander-in-Chief appointed for the occasion, or whether Samnium, unlike Attolia and Achaia, possessed a permanent Federal President. That the Samnite Government was Federal we might almost infer from the mere extent of the country without any further evidence. The Sam- nite nation constantly acts as a whole; but a consolidated republic on such a scale would be without parallel among the ancient commonwealths, and it is still clearer that Samnium was not a case of a single city ruling over a subject or dependent territory. The names of two Cantons, the Caudini and the Pentri,? are distinctly mentioned by Livy ; the Hirpini,? Cara- ceni,* and Frentani® are added by modern writers with more or less of probability. But the great city of Capua,® though a portion of its inhabitants were of Samnite blood, seems at no time to have been a member of the Samnite League. This was a most important fact in Samnite history. It debarred the Confederation from 1 Liv. ix. 1. Sammnites eo anno Imperatorem C. Pontium, Herennii filium, hubuerunt. Mr. Bunbury (Dict. of Geog. Art. Sammnium) infers from Livy, ix. 3, viii. 39, the absence of a Federal Diet, which Niebuhr (iii. 108) assumes without hesitation. It is hard to see how Mr. Bunbury’s references bear upon the point. In Liv. ix. 8 Caius Pontius consults his father on a military question, which was surely within the competence of the Imperator ; in viii. 39, I should rather have found a distinct proof of the existence both of Federal and local Assemblies. The words omnia concilia may well imply the latter, while the Federal Assembly seems implied in De eo coacts referre Proctores decretum fecerunt. A Senate too seems implied in the phrase, of πρόβουλοι τῶν Σαυνιτῶν, Dion. Fr. ii, (xe. de leg. p. 789 c). See Niebuhr, ii. 25. 2 Liv. xxiii, 41. ulgrum Hirpinum et Sumnites Caudinos. xxiv. 20, Cau- dinus Sumnis gravius devastatus, cf. ix. 1, et seqq. Soix. 31, Bovianus . . caput Pentrorum Sannitium. xxii. 61, Samnites preter Pentros. 3 See Mr. Bunbury’s Article ‘‘ Hirpini”’ in the Dictionary of Geography. The Hirpini are never distinctly mentioned during the days of Samnite independence, but throughout the Hannibalian War they appear as a distinct people. Doubt- less Rome had practised the same system of dismemberment in Samniuin of which we have seen so much in the Greek Federal States, 4 See Dict. of Geog. in voc. 5 Dict. of Geog. in voc. Niebuhr, iii. 107. The Frentani appear in history only as ἃ non-Samnite people. 6 Livy describes the Samnite occupation of Capua iniv. 37. In vii. 38 the people of Capua pray for relief against Samnite incursions. The original filibusters must therefore have quite separated themselves from the Samnite League. Χ LEAGUE OF SAMNIUM 567 both the good and the evil which might have sprung from the Effect presence of one of the great cities of Italy within its borders. of the It freed Samnium from all fear of a predominant or tyrant city, ot Capna. such as Thebes became in Beeotia ; on the other hand it must have cut off the Samnite people from many of the civilizing influences to which other parts of Italy were open. Samnium remained an isolated mountain district, without a sea-board ! and without any city of importance.? Its position resembled that of Analogy the original Aitolia and of the original Switzerland. Civic life, with | that is, among the ancient commonwealths, the only fully civilized atolls life, must, in such a country, have lagged far behind its develope- Switzer. ments, not only in the Greek cities of Italy, but in Rome, land. Etruria, or Latium. The long struggle of the Samnites with vtrtwele Rome, never flinching, never yielding while hope of success against lasted, sinking only before irresistible force, and rising again Rome. whenever the least glimmer of hope or help appeared—the war s.c. 340- which lasted, we may say, from the days of Valerius Corvus to 82: the days of Sulla, is worthy of the men of Morgarten or the men of Mesolongi. Their resistance to the conqueror ceased, as we shall see, only with the devastation of their land and the exter- mination of their race. The Pontius who led Rome’s army and 5,0. 819, whom Rome led in chains and beheaded,* and the Pontius who, μι. 82, generations after, fell in the last struggle by the Colline Gate,* remind us of the Reding who first taught the Austrian despot what a.p. 1815. freemen could do and suffer, and the Reding who struck the last a.p. 1798. blow for the true Democracy of the mountains against the sham Democracy of the bloody city. The internal history of such a people, could we recover it, would be a contribution of the highest value both to the general history of the world and to the general history of Federalism. It would of course be vain to dream of perfection in Samnium any more than elsewhere. We must never let the external heroism of a nation delude us into the hope that we should find its internal history free from those dissensions and crimes which disfigure every history. What we know of the Samnite League sets its people before us in a far fairer light than the kindred League of Attolia; still we cannot 1 Unless possibly the district afterwards known as that of the Picentes. See Niebuhr, 111. 543-4. 2 Bovianum is called by Livy (ix. 31) longe ditissimum et opulentissimum armis virisque. But could Bovianum have been compared to Rome and Capua or the great Etruscan cities ? 3 See above, pp. 45, 46. 4 See below, § 2. Lessons of Samnite history. League of LATIUM. Abundance of untrust- worthy details. 568 OF FEDERALISM IN ITALY CHAP. suppose that it was wholly free from those errors which are common to all political communities, kingly and republican, Federal and Consolidated. But, just as in the case of Aitolia, the long endurance of Samnium, the abiding energy displayed by its people, the absence of any sign of wavering on the part of any section of the people—all show that the Samnite League formed a really united people, acting with a common national will against a common enemy. ‘Thus the history of Samnium supplies another of the many answers with which our history abounds to shallow declamations about the inherent weakness of Federal states. The utter lack of all detailed history of such a Federation—a Federation too, like that of A®tolia, mainly rural and not urban—is one of those losses which the student of ancient history will ever lament, but which, if he is wise, he will not attempt to supply by arbitrary conjectures or divinations of his own. Of all the principal Italian powers, that which, as far as our scanty information goes, has the best claim to be looked on as a real Federal Government is the League of the Thirty Cities of Latium. Our position with regard to the Latins is exactly opposite to our position with regard to the Samnites. We have abundance of details, if we could only bring ourselves to look upon any of those details as trustworthy. Dionysios, if we choose to believe him, is ready to give us an account of the Latin League almost as minute as Polybios could give us of the Achajan League. He knows the name and date of its founder, the objects of its foundation, and the earlier models which the founder had before his eyes. Servius Tullius founded the Latin League in imitation of the Amphiktyonies of Greece,! and he accompanicd his founda- tion by an Inaugural Address, full of political precepts which might have fallen from the lips of Markos or of Hamilton.? Into this mythical abyss I must decline to plunge; nor yet can I undertake to correct the ever-fluctuating lists of the Confederate Cities, even with the help of the divining-rod of Niebuhr. Such minute descriptions of unhistoric times are worth incomparably 1 Dion. iv, 25. See above, Ὁ. 96. 2 Τῇ, 26. Λόγον διεξῆλθε παρακλητικὸν ὁμονοίας, διδάσκων ws καλὸν μὲν χρῆμα, πολλαὶ πόλεις pla χρώμεναι γνώμῃ" αἰσχρὸν δὲ, ὄψις συγγενῶν ἀλλήλοις διαφερομένων, αἴτιόν τε ἰσχύος μὲν τοῖς ἀσθένεσιν ἀποφαίνων ὁμοφροσύνην, ταπεινότητος δὲ καὶ ἀσθενείας καὶ τοῖς ἰσχυροτάτοις ἀλληλοφθονίαν. x LEAGUE OF LATIUM 569 less than those genuine bits of information which are ever and anon to be extracted from the unconscious witness either of chroniclers or of poets. About Latium indecd we have one piece of real direct evidence in the form of the treaty concluded between Rome ‘Treaty and Carthage in the first year of the Republic, a document which tween serves to refute so much of what has commonly passed for Roman Carthage, history. This treaty, whose genuineness there is no reason to B.c. 508. doubt, was read by Polybios in its own obsolete Latin, and is preserved by him in a Greek translation.!. But unluckily it tells us nothing as to Latin Federal history ; the Latin cities which it speaks of are described, not as Confederates, but as subjects of Rome.? Still the Thirty Cities of Latium, hke the Twelve Nature Cities of Etruria, are mentioned far too often, and in far too 2% the League. regular and formal a manner,’ to leave any reasonable doubt that © there really was a group of thirty Latin towns, united together by a Federal tie. That tie, there is every reason to believe, was much closer than that which united the ‘Twelve Cities of Ktruria. And, as the Latin towns, though most of them were small, seem to have occupied the country far more thoroughly than the few and scattered towns of Samnium, we'may well believe that the Latin Confederation presented much more likeness to a real League of Greek cities than anything to be found either in Samnium or in Etruria. The Latin League clearly had common religious and political meetings,* and, in war-time at least, a common chief with the title of Dictator.° The number of Thirty 1 Pol. iii. 22. 2 Tb, Καρχηδόνιοι δὲ μὴ ἀδικείτωσαν δῆμον ᾿Αρδεατῶν, ᾿Αἀντιατῶν, Λαυρεν- τίνων, Κιρκαιιτῶν, Tappaxiwirav, μηδ᾽ ἄλλον μηδένα Λατίνων, ὅσοι ἂν ὑπήκοοι" ἐὰν δέ τινες μὴ ὦσιν ὑπήκοοι, κιτιλ. The heading of the treaty indeed speaks of Rome and her σύμμαχοι, but σύμμαχοι is a flexible word, which must be explained by the more definite ὑπήκοος. That word implies something more than the mere προστασία of a League spoken of in Dionysios. 3 Dion. iii. 34; vi. 63, 74, 75. See Niebuhr, ii. 18. 4 The erie Lutine survived, as a well-known Roman Festival, till very late times. See Dion. iv. 49; viii. 87. The political meetings come out in iii. 34, ai δὲ τῶν Λατίνων πόλεις ἰδίᾳ μὲν οὐδὲν ἀπεκρίναντο πρὸς τοὺς πρέσβεις, κοινῇ δὲ τοῦ ἔθνους ἀγορὰν ἐν Φερεντίνῳ ποιησάμενοι, ψηφίζονται μὴ παραχωρεῖν Ῥωμαίοις τῆς ἀρχῆς, ν. 61 συναχθείσης ἀγορᾶς ἐν Φερεντίνῳ ὅσοι τοῦ Λατίνων μετεῖχον γένους κοινῇ τὸν κατὰ τῶν Ρωμαίων ἀναιροῦνται πόλεμον. So in Liv. vii. 25 we hear of the Concilia populorum Latinorum, and in viii. 3 of the decem principes. In Dion. (v. 61) we also read of a κοινὸν Λατίνων δικαστήριον. 5 The Alban or Latin origin of the Dictatorship was asserted by Licinius, quoted by Dionysios, v. 74, and the Dictator thus spoken of could hardly fail to have been a Federal Magistrate. There were also local Dictators in particular towns (like the local στρατηγοί of Achaian towns, see above, p. 199, note 4) down to very The Thirty Cities. Relations of Rome to the League. B.C. 334, 570 OF FEDERALISM IN ITALY CHAP, Cities seems confirmed by the prevalence of the same number in so many Roman institutions, the thirty Tribes, the thirty Curie, the thirty Latin Colonies of a later time. That the list fluctuated from time to time we may well believe! Etruscan and Volscian wars may have often caused the frontier to vary, so that the same town may have been Latin at one time and Volscian at another. And the position of Rome itself must have had even more influence upon the condition of the League. For Rome, whatever Itruscan or Samnite elements may have mingled with its religious or political life, was undoubtedly, primarily and essentially, a Latin city which had outgrown all its fellows? If so, we can well believe the picture which represents Rome, at different times, in an endless variety of relations to the Latin League. Sometimes, as in our most authentic picce of evidence,° she appears as an absolute mistress, sometimes as a Federal head, sometimes as the equal ally or the equal enemy of the League as a whole, sometimes as incorporating various Latin towns within the borders of her own citizenship. We can well believe that the League was more than once dissolved, and more than once restored before its final dissolution after the great war with Rome. But we must remember that Rome, though essentially a Latin city, speaking the same language, using the same names of men and of offices, employing the same political numbers, and subjecting its armies to the same discipline, still never appears as the mere capital of the Latin League. As far as the faintest glimmerings of history go back, Rome holds a position towards Latium far more lordly than even that of Thebes towards Beeotia. She must have so soon outstripped all other Latin cities, that she appears, at the very beginning of her history, as something more than the first of Latin cities, as a power able to make war and peace with the Latin League on equal terms, sometimes to hold particular cities, if not the League itself, in a state of absolute subjection. Rome, according to a highly probable conjecture,‘ late times ; Milo, the friend of Cicero, had been Dictator of Lanuvium (Cic. pro M. 10). But in Dion, iii. 34 we read of two στρατηγοί, and in Livy viii. 8 of two Pretors as the chief magistrates of the League. In the various fluctuations of the League their number and titles may well have varied. There can be no doubt that the oldest Roman offices, Pretor and Dictator, were of Latin origin. The name Consul is much more recent. 1 See other lists of thirty in Dion. v. 61, and Pliny, Nat. Hist. iii. 9. See Niebuhr, ii. 29, * See Mommsen, cap. iv. Die Anfinge Roms. 3 As in the treaty quoted above from Polybios. 4 Mommsen, i. 32. Χ LATIUM AND ROME 571 was originally an outpost of Latium on the Etruscan frontier, Probable in old German political language, a A/ark against Etruria. Her men of extraordinary developement has its parallels in the case of similar frontier states elsewhere. Brandenburg, the Mark of Germany against the Slave, and Austria, her Afark against the Hungarian, have gradually grown into the dominant German powers to the exclusion of older and more glorious names. So Paris, once the Mark of Gaul against the Northman, has grown into the capital, or rather the tyrant, of the whole land! It is no wonder that a: League of small towns could not permanently bear up against a single great city * of their own race, whose strength equalled their united strength, and which was more liberal of its franchise than any other city-commonwealth ever was. The last time that Rome and Latium negociated together, the Latin Latin proposal was that the League should be merged in the City, that proposals the name of Latins should be sunk in that of Romans, but that dn ene the chief magistrates of the united nation should be chosen in a,c. 337. equal proportion from the single City of Rome and from the Thirty Cities of Latium.? Such a proposal shows how slight must have been the national distinction between Romans and Latins ;* it shows also how close must have been the union Close among the Latin cities themselves; it shows that the Latin "ion of League was a case in which a long-standing Federal connexion the hatin had prepared its members for a more intimate union.? Had the illustrated Latin offer been accepted, the Thirty Cities could no longer have by this kept their place as sovereign members of a Federal body ; they P°°P°*! must have sunk into Roman tribes, possessing indeed their distinct votes in the Roman Assembly, but retaining no local independence except of a purely municipal kind. All that was stipulated was that the new citizens should have an equal share with the old in the honours of their common country, a stipula- tion which the struggle, so lately decided, between the Patrician and Plebeian orders, showed to be absolutely necessary, if the Latin citizens were to receive common justice. And these were not terms offered at the end of a war, when Latium was dis- 1 See Edin. Rev, July 1860. Nat. Rev. Oct. 1860. Megalopolis might have been added, as it certainly was designed as a Aark against Sparta (see above, p. 159), had it not been also designed as a capital from the beginning. “ See Arnold’s Rome, ii. 187, 245, and cf. above, p. 410. 3 Liv. viii. 3-5. Arnold, ii. 132. + Liv. viii. 8. Nihil apud Latinos dissonum ab Romana re preter animos erat. See Arnold, ii. 136. 5 See above, p. 88. Dissolu- tion of the League, B.C. 894, Rome not a Federal state ; but con- taining quast- Federal elements. Gradual incorpora- tion of other states with Rome. 572 OF FEDERALISM IN ITALY CHAP. heartened by repeated defeats; they were the Latin wltimatwm before war began, when the League was still in a position to treat or to fight on equal terms. They therefore clearly show what sort of union was looked on as just and desirable in the cyes of Latin patriots. Rome of course despised any such terms, and, when her arms proved victorious, she followed exactly the same line of policy which she afterwards followed in Greece.) It was the Federal Union which had made Latium strong; the League was therefore dissolved, and its several cities, as isolated units, were admitted, one by one, to various degrees of citizen- ship, dependence, or subjection.’ §2. The Roman Commonwealth and the Italian Alhes That the Roman Commonwealth had not, at any period of its authentic history, a real Federal Constitution is a fact so obvious that [ need not dwell upon it. Rome was essentially a city- commonwealth ; it was the greatest of all city-commonwealths ; as a Latin city independent of the Latin League, it may even have owed its origin and its greatness to secession from a Federal Union. Yet the constitution of Rome is an object of some importance in a History of Federalism. Though Rome was a city-commonwealth, yet it differed in many points from the city- commonwealths of Greece, and all the points in which it differed are approaches to the Federal type. The Roman state contained quasi-Federal elements, and to these quast-Federal elements she largely owed her greatness and permanence. From the first moment of her history to the last, Rome is ever incorporating new bodies of citizens, who have gradually less and less to do with the local city.’ We see this in her authentic history, we see it in the border-land between history and legend, we see it equally in the mythical narratives of her earliest days. With so consistent a picture before us, we cannot doubt that it dis- plays a real tendency which distinguished Rome from her very birth. The mythical tales themselves, worthless as they are for facts and dates and persons, may fairly be cited as cumulative evidence of the tendency which they illustrate in common with authentic history. In the very first days of the City we hear of Romulus and Titus Tatius reigning, side by side, over two 1 See above, pp. 144, 551. 2 Liv. viii, 14. Arnold, ii. 195 et seqq. 3 See above, p. 23. Χ ROME NOT A FEDERAL STATE 573 ee re peoples united by a Federal tie. The States are presently con- solidated, and the two peoples sink into two Tribes of a single people. A third Tribe is added, formed, doubtless, out of the inhabitants of some allied or conquered city ; it is admitted at first with a certain inferiority of position; it gradually raises itself to an equality with the elder Tribes. Then comes in a whole mass of new citizens, a new people in truth, the famous Plebs or Commons, who long formed in many respects a distinct commonwealth from the elder citizens, and whose long and successful strivings after equality with them form the internal history of Rome for several ages. We then find Rome forming alliances on equal terms with various neighbouring states, as the Latins and Hernicans, alliances so intimate as to occupy a sort of border-ground between Confederations and mere Confederacies. In process of time, the members of those alliances, by various steps and various events of war and peace, were admitted to Roman citizenship. When we reach the time of perfectly authentic history, we find, in the Italy which was invaded by Pyrrhos and Hannibal, a body of which Rome is the acknow- ledged head. The inhabitants of the peninsula fall into three Three great great classes. There were Romans, men possessing the full Roman rasses m franchise, not the mere inhabitants of the Roman City, but all Romans, the free inhabitants of a large territory, which had once con- tained independent commonwealths and whole Federal Unions. There were Latins,' imperfect citizens, not sharing in the full Latins, franchise, but capable of being raised to it by an easy process, by removing to home under certain conditions, or by serving certain magistracies in their own towns. Finally, there were and the Italians, the allied states, retaining their internal independ- 1!" ence, but united to Rome by the terms, more or less burthen- some, of dependent alliance. Their actual position answered 1 T need hardly say that the Latin Colonies of the later Roman history do not represent the old Latin League, either in blood or in geographical position. A city enjoying the Latin franchise might be anywhere, and its citizens might be of any race. They might be real Latins; they might not be real Latins; they might be Romans who by migration had sunk to the Latin level ; they might be Italians or Provincials who had been raised to it. Still the origin of the Jus Latit or Latinitas undoubtedly was that these cities were admitted to that position to which the real Latins had been admitted ; they were artificial Latins, just as many Romans were artificial Romans. The number of thirty colonies, too, inthe Hanni- balian War must surely have come from the tradition of the thirty cities of the old League. 2 On the general relation of dependent alliance, see above, p. 18 et seqq. The nature of the struggle between Patrician and Plebeian. 4 574 OF FEDERALISM IN ITALY CHAP, very closely to that of the dependent allies of Athens; but the Marsian or the Samnite had one great advantage over the Chian or the Rhodian. The Athenian allies had hardly more chance of being raised to citizenship than the Helots of Sparta; but the gradual advance from Italian to Latin, and from Latin to Roman rank, was the regular reward of merit, whether in individuals or in communities. At last the Roman citizenship was spread over the whole peninsula, and finally over all the Provinces of the Roman Empire. ‘The Quirites, the Commons, the Latins, the Jtahans, the Provincials, all gradually merged themselves in the common name of Romans. And all these incorporations, all these struggles, were strictly geographical; the strife between Patrician and Plebeian was a strife of communities rather than of classes; it had far more in common with the strife between Romans and Latins than with the strife between the Senate and the populace in later times. The true Plebeians, as distinguished from the mob of the Forum, were the inhabitants, gentle and simple, of conquered or allied states, which had received the then imperfect franchise of the Roman Commons, just as, a few generations later, they might have received the imperfect fran- chise of a Latin Colony. The Patrician stood to the Plebeian, not in the relation of Horl to Ceorl or of Gentilhomme to Roturier, but in the relation of a Swiss citizen of a ruling Canton, whether aristocratic or democratic, to the inhabitant of a subject district. When the strife of classes really came, in the days of Marius and Sulla, of Pompeius and Cesar, it put on a very different form. Patricians of heroic and divine descent, a Catilina, a Clodius, a Cesar, appeared as conspirators, demagogues, and Tyrants, while the defence of the aristocracy—when aristocracy had become synonymous with freedom—was left to Plebeian Catuli, and Metelli, to the Latin Cato and the Volscian Cicero. It is at once clear that this history of the City of Rome is something altogether different from the history of the City of Athens. The system of incorporation which Athens practised only in her earliest day was continued by Rome during her whole historic lifetime. Now, in all this, there is no real Federalism; the relation of the Tribes to each other was not a Federal relation, because all the Tribes were members of the one ruling common- On the allies of Rome, see Arnold, Late Roman Commonwealth, i. 164. Merivale, Fall of the Roman Republic, p. 78. Χ QUASI-FEDERAL ELEMENTS IN ROME 575 wealth, and did not form sovereign commonwealths themselves. Nor is the relation between Italians, Latins, and Romans a Federal relation ; because in those points which would have been delegated to the common Federal power the Romans decided for the Latins and Italians as well as for themselves.! Still. the existence of these marked geographical divisions among the various classes within the Roman dominions, the local independ- ence retained by each, the fair hope which each class had of being raised to the class above it, all form a broad contrast between Rome and other city-commonwealths, and every differ- ence 15 a difference in a Federal direction. The Tribes were not Quasi- members of a Federal Union, because they were mere munici- Federal eis . 1 . nature palities retaining no separate State-sovereignty. But they were of the not mere artificial divisions. ‘Till they were corrupted by the Roman enfranchiscment of slaves and strangers, they remained strictly Te local ;2 the Tribe was often a Latin or Volscian district, which by its incorporation lost all independent sovereignty, but which acquired a distinct vote in the Roman Assembly, and retained a large measure of municipal independence at home. Cicero had two countrics, Rome and Arpinum ; ὃ Milo, a Roman playing a prominent part at Rome, was Dictator of his native Latin town of Lanuvium.* And when the Tribes actually met in the Comitia, their position was exactly the same as that of the Achaian Cities ;° each Tribe had its independent vote, exactly as if it had been a sovereign Canton; its non-Federal and non-sovereign position is to be found in the absence of any independent Government at home. Thus the quasz-Federal position of the Tribes is to be looked for in the way in which they shared in the supreme power; the quasi-Federal position of the Allies is to be found in the retention of their separate local governments. In the Roman policy, each of these privileges was held to exclude Neay the other ; had the two been allowed to co-exist, a real Federal approach system would have been the result. Had the Samnite and ΝΗ 1 See above, p. 20. system to 2 At Athens, the real local division, round which local patriotism centred, Federalism was the δῆμος ; but the δῆμος was not a political body. The Tribe, the political and to body, consisted of certain δῆμοι, but those djuoe were not continuous, ἃ8 if Represen- expressly to hinder strictly local action in public affairs, tation. 3 See Cicero, De Legg. ii. 2, where the duce patriw: are discussed at length, and the analogy of the Attic συνοικισμός appropriately quoted. On this use of patria or πατρίς, see above, p. 15, Cicero’s patria was Rome, or Arpinum, or both, but in no case Italy. 4 See above, p. 570. 5 See ahove, p. 211. Niebuhr, ii, 29, The greatness of Rome mainly due to her quasi- Federal ἡ elements. The SOCIAL Wark, B.C. 90-89, Its historical import- ance. 576 OF FEDERALISM IN ITALY CHAP, Ktruscan cities, in addition to their local independence, possessed votes in the Roman Assembly; had the Latin and Volscian towns, in addition to their votes in the Roman Assembly, pos- sessed the same local independence as Etruria and Samnium, then Roman Italy could have formed as true a Federal Govern- ment as Lykia or Achaia. As it was, the Roman Constitution was neither Representative nor Federal, but it trembled on the verge of being both. And surely it was by thus extending the Roman franchise so far beyond the local Noman City, by con- stantly calling up alles to the rank of citizens, and subjects to the rank of allies, by thus continually strengthening the common- wealth by the infusion of new and vigorous blood, that Rome maintained her independence and her power so incomparably longer than almost any other commonwealth on record.! And the elements which were thus the main cause of Rome’s great- ness are precisely those which I have ventured to call her quase- Federal elements. They are precisely those which at once distinguish Rome from those commonwealths which knew no distinctions except those of citizens of the local city and the inhabitants of lower standing to it in the relation of subjects or dependent allies. Of the many struggles among these different component elements of the Roman world, there is one which fairly claims some comment at my hands, for, if the defeated side had proved victorious, the establishment of a Federal Government over a large part of Italy must have followed. I mean the great struggle between Rome and her Italians in the early years of the first century before Christ. This, like a widely different struggle in Grecian history, is generally known as the Social War. This struggle and its results are really among the most. important events in the history of the world. They have affected the condition of Italy, and thereby of the rest of Europe, ever since. The Social War was the last time that Nome had to fight for her dominion, and even for her existence, and never, between 1 No state in Greece or in ancient Italy can be at all compared to Rome in the long retention not of mere being but of real greatness. The Athenian commonwealth may have existed as many years as the Roman, but for several centuries it existed and no more. The commonwealths most truly rivalling Rome are Carthage, Venice, and Bern. In the case of Carthage we must allow some- thing for Semitic tenacity, and in the other two cases for the slower march of events in modern times. Χ THE SOCIAL WAR 577 the days of Brennus and the days of Alaric, was she brought so 8.0. 387. near to the brink of destruction. That Rome remained the head Δ. Ὁ. 410. of Italy and the world, that her influence has extended over every succeeding page of history, that the dominion of her Cesars and her Pontiffs, of her laws and of her language, has lived on, in one form or another, through every later age—all this is due, before all other men and all other causes, to the unbending and ruthless energy of her preserver Sulla.! It is impossible for us to judge what would have been the result, had Probable the one ruling City of Rome made way for a free Confederation results of of all Italy. Many an immediate wrong would have been ἐκ 4,5 righted, many a victim of oppression would have blessed the day Italian of deliverance, many a subject land would have regained the side. freedom which Rome had wrested from her—a King might again have sat on the throne of Alexander, and a free Assembly have again been gathered within the theatre of Megalopolis— but all those wise ends which the dominion of Rome has accom- plished in the general history of mankind must have remained for ever unfulfilled. An Italian Confederation could never have maintained the supremacy which Rome had held over the Pro- vinces ; it 15 indeed one of the merits of Federal States that they are less capable than other States of holding their neigh- bours in bondage. Federal Italy would have been far freer and happier than Italy in subjection to a single City, but then Federal Italy never could have been, like that single City, the mistress of the world throughout all time. The Social War is therefore one of the turning-points of history ; that it stands out less conspicuously than its importance deserves is owing to the misfortune that no worthy history of it has been preserved, even if any ever existed.2, We are driven to patch up our accounts of Nature it from late compilers and biographers, writing of course from ofthe | ) Authorities for the 1 See National Review, January 1862, p. 66. period. 2 Our materials for this period are: the regular narrative of Appian, a late and often careless writer, but who is more valuable now than in earlier times ; the summaries of Velleius Paterculus and Florus; some considerable and important fragments of Diodéros and some smaller ones of Didn Cassius ; Plu- tarch’s Lives of Marius, Sulla, Sertorius, and others; finally, a few incidental allusions in Cicero, Pliny, and other writers. Of these Cicero, who does not tell us much, is the only contemporary ; he, as a young man, served his first and only campaign in the war. Of the regular historians Diodéros comes nearest to the time, and might have conversed with contemporaries. Plutarch seems to have mainly followed the Autobiography of Sulla, so that what he says must be received with caution. The hest writers—for Cicero hardly comes into the 2p Character of the Roman dominion, Condition of the Italian Allies, 578 OF FEDERALISM IN ITALY CHAP. Roman materials; on the side of the conquered we have no evidence except that of a few coins. Still we have materials enough to form a general notion of the nature and objects of the struggle, although we sigh at every step for the guidance of a Thucydides, a Polybios, or a Tacitus. Rome, it must be remembered, vast as her empire had now become, still remained essentially a city-commonwealth.! The defence and administration of a large part of three continents were still entrusted to the municipal magistrates of a single town, elected by that town’s hereditary burghers. Rome had indeed liberally extended her franchise, but the only franchise which she could offer was one purely municipal, a vote in the local Assembly of the Roman People, and the chance of being chosen to the high offices of the Roman City. That City, as we have seen, ruled over a world of dependent communities, Latin, Italian, and Provincial. The Italian allies retained their local constitutions as separate city-commonwealths, but, in all external matters, they were the passive slaves of Rome. And, beside this condition of formal dependence, they had often to endure much irregular insolence and oppression at the hands of Roman magistrates and even of private men.” Each city too was isolated from its fellows ; no league, no alliance, no inter-communion of franchise was allowed ; and the cities thus isolated and weakened were watched by Roman and Latin colonies placed in all the most important points, and which, under a less invidious name, discharged the duties of Roman garrisons. Still the Roman dominion brought some advantages with it. Italy was at least free from the scourge of internal war, and, since the days of Hannibal, it had been equally free from the scourge of foreign invasion. And, if the Italians were bound to shed their blood in the endless foreign wars of Rome, if, in those wars, their officers never rose above very subordinate commands, if they comparison—are Velleius, the descendant of an Italian who remained faithful to Rome, and Dién, who, though the latest of all in date, understood Roman affairs better than any Greek writer since Polybios. But Velleius is unluckily very brief, and the fragments of Dién for this period are but few. 1 We must however remember that the Empire was still far from having reached its full extent. The European conquests of Cesar, the Asiatic conquests of Lucullus and Pompeius, were yet to be won. The Roman dominions did not as yet surround the whole Mediterranean. 2 Aulus Gellius (x. 3) has collected some of the worst instances from a speech of Caius Gracchus, Cf. Mommsen, ii, 211, Χ CONDITION OF THE ITALIAN ALLIES 579 reaped none of the direct fruits of victory, still they were by no means left without some indirect profits. If no Italian com- munity, as such, shared in the glories of Scipio or A‘milius, still many individual Italians reaped both booty in their wars, and the reward of Roman citizenship was never beyond the hopes of a deserving soldier. The whole Roman Empire too was open to Italian mercantile enterprise ; the Italians, subject as they might be at home, were a favoured, and almost a ruling, race as com- pared with the Provincials, and they were included in the hatred which Provincials and foreigners bore towards the citizens of the ruling commonwealth.! Subjects who were so nearly on a level with their masters, who had had so great a share in raising their masters to their present greatness, naturally aspired to perfect equality with them. What form was the equality which justice undoubtedly demanded, to take between the Roman and the Italian ally ? The most obvious form, and that which the demand commonly Claim of took, was that of admission to the full franchise of the oma Roman citizen, with all its political rights and personal im- es P munities. This was the form most in accordance with earlier Allies. precedent, and with the general political notions of antiquity. It was also the only form in which the allies could make the demand without infringing, or threatening to infringe, the sovereignty of Rome. A demand for admission to Roman citizenship was therefore the form which the claims of the allies always took both in their own mouths and in those of their Roman advocates. But we can hardly doubt that many of the Italians saw that Advantages there were two sides to the question, and that admission to 22d dis- Roman citizenship would not be an unmixed gain. Rome had, advantages as it was, extended her franchise too far for good government admission. on the municipal type. Her popular Assemblies, attended by thousands of citizens, had become scenes of riot, bloodshed, and open battle. In one point of view the admission of the Allies would have been the greatest possible gain for the Romans themselves. The enfranchisement of the stout yeomen of the Samnite mountains, of the refined nobles of the Etruscan cities, of the burghers of the smaller towns throughout all Italy, would refresh the degenerete Roman People by the infusion of some 1 Mithridatés ordered the massacre throughout all Asia, not only of the Roman citizens, but of all Italians—&8cor γένους ᾿Ιταλικοῦ. See Appian, Bell. Mith., 22, 23. Cf. Sallust, Bel. Jug., 26. . Ditference of feeling among the Italians. Among the states near Rome ; among the Samnites and Lucanians ; among the Etruscans and Umbrians. 580 OF FEDERALISM IN ITALY CHAP. new and vigorous elements. But, unless the Roman Assembly had changed its constitution in some way for which there was as yet no precedent in political history, every fresh infusion of citizens would only make that ungovernable body more un- governable than before. A dweller at the other end of Italy might not be greatly attracted by admission to a vote in such an Assembly, combined with the shadowy possibility of the fasces and the curule chair for some remote descendant. And by admission to Roman citizenship, an Italian town lost its local independence ; it sank into a purely municipal existence ; it fell from the functions of a Colonial Parliament to the functions of an English Town-Council. The leading men would lose the influence of the local magistracies with but little chance of sharing in the magistracies of Rome. The citizens at large would lose the power of managing their local affairs as a separate commonwealth, and receive in exchange a place in the Roman Assembly which was sure to be almost illusory. It is no wonder then that the feeling on the subject differed widely in different parts of Italy. The states nearest Rome, differing little from Rome in blood or language, simply wished for admission to that Roman franchise which had been already conferred on so many of their neighbours. They had no wish to destroy Rome or to weaken her power; they only wished to share her greatness by becoming Romans themselves.' But Samnites and Lucanians looked at matters with different cyes. To them, at their distance, with their foreign speech and foreign feclings, the offer of the Roman franchise was little better than a mockery. In them the old spirit of national independence and national hatred to Rome had never died out. They might accept Roman citizenship as a last resource, if there was no alternative but citizenship or dependence ; but what they really wished for was not Roman citizenship but Samnite and Lucanian freedom ; they were ready at any moment to fight against Rome; they were ready, if need were, to wipe out her name from among the nations. On the other hand some parts of Italy, or at least the ruling classes in them, seem really to have preferred the position of depend- encies to either independence or citizenship. When the struggle came, Etruria and Umbria took hardly any share in it. And 1 Οἷς. Phil. xii. 11. Mon enim ut erinerent nobis civitatem, sed ut in eam reciperentur, petebat. This is said specially of the Marsians. Dr. Liddell (ii. 282) makes the Marsian a Samnite, and puts his speech into the nouth of a Roman. Χ THE CLAIM OF THE ALLIES 581 the reason is easy to be understood. The Roman dominion pre- served at once the internal and the external tranquillity of the Etruscan oligarchies. Etruria, under the shield of Rome, was safe against Gaulish inroads, while the policy of Rome retained the proud and luxurious nobles of the Etruscan cities in their full domination over the rest of their countrymen. It might prove a dear bargain, were they to exchange this local dominion for a mere plebeian franchise at Rome, where they would be massed in some Tribe along with their own dependents, where they would cease to;be Etruscan Lucumos, and would have small chance of becoming Roman Prwtors and Consuls.1 These differences of opinion doubtless existed all along, though they did not make themselves prominently seen till the war actually broke out. Of course till war did break out, the only ery that could be raised was the claim of Roman citizenship for the Italian allies. That claim was successively urged by various men and various parties in Rome. Undoubtedly the true Federal course would have been, not to admit the Allies to the mere or Repre- municipal franchise of Rome, but to unite Rome and all Italy institutions by Federal or Representative institutions. But such a change the true would have been contrary to every Roman feeling and tradition ; ™™°4Y- it is no matter for blame or for wonder that no Roman was found sharp-sighted enough to dream of it or daring enough to propose it. And, failing this more sweeping reform, the demand of citizenship for the Allies was the demand of perfect justice.’ If their cause was taken up as a tool by some factious dema- Τὰς claim gogues, it was also taken up, as the cause of justice, by some 4)... of the best men both of the Senatorial and the Popular party. The proposal ran counter to the worst prejudices of both sides. The vulgar oligarch feared that his path to the Consulship would opposed be made more doubtful if he were exposed to the additional py the competition of the nobles of the allied states, of the Lucumos of — Ktruria and the Imperators of Samnium. The vulgar democrat feared that his vote would lose half alike of its political im- portance and of its market value, if the number of citizens who 1 See Cantu, i. 407. * Florus, iii. 18. Quum jus civitatis, quam viribus auxerant, socii justissime postularent. Velleius, 11. 15. Quorum, ut fortuna atrox, ita caussa fuit justis- sima. Petebant enim eam civitatem, cujus imperium armis tuebantur : per omnes annos atque omnia bella, duplici numero se militum equitumque fungi, neque in ejus civitatis jus recipi, que per eos in id ipsum pervenisset fastigium, per quod homines ejusdem et gentis et sanguinis, ut externos alienosque, fastidire posset. and supported by the best men of both parties at Rome. Tribune- ship of Marcus Livius Drusus, Β.6, 91. 582 OF FEDERALISM IN ITALY CHAP, shared his rights were at once to be doubled. And the proposal also offended a vein of dull conservatism in both parties, that blind clinging to things as they are, under pretence of reverence for antiquity, when to make a change would be simply to imitate the best precedents of that antiquity for which reverence is professed. But there were men of both parties who rose above such narrowness and blindness. The Gracchi, the purest of popular leaders, favoured the cause of the Allies as the cause of justice. The younger Scipio, the purest of aristocrats, stood up for the brave soldiers who had shared his toils and victories, in defiance of the howls of the mongrel populace of the Forum.! Caius Marius, as yet the Third Founder and not the destroyer of his country, himself a Volscian yeoman whose grandfather had not been a free citizen, naturally felt far more sympathy for the cause of Italy at large than for the arrogant pretensions of the local Rome. On the whole, the Italian cause gained a good deal of favour among the better class of the Senators and among the more uncorrupted portions of the people ;? but it was bitterly opposed by the high aristocrats, by the low populace, and by the most selfish class of all, the money-making order of Knights. Its last champion before the war began was that most perplexing of statesmen, the second Marcus Livius Drusus. In the lack of con- temporary and impartial evidence, his character and schemes must for ever remain mysterious ; still we are attracted towards a man whose plans embraced portions of the policy of both contending parties, and who accordingly won for himself the unextinguishable hatred of the vulgar mass on both sides. Perhaps, had not the assassin’s knife prematurely cut him off, he might not have shrunk from actual violence any more than Caius Gracchus or than his enemies. As it was, he put himself at the head of a wide-spread conspiracy which it was impossible that any Govern- ment should tolerate. He was not satisfied with pressing the Italian claims, lawfully and honourably, in the Roman Senate 1 App. Bell. Civ. i. 19. Val. Max. vi. 2.3. Aurel. Vict. de Vir. Ill. lviii. 8. Taceant quibus Italia noverca est, non mater are the famous words said to have been uttered by him. They plainly imply that he looked on the turba forensis as a mere mob of freedmen and enfranchised strangers, far less worthy of the Roman name than allies of Italian blood. The facility with which citizenship was granted to freedmen in preference to themselves was alone enough bitterly to incense the Italians, Cf. the story of the Cretan mercenary in Diodéros, Exc. Vat. lib. xxxvii. 18. 2 See Arnold, Later Roman Commonwealth, i. 179, note. Χ TRIBUNATE OF LIVIUS DRUSUS 583 and Assembly; he bound his partizans throughout Italy by a personal oath to himself which we can hardly look upon as consistent with the character of a Roman citizen and magistrate. This oath shows how widely spread the disaffection was through- out Italy, even while disaffection sheltered itself under the legal demand for the Roman citizenship. Another story shows that, even during the lifetime of Drusus, the Allies were ready to fall back upon force, if lawful means failed them. A body of the Italians formed a plan, which they did not scruple to communicate to their Roman champion, for murdering the hostile Consul Philippus among the solemnitics of the Alban Mount.? Drusus might perhaps not have shrunk from civil war, but he had no mind to be an accomplice in an assassination, and his warning saved his rival from the threatened danger. At last, when Drusus was killed,? and when several eminent Romans were prosecuted, and some of them condemned, for favouring the Italian claims,* the Allies saw that they had no hope except in their own swords. A plot which must have been widely spread through the peninsula was prematurely discovered ;° the unwise threats of the Proconsul Servilius at Asculum ® raised a popular commotion, and every Roman in the town was slain. The sword was now drawn, and it was time to fling away the scabbard. All unenfranchised Italy, save Etruria and Umbria, now took Beginning up arms. One final embassy was sent to Rome, and, when eee its demands were contemptuously rejected, the Seceding States war, 1 Diod. Exc. Vat. [xxxvii. 11]. ᾿Ομνυμι τὸν Ala x.7.d. τὸν αὐτὸν φίλον B.C. 90. καὶ πολέμιον ἡγήσεσθαι Apovow, kal μήτε βίον μήτε τέκνων καὶ γονέων μηδεμιᾶς φείσασθαι ψυχῆς, ἐὰν μὴ συμφέρῃ Δρούσῳ τε καὶ τὸν αὐτὸν ὅρκον ὁμόσασιν. ἐὰν δὲ γένωμαι πολίτης τῷ Δρούσου νόμῳ, πατρίδα ἡγήσομαι τὴν Ρώμην καὶ μεγίστην εὐεργέτην Δροῦσον. 2 Aur. Vict. de Vir. Dl. Ixvi. 12. Florus, iii. 18. 8. 8 He seems (App. Bell. Civ. i. 36) to have in some degree lost the affections of the Italians. They thought themselves threatened by his law for founding colonies, which they feared might be endowed at theirown expense. Drusus, in fact, offended all parties in turn—one of the best proofs of his honesty, though perhaps not of his worldly wisdom. 4 App. Bell. Civ. i. 87. Aur. Vict. de Vir. ΠῚ. Ixxii. 11. 5 The immediate discovery (see App. u.s. 38) was caused by the sending of a hostage from Asculum in Picenum to another town. This was of course a direct attack on the Roman system of isolating the several cities. Livy (Ep. xxi) seems to have given a full account of the internal movements in the Italian states— Eorum coitus conjurationesque et orationes in conciliis principum, 6 Liv. Ep. Ixxii. App. Bell. Civ. i. 38. Analogy between the Italian Allies and the American Colonies. 584 OF FEDERALISM IN ITALY CHAP, proceeded to organize a Government for themselves. Their position was, in everything but its geographical aspect, singularly like the position of the North American Colonies in 1775.} What the colonists demanded was, not separation from the mother-country, but an acknowledgement of their claim to all the natural rights of Englishmen. What the Italians demanded was, not separation from Rome, but admission to the full privileges of Romans. Of course the form of the demand was not the same in the two cases. The Italians asked for closer incorporation, the Americans asked for fuller acknowledge- ment of local liberties. This difference was the natural con- sequence of the geographical difference. The Italians demanded Roman citizenship; the analogous demand on the part of the Americans would have been a claim for representation in the British Parliament. Had England and America formed one peninsula, they probably would have demanded it; but, with the Atlantic between the Colonies and the mother-country, American patriotism necessarily took another shape. But, in other respects, the relations between the ruling country and its dependencies were closely analogous in the two cases. In both cases, the dependent commonwealths possessed a large share of internal independence, while their external affairs were ordered for them by a power over which they had no control. In both cases they were kept isolated from one another, with no common bond save that of common dependence on the dominant power. Even the complaints as to the position of the Italian allies in the Roman armies find a parallel in the complaints made by the Provincial officers in America as to the superiority over them claimed, even on their own soil, by officers of the same rank who bore British commissions. In both cases no doubt there were men who foresaw and desired separation from the first; in America indeed such foresight and desire were confined to a few individuals, while in Italy they clearly extended to whole commonwealths : still separation was neither openly sought for, nor probably generally desired, till all constitutional means had failed, till separation was forced upon the discontented depend- encies by the conduct of the ruling state. The Americans, as being not conquered enemies but British colonies, clave longer than the Italians did to the names of loyalty and union. Still, 1 See Mommsen, ii. 216. * See Marshall’s Life of Washington, ii. 36. x ANALOGY BETWEEN ITALY AND AMERICA 585 when Congress had once raised troops, when the Allies had once set up their counter-Government, the ruling state in each case had no choice but to yield every point at issue, to acknowledge the independence of the seceders, or to reconquer them by force. As the policy of Rome and England differed, so the event of the war differed ; but between the origin and the earliest stages of the two there is a close likeness. The Constitution which the seceding Allies now established Federal was beyond doubt intended to be a Federal one. This is taken Constitu- . . . . tion of the for granted by most modern writers,’ and it seems involved iN seceding the nature of the case. The various nations which joined in the States. revolt might indeed stoop to acknowledge the supremacy of home or to merge themselves in the Roman Commonwealth, but they were not likely either to acknowledge the supremacy of any other state or to merge their national differences in an Italian Republic one and indivisible. They chose a particular city as the seat of the Federal Government; but there is no evidence that it was intended to be anything more than the seat of the Federal Government.?, Their new capital was Corfinium, in the Pelignian territory, a position admirably central for the whole of Italy, and probably chosen in the hope that the northern states which as yet stood aloof would before long join the League. As the Federal capital, Corfintum exchanged its old name for ttalicum that of Italicum.? The League took for the present the form of the. a Confederation of eight * States, each doubtless retaining its full capital internal sovereignty, and some of them probably assuming a League. Federal form in their internal constitutions.° In the details of Constitu- the central Government they closely followed the Roman pattern, tion of the . . . . . ΜΝ Federal a pattern in truth in no way inconsistent with Federal institu- «,,.,1. tions. For, had each of the Roman Tribes possessed the internal ment borrowed 1 See Merivale, Fall of the Roman Republic, p. 84. Canti, Hist. des It. amen i, 408. Cf. Mommsen, ii, 216-17, 220-21. Diodéros (Exc. Phot. 1. xxxvii.) uses of Rome. the Federal word σύνεδροι. 2 Mommsen (ii. 221) seems to think that every citizen of the League received the citizenship of Italicum. I see no. proof of this. 3 Ἰταλική, Strabo, v. 4. Ztalicum, Vell. ii. 16. 4 The number eight seems to rest on good numismatic evidence. The lists vary in different authors. Livy’s list is Prcentes, Vestini, Marsi, Leligni, Marrucini, Samnites, Lucant. Add the Hirpini, who appear as a distinct people from the Samnites (App. i. § 15; see above, p. 566, note 3), and we have the eight states needed. 5 The several states of Samnium and Lucania, isolated by the Roman policy, could hardly fail to return to the old Federal connexion, and the Samnites and Lucanians act throughout as wholes. On Leagues within Leagues, see above, p. 126. Rome the great obstacle to a permanent Italian Federation. The Social War, B.C. 90- 89. 586 OF FEDERALISM IN ITALY CHAP. sovereignty which belonged to each Achaian City, the power of the Consuls, the Senate, and the Assembly would have been a good deal curtailed, but all three would have been just as neces- sary as they were under the actual system. At the head of the League stood two Consuls and twelve Pretors, and the affairs of the Confederation were administered by a Federal Senate of five hundred. This was the nearest approach to a Federal union of the whole peninsula which Italy has ever beheld. It might be a matter for curious speculation what would have been the result if the Italians had finally conquered, as at one stage of the war they seemed likely to do. Rome, so far greater in every way than any other Italian city, would perhaps have been found to be an insuperable obstacle in the way of any lasting Federation of all Italy. Had the Roman armies been finally overthrown, had Rome, instead of admitting the allies to citizenship, been driven to seek admittance into the Italian League, she could never have sat down as an equal and con- tented member of a Federal body. It would have been as when Sparta, in the later days of the Achaian League, was required to sit down as an equal confederate alongside of her own revolted subjects of Messéné and the Eleutherolakénic towns.? The Samnite Pontius gave utterance to a real, though terrible, truth when he said that, if the Italians would be free, they must root up the wood which sheltered the wolves which so long had ravaged Italy. He, we may be sure, had looked to separation from the first, and had held the rejection of the Italian claims by the Roman Senate to be matter for nothing but rejoicing. As it was, it is hard to say whether Rome conquered or was conquered ; but it is certain that, so far as she can be looked upon as successful, her victory was due far more to her diplo- macy than to her arms. As usual, I must decline entering into military details. It is enough for my purpose to say that Rome drew on all her resources both in Italy and in the Provinces. As the British Government strove to reconquer America by the help of German mercenaries and of Indian savages, so Rome called to her help the fierce warriors of Numidia and Maure- tania. As the revolted colonists sought for aid from France, so 1 Diod. Exc. Phot. 1. xxxvii. 2. “ See above, pp. 485, 492. : 3 Vell. ii. 27. ὃ. Telesinus dictitans adesse Romanis ultimum diem, vocifera- batur eruendam delendamque urbem; adjiciens pumquam defuturos raptores Italices libertatis lupos nisi silva, in quam refugere solerent, esset excisa. Χ ROME THE OBSTACLE TO ITALIAN FEDERATION 587 the revolted Italians sought for aid from Mithridatés. But, in the case of Italy, these extraneous aids had less influence on the struggle than they had in the case of America. The Numidians were rendered lukewarm in the Roman cause by an ingenious stratagem,! and Mithridatés, less wise than the counsellors of Lewis the Sixteenth, gave the Italians no effectual support.” The Roman and Italian armies, thus left to themselves, were, on the whole, equally matched ; and the victories and defeats on Successes the two sides were nearly equally balanced. Indeed, as long as οἱ ἴμὸ the League retained its full proportion, the Italians had clearly the advantage. Their successes emboldened the Etruscans and Movements Umbrians ; that is, most probably, the mass of the people ἴπ ἢ Exruria those states, whose interests lay in separation, showed that they umpbria. would no longer be kept down by the local aristocracies, whose interests bound them to the Roman connexion. At all events, Secession began to be threatened among the Etruscan and Umbrian commonwealths.? The Senate now yielded ; citizenship The was offered to the Latins, to the Allies who had remained faithful, Senate finally to all the seceders who should lay down their arms.* vies ne That is to say, Rome was really defeated, but she contrived to of the preserve the appearance of victory. The Allies had in truth Allies. extorted from her at the point of the sword all that any of them had openly demanded, all that many of them had actually wished 1 App. Bell. Civ. i. 42.. 2 Diod. Exe. Phot. 1, xxxvii. 2, ‘O δὲ Μιθριδάτης ἀπόκρισιν δίδωσιν ἄξειν τὰς δυνάμεις εἰς τὴν ᾿Ιταλίαν, ἐπειδὰν αὑτῷ καταστήσῃ τὴν ᾿ΛΑσίαν᾽ τοῦτο γὰρ ἔπραττε. Out of this Dr.. Liddell (ii. 282) makes the following: ‘‘ He bade the Samnites hold out firmly ; jhe was, he said, at present engaged in expelling the Romans from Asia; when ‘that work was done, he would cross the sea, and assist them in crushing the she-wolf of Asia.” The wolves of Pontius Telesinus speak for themselves ; those of Dr. Liddell are wholly inexplicable. It should be observed that this application to Mithridatés was only made in the last stage of the war, by the Samnites and other real enemies of Rome. Probably those states which sincerely sought for Roman citizenship would not have consented to such a negociation. 3 App. Bell. Civ. i. 49. 4 Ib. Δείσασα οὖν ἡ βουλὴ. .. ᾿Ιταλιωτῶν τοὺς ἔτι ἐν τῇ συμμαχίᾳ παραμένοντας ἐψηφίσατο εἷναι πολίτας. This must be the Lex Julia. See Cic. pro Balbo, 8. Merivale, p. 92. The words of Appian do not distinctly mention any offer of citizenship to those who should lay down their arms; but it seems implied in the fact that those who did so did receive it (see Arnold, i. 174), and perhaps in tle words of Velleius (ii. 16), Paullatim deinde recipiendo in civitatem, qui arma aut non ceperant, aut deposuerant maturius, vires refectz sunt. Probably promises to that effect were made, of which the later Lex Plautia-Papiria (see Cic. pro Archia, 8. Merivale, p. 94) was the formal confirmation. The other States accept citizenship, but Samnium and Lucania still hold out, Β.6. 89. 588 OF FEDERALISM IN ITALY CHAP. for. But that policy which never failed the Roman Senate was able to put another face upon the matter. Rome no doubt well knew the real diversity of objects which lurked under the apparent unanimity of the seceders. The commonwealths nearer Rome, to which she was an object of envy rather than of hatred, had now all that they had wished for freely offered to them— offered to them, it might well be said, as the reward of their own prowess in arms. Citizenship was what they had all along striven for; they had been driven into revolt and the establish- ment of a rival Government only by the pertinacious refusal of the wished-for gift. When citizenship was really to be had, there was no need to prolong the struggle for their own sakes, and the Italian Confederation was hardly old enough for them to wish to prolong it for the sake of the Union. It would have been an excess of self-sacrifice beyond all parallel, if Marsians and Pelignians, when their own point was gained, had gone on fighting purely for the sake of Samnites and Lucanians. With the exception of those two gallant nations, all the revolted states gradually returned to their allegiance, and received the full citizenship of Rome. And, received as they were, one by one, often after some success of the Roman arms, Rome was even now able formally to maintain her own principle of yielding nothing to those who resisted and negociating only with the conquered. But the Samnites and Lucanians still held out; when they had once taken up arms, when they had once again won victories and suffered defeats, their old enmity towards Rome was not so easily quenched. The Confederation was now reduced to two members, but those two members still resisted; Italicum sank again into Corfinium, but the Samnite town of A‘sernia succeeded to the rank of the Federal capital! Sulla himself, notwithstand- ing several victories, failed wholly to subdue them; they still prolonged a guerrilla warfare, hoping that, among the factions of the Roman state, some favourable opportunity might still turn up, or that the great King of Pontos might at last land in Italy, and summon them to his banners, as Pyrrhos and Hannibal had summoned their fathers. And for a while they were not wholly disappointed. The Social War had now dwindled into such small proportions that it might be left to a subordinate commander, while the 1 Diod. Exc. Phot. 1. xxxvii. 2. But App. c. 51 calls Bovianum the κοινοβούλιον τῶν ἀποστάντων, Χ ILLUSORY NATURE OF THE ROMAN FRANCHISE 589 threatening aspect of Mithridatés demanded all the attention of the Republic and its chiefs. Metellus Pius was left to deal with the remnants of war! which still lingered in Samnium and Lucania, while the great prize of the Eastern command was disputed between Marius and Sulla. It fell to Sulla; he was chosen Consul, and bidden to recover Rome’s Eastern dominions from her terrible enemy. But just then arose the disputes and Legislation tumults which attended the legislation of Publius Sulpicius. oie The Allies had been admitted to the Roman franchise; but they 5° sa. had been admitted to it in a shape which made its political rights wholly illusory. The new citizens were equal in number Musory to the old; but they were all massed together, in eight Tribes ture only, so that, according to the Roman manner of voting, they franchise could, at the outside, command cight votes only out of thirty- granted five, perhaps only out of forty-three. Considering their numbers ἴο the and weight, they were fully entitled to command twice as many. οοο They were naturally discontented with their position, and their Their discontent, 1 App. Bell. Civ. 68 τὰ λείψανα τοῦ συμμαχικοῦ πολέμου. Cf. capp. 53, 91. 2 It is by no means clear whether the new citizens were all placed in eight of the existing Tribes, or whether eight new Tribes were created to receive them, making the whole number forty-three. The latter course would have been in harmony with the ancient custom by which so many allied or conquered states had been converted into Roman Tribes. The words of Appian (i. 49) are, Ῥωμαῖοι μὲν δὴ τούσδε τοὺς veoroNiras, οὐκ és ras πέντε καὶ τριάκοντα φυλὰς, al πότε ἦσαν αὐτοῖς, κατέλεξαν ἵνα μὴ τῶν ἀρχαίων πλέονες ὄντες, ἐν ταῖς χειροτονίαις ἐπικρατοῖεν. ἀλλὰ δεκατεύοντες ἀπέφηναν ἑτέρας, ἐν αἷς ἐχειροτόνουν ἔσχατοι. This can only mean the creation of ten new Tribes, though dexarevw is a very odd word to express it. Velleius (ii. 20. 2) says, ‘‘Cum ita civitas Italie data esset, ut in octo tribus contribuerentur novi cives ; ne potentia eorum et multitudo veterum civium dignitatem frangeret.” This would most naturally be understood of distributing the new citizens among eight of the existing Tribes, but it might perhaps be taken the other way, and the eight Tribes of Velleius coincide most temptingly with the etght States of the Italian League. Mr. Merivale (p. 96) takes for granted that the Tribes, whether eight or ten, were additional. Dr. Liddell (ii. 289) thinks Appian’s statement “clear and consistent,” and explains the diversity by supposing that “several plans were afoot, but that none was actually carried into effect.”” Now nothing can be plainer than that the plan, whatever it was, was carried into effect, and that the Italians were dissatisfied with the result. (See Merivale, p. 104.) Appian (u.s.) goes on to say, πολλάκις αὐτών ἡ ψῆφος ἀχρεῖος ἦν, dre τῶν πέντε καὶ τριάκοντα προτέρων τε καλουμένων, καὶ οὐσῶν ὑπὲρ ἥμισν. It may be worth a thought whether their special exasperation was not caused by the election of Sulla and Pompeius to the Consulship for B.c. 88—doubtless in the teeth of every Italian voter. 3 Some slight preference to the old citizens could not be helped. In our own Reform Bill old boroughs were allowed to retain their one or two members by the possession of a much smaller population than was required for new boroughs to claim them. Their cause embraced by Marius and Sulpicius. The Civil War, B.C. 88-2. B.C. 87. The Samnite War still continues. Β.6. 87. ὅ90 OF FEDERALISM IN ITALY CHAP. just cause found a vehement advocate in the great Caius Marius. The Volscian yeoman had always taken their side; his heart had always been Italian rather than Roman; when constrained to fight against them in the Social War, he had gone forth with only half a heart, and he had waged war in a very different way from that in which he had waged it against the Numidian and the Teuton.1 Marius, we have no reason to doubt, honestly em- braced the cause of men whose friend he had been through life ; but he was an ambitious, and now a disappointed man, and he of course looked for the grateful support of the new citizens in any future struggles with his rival. Their cause was also taken up by Sulpicius, then a Tribune of the Commons, a celebrated orator, a man hitherto of aristocratic politics, and whose character is certainly not to be estimated by the unfavourable reports of it which have been handed down to us by the Sullan party.? A law was proposed to distribute the new citizens among all the Tribes ; when the Consuls threw vexatious obstacles in the way of its passing, Sulpicius, by a bolder stroke still, proposed another law, transferring the Mithridatic command from Sulla to Marius. The Civil War now began ; Sulla entered Rome as a conqueror ; Sulpicius was killed and Marius fled for his life; and Sulla at last departed for the East, leaving the Marian Cinna in posses- sion of the Consulship, and Samnium and Lucania still unsubdued. The details of the Civil War do not concern me; it is enough for my purpose that the new citizens, Marsians and Etruscans alike, stedfastly clave to the Marian cause,’ and that Samnium and Lucania still continued their anti-Roman warfare. Attempts were made to conciliate both the avowed foes and the discon- tented citizens. The Italians who had accepted the franchise were at last distributed among the thirty-five Tribes,* and so gained their proper position in the commonwealth. Their part in the struggle is no longer that of enemies of Rome, but merely of partizans of one of the two Roman factions. But in Samnium matters were very different. An attempt was made by Metellus to bring the rebels to terms ; citizenship was offered ; the Sam- 1 See Merivale, p. 90. National Review, Jan. 1862, p. 63. 2 Plut. Mar. 35. Sulla, 8. Lau (Lucius Cornelius Sulla, p. 193) has thrown much light on the real character of Sulpicius and his designs. They have been much misunderstood, through trusting too implicitly to reports which, it is clear, represent only the Sullan version of the story. See National Review, January 1862, p. 64. 3 App. c. 64, 86. 4 See Merivale, p. 120. Χ THE SAMNITES BEFORE ROME 591 nites professed to accept it, but they clogged their acceptance with conditions to which Rome, even in her distracted state, could not yield without dishonour, ὁ and the negociation came to nothing. Probably it was only in mockery that the Samnites had professed to listen, hoping to prolong the struggle till some more favourable time. At last the moment came; Rome was Last stage utterly divided against herself; Sulla and the younger Marius οἱ the were at the head of hostile armies, waging a war in which no {π᾿ mercy was shown on either side. Pontius the Samnite and Samnites Lamponius the Lucanian now marched on Rome, with the before avowed purpose of destroying the tyrant city or of perishing in αὶ ὁ, 85. the attempt.2, They were received as allies by the Marian army —an act of treason against their country which almost drives our sympathies to the side of Sulla. But, viewed from the Samnite side and with the memories of old Samnite glories in our minds, this march of the last Pontius is the one heroic scene which redeems the black annals of the Civil War. Rome had now at last to struggle for her existence at her own gates ; Pontius and Lamponius brought her nearer to her overthrow than Hannibal or Pyrrhos. And the brave Samnites might boast that, in this last hour of their national being, victory was in some sort theirs. In the battle before the Colline Gate, Battle Pontius drove Sulla himself before him; had fortune been tlic equally favourable to his Roman allies, he might have avenged Gate, the wrongs of his forefather, and have entered Atsernia with the proudest of the Cornelii led in chains before his car of triumph. But it was not in the Fates that Rome should fall in this the hour of her deepest danger. The star of Sulla the Fortunate was dimmed but for a moment; the whole Samnite host died on the field, or were slaughtered after the battle by the merciless conqueror. In a word, Sulla had delivered 1 App. c. 68. Didn, fr. 166. 2 Vell. (ii. 27. 1) introduces them with more sympathy than a Roman writer often shows toa noble enemy. At Pontius Telesinus, dux Samnitium, vir domi bellique fortissimus, penitusque Romano nomini infestissimus, con- tractis circiter quadraginta millibus fortissime pertinacissimeque in retinendis armis juventutis, Carbone et Mario Coss. abhinc annos cxi. Kal. Novembribus ita ad portam Collinam cum Sulla dimicavit ut ad sumimum discrimen et eum et rempublicam perduceret. See also Florus, iii. 21. 22. App. c. 90-93. Liv. Ep. Ixxxviii. Plut. Sull. 29. Arnold, i. 221-7, and a singularly fine passage of Merivale, pp. 129, 30. 3 App. c. 94, cf. 87. Vell, ii. 27. Didn, fr. 185, 6. Arnold, i. 226. Permanent devastation of Sam- nium by Sulla. Gradual incorpora- tion of the Provinces with Rome. 592 OF FEDERALISM IN ITALY CHAP. Rome, and had thereby fixed the future history of the world for ever. The conqueror had now only to gather in the spoil. Heavy indeed was the hand that fell alike upon Samnium and upon Etruria. Sulla had saved Rome, and all Italy was henceforth to be Roman. The Samnite people were, as far as might be, exterminated, and their cities reduced to desolation! Rome had never again to fear an Italian enemy; but the effects of Sulla’s devastation of Southern Italy remain to our own day. The rooting out of that noble people of brave soldiers and hardy yeomen has been the main cause of that difference which, in every later age, has been visible between the Southern and Northern parts of the peninsula. The policy of Sulla was well nigh the same as that by which, in our own times, another lord of Rome has doomed the same lands to anarchy and brigandage. But, if Sulla wasted Samnium, he at least did it in the cause of Rome’s dominion ; it was reserved for another Saviour of Society, the Eldest Son of the Church, the patron of the Holy Father, to renew the same evil work in the cause of Rome’s subjection to a foreign enemy. $3. Of the Lombard League Our history has now to take a leap of more than twelve hundred years. The victory of Sulla established the permanent dominion of Rome over Italy, and over all the Mediterranean nations. Or rather, what was finally accomplished was not so much the dominion of Rome, as the incorporation of Italy and the Provinces with Rome. Under the Republic indeed, and under the early Cesars, the local Rome still kept her place. But gradually all mankind, from Egypt to Britain, became equally entitled to the name of Romans, and to whatever pre- eminence that once proud name still implied. As classes were gradually mingled together within the Roman dominions, as new nations gradually arose, capable of fighting and negocia- ting with Rome on equal terms, the pre-eminence attached to the Roman name ceased to be the pre-eminence of a particular order within the Empire, but the supposed pre-eminence of all the subjects of the Empire over all the nations beyond its borders. 1 Strabo, v. 4, 11. Οὐκ ἐπαύσατο πρὶν ἣ πάντας τοὺς ἐν ὀνόματι Σαυνιτῶν διέφθειρεν ἣ ἐκ τῆς ᾿Ιταλίας ἐξέβαλε. Χ THE KINGDOM OF ITALY 593 The Roman was now opposed not to the Italian or the Provincial, but to the Persian and the Goth. The Emperors, commonly Rome Provincials by birth, learned to care less for the City and more oreaken for the Empire; and, as barbarian enemies began to threaten, Emperors the presence of Ceesar was needed almost anywhere rather than in the ancient capital. Province after province was lopped away, but no province of the West seems ever to have willingly seceded from the Empire till the Empire had ceased to be Roman in more than name. Strangers established themselves within the Kmpire: barbarian dynasties reigned in Britain, in Gaul, in Spain, in Africa, in Italy itself. The style and title of Augustus was handed on from one stranger to another; it was assumed The © by a Frank and disputed by a Greek or a Slave; yet Rome was imperial never without a Cesar; there was always some Prince whom always she acknowledged as the lawful bearer of the Imperial title, main- whose claim was never denied in theory, however carefully his «4 authority might be evaded in practice. Rome had her Cesar, but, from the fourth century onwards, he dwelt anywhere rather than in Rome itself; at Milan, at Ravenna, or at Pavia; at Nikomédeia or at Byzantium; at Aachen, at Goslar, at Geln- hausen, or at Palermo. This absence of the Emperors was one main cause of the difference between the history of the Old Rome and of the New; the presence of the Eastern Emperors at Constantinople preserved the Imperial authority both in Church and State; the absence of the Western Emperors from The Rome left room for the growth of those sacerdotal and republican Kingdom . . of Italy, powers whose developement forms the history of medizval Italy. , 5 5¢68- From the days of the Lombard invasion there was also an 1250. acknowledged Kingdom of Italy, whose sovereign, from the days 774. of Charles the Great, was commonly either a vassal of the Emperor or the Emperor himself. But the royal authority was never extended over the whole peninsula; the Eastern Emperors still retained a considerable province in the South, and here and there a Lombard Duke or a Saracen freebooter contrived to maintain himself in independence of all kings and Emperors whatsoever. The King of Italy commonly dwelt, as at this day, in a remote corner of his Kingdom! ; when, under the great 1 The perplexing history of the Italian Kings between 888 and 961 may be studied in that most amusing book, Liudprand’s Antapodosis (printed both by Pertz and by Muratori),and in several chronicles in Muratori’s second volume. Some of them bore the title of Emperor (see, for instance, the Chronicle of Farfa, col. 416 of Guido, and 460 of Berenger), but their history is mainly confined to Northern Union of the Crown of Italy and Germany, 961. Weakness of the royal authority, 1039- 1056. The Normans in Apulia and Sicily, 1021- 1194. _ Condition of Rome. Northern Italy in the twelfth century. Predomi- nance of the Cities. Their practical indepen- dence. 594 OF FEDERALISM IN ITALY CHAP. — Otto, the crown of Italy was definitely annexed to that of Germany, the King of Italy became at once a stranger, a plura- list, and a non-resident. The consequence was that the royal authority was weaker in Italy than anywhere else, and that it required an unusually vigorous King, an Otto or a Henry the Third, to maintain any authority at all. Italy thus changed, far sooner than Germany, far more permanently than France, into a system of independent principalities and cities, owning little more than a nominal allegiance to their King and Emperor. By the middle of the twelfth century the notion of a Kingdom of Italy had become almost nominal. The southern part of the peninsula had been converted into an independent monarchy, whose Norman Counts and Kings did not scruple to acknow- ledge themselves as the vassals of the Pope, but rejected all claims to even a formal supremacy on the part either of the Eastern or of the Western Cesar. In other parts of the peninsula smaller princes reigned, nominal vassals, no doubt, of the absent Emperor, but practically no less independent than the Sicilian King. Rome was in an anomalous state, sometimes a republic, sometimes almost a Papal possession, anything rather than a loyal city of the Cesar and Augustus, who, once in his reign, fought his way to a coronation within its walls. Northern Italy had split up into a multitude of practically independent states ; some of them were feudal principalities, but the dominant element in the country was the Cities! It is their greatness, their rivalries, and their fall, which make the history of medieval Italy the most living reproduction in later times of the history of ancient Greece. During the constant absence of the Emperors from Italy, the Lombard cities had become practically sovereign. They not only chose their own magistrates and administered their internal affairs without royal interference, but they exercised all the rights of independent commonwealths ; they levied war and they made peace, they sent and received ambassadors, they entered into treaties and alliances, without any reference whatever to the will of the distant prince whom they still acknowledged as their lawful Emperor and King.® Italy. The most exceptional is King Hugh’s unlucky expedition to Rome. See Liudprand, iii. 44-5. 1 On the greatness of the Cities, and the way in which they had absorbed nearly all the feudal nobility, see the description of Otto of Freising, ii. 12, 14. 2 See above, p. 24. 5.1 do not enter into any question as to the Roman or the Teutonic origin of Χ IMPERIALIST REACTION 595 The amount of authority retained by the Emperors in Italy fluctuated infinitely according to the character and position of the reigning prince. Henry the Third, nearly absolute in Germany, was hardly less so in Italy, but Kings like the Saxon Lothar and the Frankish Conrad retained hardly any authority Reigns of at all. By the middle of the twelfth century, the Imperial Lothar ΤΙ, power in Italy had sunk to the lowest ebb. But about that oat time several circumstances combined to bring about a reaction in 1137-59. its favour. The study of the Civil Law was reviving, and with it there revived a certain feeling of reverence for the power Imperialist which possessed the titles, and claimed the prerogatives, of reaction. Theodosius and Justinian. The independent princes looked with jealousy on the advances of civic freedom, and hoped that the authority of a king would be exercised in favour of feudal chiefs rather than in favour of revolted commonwealths. The cities again, divided against each other, did not always refuse a common master as an arbiter of their quarrels ; small common- wealths oppressed by great ones eagerly invoked Cesar as their protector against the other tyrants ; several cities, above all, the old Lombard capital of Pavia, were bound to the Imperial cause by an attachment as loyal and enthusiastic as any that bound their rivals to the cause of the Church or to the cause of freedom. And, above all, Milan, Cremona, and Tortona themselves still] acknowledged the Roman Emperor and King of Italy as their lawful sovereign. They might be anxious to limit his royal rights to the smallest possible amount, but that they had a King in Cesar, and that Cesar had some rights over them, the stoutest Guelf in Lombardy never dreamed of denying. When therefore Electibn of the choice of the German and Italian! electors had filled the Frederick, throne of Charles and Otto with a prince really worthy to walk ὁ Italian municipal freedom, or whether any civic constitutions can trace their being as far back as Otto the Great. It is enough for my purpose that the cities were practically independent at the accession of Frederick Barbarossa. 1 Otto of Freising (ii. 1) distinctly says that Frederick’s election was made non sine quibusdam ex Italia baronibus, We know not who they were, or by what commission they came, but it is important to mark that the election was not exclusively the work of Germans. So at the election of Frederick's uncle, the late King Conrad, in 1137, the consent of Italy was given through the mouth of a Papal Legate. See Otto Fris. Chron. vii. 22, “ Praeesente Theodwino Episcopo Cardinali, ac sancte Romane Ecclesize Legato, summi Pontificis, ac toliws Romani Populi, Urbiumque Italie assensum promittente.” It should also be remembered that this same Conrad had already been actually chosen and crowned King of Italy at Milan in 1128, in opposition to Lothar, who was then reigning in Germany. See Otto Fris. Chron. vii. 17, ‘‘Conradus a fratre ac quibusdam 096 OF FEDERALISM IN ITALY CHAP. in their steps, the revival of the Imperial dominion in Italy seemed to follow as a matter of course. Frederick of Hohen- staufen, famous by his Italian nickname of Barbarossa, was the greatest and noblest sovereign of his age. He rose as high in aliis Rex creatus, ... a Mediolanensibus .. . honorifice suscipitur, et ab eorum Archiepiscopo Anselmo Modoyci sede, Italici Regni in Regem ungitur.” Of course Conrad intended to become King and Emperor of the whole Empire, if he could, and not merely to reign as a local King of Italy, but the fact is worth notice as showing not only that the right of Italy to a voice in the choice of its sovereign was not denied, but also that the Milanese did not look upon a German King as being necessarily a foreign oppressor, This election of Conrad was just after the Milanese conquest of Como. 1 The authorities for the reign of Frederick are numerous, but unluckily some of the best fail us long before the end of his reign. By far the best historian of that time is Otto, Bishop of Freising, Frederick’s uncle, whose history of Frederick (a distinct work from his Chronicle) unluckily reaches only to the year 1156, and the continuation of Radevic, a Canon of his church, only to 1159. They therefore give us no direct help for the history of the Lombard League. Prefixed to Otto’s history is a letter from Frederick himself to his uncle, describing his first campaign. Otto and Radevic are printed in the sixth volume of Muratori’s Rerum Italicarum Scriptores. There is also a fine old edition printed at Strassburg in 1515, at the end of which (in my copy) is added the poetical account of Frederick’s campaigns by Guuther, otherwise Ligurinus. There is also a contemporary Chronicle by Otto of St. Blaise, printed in the same volume of Muratori. ‘The contemporary poems contained in the collection called Gedichte auf Konig Friedrich, published by Jaco) Grimm (Berlin, 1844), are very curious. Of Italian writers, we have, on the Imperialist side, the very valuable Chronicle of Otto Morena of Lodi, carried on by his son Acerbus and hy a nameless continuator down to 1168. ‘The shorter Chronicle of Sire Raul or Ralph of Milan is of course strong on the other side; it takes in Frederick’s whole reign. These are also in Muratori’s sixth volume. In his seventh volume we have the contemporary Chronicle of Romuald, Archbishop of Salerno, primarily devoted to Sicilian history, but which deals at length with several stages of the struggle between Frederick and the cities. A few things may also be gleaned from the Pantheon of Godfrey of Viterbo, and the Chronicle of Sicard of Cremona in the same volume. All these are contemporary. To the next century belongs the Chronicle of Conrad, Abbot of Ursperg, printed at Strassburg, 1537, edited by Philip Melanchthon. The life of Pope Alexander the Third by Nicolas, Cardinal of Aragon, in Muratori’s third volume, though not compiled till the fourteenth century, is very important, as giving the strictly Papal, as distinguished from the Imperialist, the Lombard, or the Sicilian view, of the history. The abundance of our materials for these times makes us the more sigh over the sad deficiency of them during a large part of the time dealt with in this volume. If all medisval writers were like Lambert of Herzfeld and Otto of Freising, we should not have also to lament the inferiority of our store as well as to rejoice at their abundance. Between original authorities and modern writers may come the work of Sigonius, an Italian scholar of the sixteenth century, De Regno Italie, As he professes to have searched diligently the archives of various cities, he probably had materials before him which are not now available, and may therefore be looked on as occupying a place somewhat like that of Plutarch, Pausanias, and Appian in our earlier history. Of modern writers there is of course the second Χ CHARACTER OF FREDERICK BARBAROSSA 597 every moral quality above Henry of Anjou and Philip of Paris, as he perhaps fell below them in some purely intellectual gifts.! Charac- Firmly believing in his rights, supported in that belief by all terot Germany and by a large part of Italy, he devoted every energy Frederick. of his soul, every resource of his kingdoms, to the assertion of the claims which he had inherited from the Kings and Emperors before him. Stern and merciless while opposition lasted, but faithful to his word? and generous in the hour of victory, Frederick stands forth in honourable contrast to most conquerors of his own or of any other age. He was a King contending His against Republics ; therefore all our noblest sympathies lie with Position his enemies ; but we must never allow ourselves to look on the ποῦ to Oe dl Italian history of the twelfth century ina light reflected only with that from the passions of the nineteenth. Never must we confound οὗ modern the claims of the Saxon, Frankish, and Swabian Cesars with the Austria. imposture of yesterday, which ventures to assume their title and to deck itself with their Imperial ensign. Frederick was indeed a stranger in Italy, but he was not more a stranger than Henry of Anjou was a stranger in England, than Lewis of Paris was a stranger in Aquitaine. His royal title was acknowledged by all; his royal rights were zealously asserted by many ; his personal qualities won the enthusiastic love of multitudes of Italian as well as German partizans.? His position, as lawful Emperor of the Romans, lawful King of Germany, Italy, and volume of the great work of Sismondi, and Raumer’s Geschichte der Hohenstaufen, the second volume for the narrative, and the fifth for the political antiquities. A good deal may also be learned from the fifth volume of Cantu’s Histoire des Italiens. The Histoire des Revolutions d’Italie, by}Ferrari (Paris, 1858), is, I must confess, beyond my understanding. I will only say that the author through- out uses the word “ Federal” in a sense quite different from its usual meaning, and one which I have been quite unable to catch. 1 On the character of Frederick, see National Review, Jan. 1861, p. 61 et 8644. Ἢ The only breach of faith—in a very faithless age—with which Frederick stands distinctly charged is his attack on Alexandria during a truce in 1174. But there is no reason to believe that this was an act of deliberate treachery, as might be inferred from the words of Romuald (tmaginaria treuga, etc. col. 218) and the Life of Alexander (insidiator, perversa proditio, etc. p. 464). Ralph of Milan, a hostile witness, distinctly attributes the Emperor’s breach of faith to the impatience of his Italian allies (accensus ira et dolure Longobardorum, col. 1192), ever foremost in acts of cruelty against their neighbours. See above, pp. 42, 43. It is hard tosee how Frederick was guilty of any breach of faith, however much he may be open to the charge of harshness or cruelty in the destruction of Milan in 1162. Yet the charge seems to be brought by Romuald, col. 203. Cf Ralph of Milan, col. 1187. 8 See the character of Frederick as he seemed to a German admirer in Radevic, The War 598 OF FEDERALISM IN ITALY CHAP. Burgundy, had no one point of likeness to the position of the Austrian or Lotharingian Archduke who insults Germany and Italy by his usurpation of the Imperial title, and who acts the practical wrong of detaining by brute force an Italian province in which his sway is hateful to every native. The struggle not strictly between Frederick and his Italian subjects was hardly a national a national struggle, but a struggle between struggle at all; it undoubtedly called forth a bitter and lasting hatred between German and Italian, but that hatred was the effect of Frederick’s warfare rather than its cause. The notion of nationality was still very vague; many of the Italian nobles had not yet forgotten their German origin; any hatred between Italian and German as such was as nothing compared with the bitterness which raged between neighbouring and rival cities.! The war between the Emperor and the Lombard commonwealths was such a war as would have taken place in every kingdom in royalty and Europe, had the cities everywhere been able to develope them- municipal freedom. selves to the same degree as the Italian cities did. That age and the age which followed it, beheld a vast movement in favour of municipal independence everywhere. In most countries the cities were so weak, and their claims so modest, that the Kings rather favoured them as a useful counterpoise to the more dangerous power of the feudal nobles. But wherever, as in Provence” and Flanders, the cities threatened to grow into independent Republics, a struggle took place between the common- wealths and the local sovereign differing only in scale from the great warfare which tore Italy in pieces. Most of the feudal lords of Italy stood by the side of the Emperor against their common enemies ; in the next age Frederick’s own grandson and namesake showed as little love for civic independence in Germany as himself or his grandfather showed in Italy. To look on Frederick Barbarossa as a mere foreign intruder in Italy, or as affording the slightest parallel to Italy’s modern French and Austrian oppressors, is to catch at one of the most superficial of lib. iv. ο. 80, and for his portrait by a no less zealous Italian adherent, see Acerbus Morena, col. 1115. 1 One of the most striking passages on this head is in Acerbus Morena, col. 1141. ‘ Bene scicbat [Landenses] Mediolanenses nullam pietatem de ipsis habere, quam de rabiosis canibus haberent, et si manus aliorum inimicorum effugerent, ipsorum tamen Mediolanensium manus nequaquam evadere valerent.” ? On the Provencal Republics, see Sismondi, Histoire des Franvais, part iv. c. 410 (vol. iv. p. 281), William de Nangis in An. 1257 (Pithou, Hist. Fr. Scriptt. Vet. ed. 1596, p. 446), 996, ed. Bruxelles. 3 See Kington’s History of Frederick the Second. Χ FREDERICK AND THE LOMBARD CITIES 599 resemblances and to forget the essential unlikeness which lies below. Frederick then, already elected at Frankfort and crowned Frederick King of Germany at Aachen, entered Italy, not as an external ees τ invader, but to assume, in the regular order of things, the crown taly, Ld. of the Italian Kingdom at Monza or Milan,! and the crown of the Roman Empire at Rome. He came too to settle the affairs of a Kingdom long deserted by its Kings, and specially to redress the wrongs of certain injured commonwealths which cried to him for help against their oppressors.” His alleged royal rights came Collision into collision with the alleged rights of various Italian cities, but οἱ cams neither party denied the existence of some rights in the other. 41. bn. The difference seems to have been mainly this — Frederick, peror and though willing to allow to the cities a large amount of municipal the Cities. independence, understood his royal rights as implying a direct and immediate sovereignty over them. Milan and_ her confederates, on the other hand, were willing to acknowledge the external suzerainty of the Emperor, but claimed to them- selves all the essential powers of sovereign commonwealths. They excepted his royal rights in their manifestoes, they re- cognized his royal title, they were ready to pay him a royal tribute,? and to show him all royal honour,‘ but they would both be sovereign within their own walls and capable of making war and peace with their neighbours. Frederick’s policy, on the other hand, strictly forbade all private war and all private alliances® between any communities within his realm. In his Early first campaigns he was successful, as much through the zealous δον help of his Italian partizans as through the forces which he Frederick, 1154-62. 1 Such was the regular course of things. In point of fact Frederick was crowned King of Italy not at Milan, but in the loyal city of Pavia. Otto Fris. ii. 20, * Compare the contrasted descriptions of Otto Morena and of Ralph of Milan at the opening of their respective chronicles. 3 The Imperial claim of Fodrum (see Ducange in voc. and Otto Fris, ii. 12) amounted to a tribute for the time heing, though it was only required when the King went to Rome to receive the crown of the Empire. 4 Rom. Sal. c. 221. Nos gratanter Imperatoris pacem, salvo Italie honore, recipimus, et ejus gratiam, libertate nostra integra remanente, preoptamus. Quod ei de antiquo debet Italia, libenter exsolvimus, et veteres illi justitias non negamus ; libertatem autem nostram, quam a patribus nostris, avis, et proavis hereditario jure contraximus, nequaquam relinquemus. 5 Sigon. de Reg. It. 584. Volumus etiam ut cum nulla civitate conjurati- onem injussu nostro ineatis [Cremonenses]. 600 OF FEDERALISM IN ITALY CHAP. brought from the other side of the Alps. Pavia triumphed over her rival ; the despiser of Ceesar and his rights! was, like Thebes, levelled to the ground by her exulting neighbours, and her Destruction inhabitants, like those of Mantineia, were distributed among ee four unwalled villages.? Lodi rose again, like Messéné under the hands of Epameinéndas,* and the royal power was as fully acknowledged in Lombardy as in any kingdom in Europe. What Oppression called forth that spirit of resistance which triumphed in the end of ___, was the oppression exercised in Frederick’s absence by many Frederick's . . . . : agents, Οἱ his German lieutenants, which the Emperor himself, on his return to Italy, failed to chastise as his royal duty required.‘ Four And now came one of those moments which have offered eins themselves at long intervals in the history of the world for the Union of realization of the great vision of our own times, the formation of a Italy ; free and united Italy. Twice has the opportunity offered itself in the form of a national Monarchy, twice in that of a Federal in the Republic. We have seen the attempt made to establish an Social Italian Confederation in the days of Sulla and Pontius Telesinus ; we can hardly say that the attempt was again made, but most under the certainly the opportunity was again offered, in the days of Lombard Frederick Barbarossa and Alexander the Third. In the next πων, age the chance came from the opposite side. It would have deprived Florence and Genoa of some ages of splendour, but it would have saved Italy, as a whole, from many more ages of oppression, if all Italy had been, in the thirteenth century, under united under the sceptre of Frederick’s descendant Manfred. Manfred; Jn all these cases Rome, Republican, Imperial, or Papal, has been under the greatest difficulty in the way. So we see it in our own day, τοῖο mel, when a fourth opportunity has offered itself, when, as far as Italy is concerned, that opportunity has been vigorously seized upon, and when the delay in the full victory of right is owing 1 Gedichte auf Konig Friedrich, p. 65: De tributo Cesaris nemo cogitabat, Omnes erant Cesares, nemo censum dabat ; Civitas Ambrosii velut Troja stabat, Deos parum, homines minus, formidabat. 2 Rom. Sal. col. 299. Otto St. Bl. col. 875. Divisis in quatuor partes civibus, regione inculta ipsis ad inhabitandum concessa, quatuor eos oppida eedificare jussit, ipsosque, ut dictum est, per partes divisos ea incolere fecit. Cf. above, pp. 154, 155. 3 Rad. Fris. iii. 27. Otto Mor. col. 1011, 1087. Cf. above, p. 140. 4 See Vit. Alex. iii, 456. Acerbus Mor. col. 1127, 1131. Cf. Conrad Ursp. p. 809. Acerbus gives large details, and the witness of so warm an Imperialist proves a great deal. Χ FOUR OPPORTUNITIES FOR UNION OF ITALY 601 wholly to the selfishness of avowed foreign enemies and to the baser hypocrisy of pretended foreign friends. Among the four cases, the second was, in some respects, the least favourable, because the union of the whole peninsula would have been, in the twelfth century, an idea utterly chimerical. At any one of the other three periods, an united Italy would have included, as we have seen it include in our own times, southern Italy, as well as northern. In the twelfth century, the idea of Italy as a Distinc- national whole, including Apulia and Calabria no less than Lom- tion οὗ bardy and Tuscany, did not enter the mind of any party. πον ™ Southern Italy formed no part of the Italian Kingdom. Held southern by the Eastern Emperors, by independent Dukes, and now by Italy. the powerful Norman Kings of Sicily, the modern Kingdom of Naples had very little share in the revolutions of the northern part of the peninsula. It was indeed in Campania that the first The Italian Republics arose. But Naples, Gaeta, and Amalfi, like pompanan Venice in another part of Italy, were really Byzantine depen- 5580. 1188᾽ dencies, whose allegiance, distant and isolated as they became, was best retained by allowing to them a large amount of prac- tical freedom. Their freedom was like that of Cherson at the other end of the Empire, or like that of Bourdeaux and Bayonne in the fifteenth century, when they found in loyalty to the distant King of England their surest safeguard against the despotism of the Valois. The Republics of Campania had no connexion with those of Lombardy, and, in the days of Frederick, they had sunk into mere municipalities of the Sicilian Kingdom. During the war with Frederick, both the Eastern Emperor and the Sicilian The cities King were zealous in the cause of the Lombard commonwealths ; Supported but this was simply because they were both the enemies of Pope, the the Western Emperor. William! and Manuel had no more Eastern natural love for Lombard freedom than they had natural friend- E™peror, ship for one another. They settled their own differences King of in the face of the growing power of Frederick, and, under Sicily. this strange combination of circumstances, the Lombard Re- 1166. publics found three powerful protectors against their own sovereign. The Pope, the Eastern Cesar, and the Sicilian King were all zealous in their cause; yet we can hardly doubt that any one of the three would have been more ready to swallow 1 William the Bad and his son William the Good, different as they appear in the internal history of Sicily, can hardly be distinguished in their relation to northern Italy. Parallel with the Revolt of the Nether- lands, First movements in the Veronese March, 1155. Beginning of the LOMBARD LEAGUE, 1164. Relations of Venice and the Lombard Cities. Action of the Emperor Manuel. 602 OF FEDERALISM IN ITALY OHAP. them up than Frederick himself, if a common dread of his power had not for a moment united their interests with those of freedom. | As in the liberation of the Belgian provinces from Spain, so in the struggle of the Lombard cities against Frederick, the movement did not begin in the quarter in which it was most vigorously carried on to the end. The revolt against Philip the Second did not begin with Holland and those other provinces which, in the end, won and maintained their freedom. During the earlier stages of the war, the main centre of interest lies in those southern provinces which at last fell back under the Spanish yoke. So the first movements against Frederick now began in a corner of Italy which, both before and after, played quite a secondary part. Verona had indeed, nine years earlier, acted vigorously against the Emperor,” but both Verona and the neighbouring cities have called for but little of our attention compared with Milan, Cremona, and Tortona. It was probably because the north-eastern cities had suffered so much less than the others in the first part of the war that they are found the foremost in beginning the second. The first group of cities which leagued together for the recovery of their liberties con- sisted of Verona, Padua, Vicenza, and the great island common- wealth of Venice.? This last city, it should be remembered, was no part of the Kingdom of Italy. Venice had never admitted the claim of the German Kings to the style of Roman Emperors ; she had found her account in cleaving to the nominal supremacy of the Cesars of Byzantium till she became, as she now was, strong enough to dispense with any acknowledgement of vassalage to either of the Lords of the World. She must therefore be looked on throughout as an external ally, almost on the same footing with William and Manuel. According to the Byzantine version, the movement was first suggested by the Eastern Emperor, who sent his Ambassador Niképhoros Chalouphés to Venice, and other agents to the smaller Italian cities, in order to ' This peace was concluded soon after the accession of William the Good, Rom. Sal. col. 1166. * Otto Fris. ii, 27. Rad. Fris. iii. 45. Otto Mor. col. 991. 3 Acerbus Mor. col. 1123. TIisdem temporibus Veronenses et Paduani et Vicentini, certique [caterique] de illa Marchia, preter paucos Imperatoris, fieri contra Imperatorem rebelles exstiterunt, partim propter pecuniam Venetie accep- tam, que jam ante Imperatori resistant [resistebat] Rad. Mil. 1189. Eadem quoque hyeme Veronenses cum omnibus de Marchia illa juraverunt cum Veneti- bus, et facti sunt Imperatori rebelles. Cf. Vit. Alex. iii. 456. Sicard, 600. Χ DESIGNS OF THE EMPEROR MANUEL 603 unite them against the rival Cesar.' There is nothing im- probable in the story ; Byzantine troops and Byzantine gold play an important part throughout the narrative, and Manuel was an ally of far more moment than might seem to those who are accustomed only to vulgar commonplaces about ‘Greeks of the Lower Empire.” The Byzantine power was indeed no longer Condition what it had been under the great Macedonian Emperors, but the of the . ᾿ Ὡς . Kastern vigorous rule of the Komnénian princes had recovered a large Empire. portion of Asia from the Turk,” and in Eastern Europe, the Cesar of Constantinople, after his Servian and Hungarian victories, no longer met with a rival on equal terms. Manuel was no statesman, and he was perhaps more of a knight-errant than a general; his Empire was weakened by his very victories ; still, under him, the Eastern Empire presented a splendid and formidable appearance in the eyes of Europe. He aspired to Manuel reunite the rival Churches and the rival Empires ; he, the true aspires to Emperor of the Romans, aspired to reign once more in the the capital of his predecessors instead of the northern Barbarian Empires. who presumptuously usurped the titles of Roman sovereignty.? 1 Joan. Kinnamos, Hist. lib. iv. (p. 298, ed. 1652). Ὅθεν καὶ ἐπὶ τὰ ἔθνη τὰ τῇδε Kal κόλπου ἐντὸς ἵδρυται τοῦ ᾿Ιονίου, τῶν ἀσημοτέρων τινὰς ἀφανῶς ἐκπέμπων, τῆς Φρεδερίκου τε αὐτὰ ὑπομιμνήσκειν ἐκέλευεν ἀπληστίας, καὶ πρὸς ἀντίστασιν ἤγειρεν. els δὲ τὸ Οὐεννέτων ἔθνος Νικηφόρον σὺν χρήμασι τὸν Χαλούφην ἔπεμπε, πειρασόμενόν τε εἰς αὐτὸν τοῦ ἔθνους εὐνοίας, καὶ ἐπὶ τῷ Ρωμαίοις συμφέροντι τὰ τῇδε διοικησόμενον. . 2 I mean, of course, the Seljouk Turks of Ikonion ; the Ottomans had not yet appeared, 3 The language of the Byzantine and Papal writers on this head is very curious. The schismatic Greek now becomes Magnus et excelsus Constantinopolis Imperator (Vit. Alex. iii. 458, 60). Manuel sends his Ambassador Jordan ; “ Nihilominus quoque petebat ut, quia occasio justa, et tempus opportunun at- que acceptabile se obtulerat, Romani corona Imperii a sede Apostolica sibi redde- retur, quoniam non ad Frederici Alamanni, sed ut suum jus asseruit pertinere”’ (458). And again, “rogat et postulat, quatenus predict Ecclesia adversario Imperii Romani corona privato, eam sibi, prout ratio et justitia exigit, restituatis”’ (460). Cf. Godfrey of St. Pantaleon (Freher, Rer. Germ. Scriptt. vol. i.) in A. 1172. ‘Imperator . . . conquestus de Italicis et illis qui partibus favebant Rulandi, quod coronam Romani Imperii Greco imponere vellent.” (This was just after the special alliance between Pisa and Constantinople. See Sismondi, ii. 190.) In Kinnamos (lib. iv. pp. 247, 8) we see the same side from the home point of view. Φρεδερίκῳ τῷ ῥηγὶ ᾿Αλαμανῶν ἐπὶ μέγα ἑκάστοτε τὰ τῆς δυνάμεως ἐχώρει καὶ ηὔξανεν. .. Φρεδερίκος Ῥώμης ἤδη περιγεγονὼς, ἄλλα τε πολλὰ ἐνεωτέρισε, καὶ δὴ καὶ ᾿Αλέξανδρον τὸν τῇδε ἀρχιερέα τοῦ θρόνου κατασπάσας, ᾿Οκταβιανὸν ἀντεισῆξεν ἐντεῦθεν οἶμαι τοῦ Ῥωμαίων αὐτοκράτορος προσ- αρμόσειν αὐτῷ τὸ ἀξίωμα οἰηθείς .. .. Φρεδερίκος τῇ αὐτοκράτορος πάλιν ἐποφθαλμίζων ἀρχῇ, κ.τ.λ. B.C. 394. Growth of the League, 1164-8. Accession of Lodi, 1167. Founda- tion of Alexan- dria, 1168. 604 OF FEDERALISM IN ITALY CHAP, More than one embassy was sent from Manuel to Alexander demanding a Roman Coronation, and though this request was, as might be expected, always evaded, still the Eastern Emperor continued, throughout the war, to give important help to every enemy of his Teutonic rival. That Manuel then was actually the first mover in the formation of the Lombard League is a statement which we may readily accept. But if it were so, his promptings were merely the occasion and not the cause; his embassies and his gold did but enable the discontented cities to do a little sooner and a little more effectively what they would assuredly have done sometime without his help. Manuel caused the formation of the Lombard League only in the sense in which the Persian King caused the Corinthian War ;! the Italians received his gold as Aratos received the gold of Ptolemy, as Algernon Sidney received the gold of Lewis, merely as the con- tribution of an ally towards a purpose which suited the objects of both. Anyhow the League,” such as it was, was formed, and grew, till it included most of the Lombard cities. Pavia indeed stood firm in her loyalty; but Cremona,® lately almost as zealously Imperialist, was not long in embracing the cause of freedom ; Lodi, small, weak, and isolated, clave to the cause of her Imperial founder, but, when her existence was perilled, she unwillingly became a member of the Confederacy.* Milan, destroyed like Mantineia, rose again, like Mantineia, from her ruins ;° and, as if to repeat every detail of the Arkadian parallel, the combined powers of the League founded what might seem to be meant as a Federal city, a second Megalopolis.© The new city received the name of Alexandria, in honour of the Pontiff whose cause was incidentally linked with that of Lombard free- dom. But Alexandria resembled Megalopolis only in its strategic position ; it stood as an outpost against Pavia, as Megalopolis stood as an outpost against Sparta, but it never was meant to become a Federal capital or a member of a true Federal body in any shape. 1 Xen. Hell. iii. 5.1.9. See Grote ix. 400. * The Confederacy is at first Veronensis Societas (Vit. Alex. iii. 456), after- wards Societas Lombardic: or Lombardorum, Lombardorun Communitas or Confede- ratio (ib. 461, 4, 7), Sucietas Lombardi et Marchice et Veron et Venetia. (Conventus Venetus ap. Pertz, iv. 151.) 3 Vit. Alex. iii. 456. Acerbus Morena, 1133. 4 See the details in Acerbus Morena, 1135-43. 5 Acerbus Morena, 1185. Otto St. Bl. c. 20, 22. Cf. Ursperg, p. 309. 6 See above, p. 159. x LOMBARD LEAGUE OF INDIRECT FEDERAL IMPORTANCE 605 For in fact the importance of the Lombard League in Federal Indirect history is of exactly the same kind as the importance of the ire portance Amphiktyonic Council. It is important simply because it never Lombard became a Federal Government. Yet its beginnings closely League in resembled the beginnings of two of the great Federations of Federal 4 . History. history. ‘The Lombard League was analogous to the union of gnatogy the Belgic Provinces or the American Colonies before their with respective Declarations of Independence. The oaths of the Amenca Confederate cities may be paralleled with the early acts of the Nether. American Congress, with the early engagements among the lands. Provinces of the Netherlands, such as the separate alliance of Holland and Zealand,! or the general agreement of all at the 1575. Pacification of Ghent.? All agree in being unions of revolted 1576. subjects against Princes whose authority, within its lawful bounds, there was no avowed, and probably no real, intention of shaking off. All alike are they distinguished from the struggle of the Peloponnésian towns against Macedonia, where of course no sort of legal right was acknowledged in the oppressor. The Lombards indeed guarded the rights of the Prince against whom they were contending, even more scrupulously than the Americans or the Netherlanders. The cities agree to maintain strict alliance with each other, to wage war against the Emperor with their united forces, to make no peace or truce with him except by common consent, but all is done with the most careful reservation of their faith and allegiance to the Empire itself. The Lombard League, 1 Recueil des Traités, iii. 397. * Th, iii, 366. Motley’s Rise of the Dutch Republic, iii. 85 (ed. 2). 3 This feeling appears strongly in the first beginnings of the League, but it seems gradually to have been weakened, though the event shows that the idea of perfect independence of the Empire could never have been reached. The rights of the Empire are formally reserved on the accession of Cremona and Lodi to the League. According to Sigonius (1. 14, p. 595) the Confederates describe themselves to the Cremonese as non Friderico adversaturt, sed communem libertatem adversus immanem profectorum ejus inypotentiam tutaturi, and the agreement with Lodi is made salva fide Friderico Coesari data (Ib. p. 596). This last fact at least rests on the sure authority of Acerbus Morena (1143): Faedus . . . salva Imperatoris Jidelitate, sicut palam tunc dicebatur, inierunt. In the oath of the cities in 1167, given in Muratori’s Antiquitates Italicee (Diss. 48, vol. iv. p. 262), the formal reservation is not made, but the rights of the Empire are implicitly reserved. They agree to resist any addition to their obligations as they stood at the accession of Frederick contra quod velit nos plus facere quam fecimus a tempore Henrict Regis usque ad introttum Imperatoris Friderict. This language clearly implies that some obligations towards the Empire were recognized. Alsoin this oath they do not bind themselves to make war on the Emperor by name, but only on any one who may violate their rights, contra omnem hominem quicumque nobiscum facere voluerint guerram aut malum. But in the later oaths they engage to make Congress of the League. The League not a true Federa- tion. Why the League did not develope into a true Federa- tion, 606 OF FEDERALISM IN ITALY CHAP. in short, was not a Federal union, even of the laxest kind, it was a mere temporary agreement of certain cities to employ their united forces to accomplish a common object. While the war lasted, the League had its Congress ;! the Rectors” of the Con- federate cities met, as, in the nature of things, some one must have met, to arrange the measures to be taken by the Confederacy. Now and then they seem to have interfered in disputes between two Confederate cities, to defend the weaker against the stronger.® But there was no Federal Government, no formation of an united state, nothing, in short, but an alliance of an unusually close kind.4 Why then should-such an ephemeral union claim any place in a history of Federalism ? Because, I would answer, it is instructive to mark the contrast, and the causes of the contrast, between the subsequent fate of the Lombard, the Belgian, and the American Confederacies. The early stages of all three were remarkably alike. But, in the two later cases, a lasting Federal Government rose out of what was, in its beginning, a mere Con- federacy for a temporary purpose. At first sight the circumstances of Italy might seem just as favourable for the formation of such a Government as the circumstances of America or the Netherlands. Why then did not a real Federal State grow up out of the promising elements of the Lombard League such as grew up out of the elements—at one time not more promising—which developed into the Belgian and American Confederations ἢ Several causes at once present themselves ; one of them indeed war on hin by name, and to make no peace or truce with him, his sons, or his wife, without the common consent. See Sigonius, pp. 606, 607, 618. Muratori, Ant. iv. 266,271. I transcribe Muratori’s comment (279): “Ceterum antea Societas Lombardorum propriam tantummodo tutelam in suis fcoederibus preferebat, volebatque illasam fidelitatem Imperatoris. At hic sine ulla tergiversatione ab eo discedit, atque ipsum ejurat, hostemque decernit. Eum nempe uti depositum et anathemate perculsum ab Alexandro III. Papa jam tandem omnes exsecra- bantur,” ° 1 Vit. Alex, III. 461. Pontifex . . . ad Lombardos literas et nuntios festinanter direxit, et eorum dubia et nutautia corda firmavit, ut ex singulis civitatibus wneam discretum et idonewm personam, que vicem generalitatis haberet, ad ejus presentiam destinarent . .. . . Unde factum est quod quidam fideles et sapientes viri a Lombardorum communitate sunt electi, etc. 2 Ib. 466. Rectores civitatum Lombardiz. 3 Cantt (Histoire des Italiens, iv. 558) quotes a case in which the Congress of the League annulled a sentence of the Consuls of Bellagio to the prejudice of the people of Civenna and Lamonta. Would they have ventured on such an act of justice, had the offender been Milan or Verona? This whole chapter of Cantu should be read, especially the remarks on subject districts in p. 563 et seqq. 4 See Sismondi, ii, 184-9. Canti, iv. 531. . Χ LOMBARD LEAGUE NOT A TRUE FEDERATION 607 lies quite on the surface. Frederick Barbarossa was more under Personal the dominion of reason than either Philip the Second or George ὁμαχθοίετοῦ the Third. When Frederick saw that the maintenance of his ον claims in their full extent was hopeless, he had the wisdom to surrender a part in order to save the rest. The Belgian and the American insurgents had to do with princes who would yield nothing till they were obliged to yield everything. Thus the original demand for just and legal government gradually changed into a demand for total separation. The prudence of Frederick He yields prevented matters from reaching this stage. But this personal ™ time. difference by no means touches the root of the matter. The Second Lombard League was renewed against Frederick the Second, by ombard . . . . eague, which time one might have thought that the need of union would 1008, have been more strongly felt; but the second League was, if anything, still further removed from a true Federal Government than the first. It is indeed possible that, had the struggle with Frederick Barbarossa gone on much longer, the cities might have been tempted to throw off their allegiance to the Empire altogether. In that case an united Government of some sort, whether a League or a national Kingdom, could hardly fail to have taken its place. As it was, the Imperial power in Italy died out No definite gradually, without any definite act either of revolt or of abdica- moment tion at any particular moment. There was therefore no particular που 5, moment when it was clearly imperative to substitute any other Italy. Government for it. There was therefore no such distinct opportunity or rather necessity for the formation of a real Federation in Italy as there was in America and in the Nether- lands. And, what was of still greater moment, there was not No such in Italy the same predisposition towards union of any kind which tendency there was in the other cases. The Lombard cities were in truth τη Italy in a position far too closely resembling that of the old Greek as there cities to feel the need of union. Their feelings and their patriot- van the ism were more strictly local than in the Netherlands or in the jana. American colonies. In Italy we have to do with cities ; in the and in other two cases with provinces. The Dutch cities indeed retained America. a most extraordinary amount of independence, still the immediate component members of the Confederation were not cities but provinces. Again, the Lombard cities, in the practical abeyance The of the royal power, had actually exercised all the rights of Lombard independent sovereignty ; probably no wrong seemed to them {4 ; : really so great as when the Emperor required them to give up their sovereign ; the Dutch and American provinces not so, 1429-33. Vigour and constancy of the Confede- rates. 608 OF FEDERALISM IN ITALY CHAP. darling privilege of private war. But the American Colonies had never possessed any sovereignty at all; and the separate sove- reignty of the Belgian Counties and Duchies—sovereign at any time only with the reservation of the rights of the Empire }— had been altogether lost since their union under the House of Burgundy. There may have been local jealousies in cither case, but there was nothing like the bitter hatred which reigned between Milan and Lodi. The American and the Dutch States had infinitely more to gain than to lose by union; the Italian cities, like those of old Greece, would have lost by any effective union all that was dearest to them. In days when the names of Rome, and Cesar, and Augustus had not yet lost their magic influence, we can almost believe that a more complete subjection to the Empire would have been felt as less irksome than the establishment of a Federal Government strong enough to deliver Lombardy from the curse of local warfare. To have preached Federalism to the Italians of the twelfth century would have been like preaching it to the Greeks before the days of Alexander. Indeed it- would have been a vainer attempt still, for experience did at least teach a large portion of Greece the necessity of union, while Italy never learned the lesson till our own times. The Lombard League then was a mere Confederacy, a mere close alliance to obtain a common object ; a Confederacy so close that it might easily have been developed into a real Confedera- tion, but which, in point of fact, never was so developed. As a Confederacy, it claims our deep admiration for the unity and vigour with which so many independent cities acted together during so long a struggle, for the constancy with which they refused all offers of separate terms, all temptations to break the ties which bound them to their external allies, the Pope, the King of Sicily, and the Emperor of the East.2. It was only when the war was over, when they had seen Cesar himself fly before them, that any of the true Lombard cities began to fall away. 1 Of the Crown of France in Flanders ; of the Empire everywhere else, 2 See Vit. Alex. iii. 965, 6, told with much papal partiality. It was however forbidden for any particular city to make any private agreement with the Eastern Emperor. Sce the oaths in Cantt (iv. 516). Ht ego nullam concordiam fect vel faciam cum imperatore Constantinopolitano. The League might negociate with Manuel as an external power ; for a single city to negociate with him could hardly fail to involve an admission of his sovereignty, which would be at once dangerous for the other cities, and inconsistent with the rights which they still acknowledged in the Western Emperor. Χ POLICY OF VENICE 609 Venice indeed seems to have put a laxer interpretation on her Peculiar engagements ; but then Venice stood in quite a different position, policy of and was actuated by quite a different spirit, from the cities of ‘°° the mainland. Venice did not scruple to aid Frederick the Siege of enemy of the League against Manuel its ally, when Frederick Ancona, attacked, and Manuel defended, her commercial rival Ancona:! " Perhaps, as Ancona was not a member of the League, the island city did not actually violate the letter of any engagement ; still her conduct at least displayed something like sharp practice on the part of her merchant princes. The details of the war are matter of Italian history. At one Course of time, before the decisive stroke which ended the war, there ‘¢ ὙΆΓ. seemed a fair hope of settling matters by peaceful negociation. .. . : . . . 4 . iege of Frederick had failed—the only failure in his life which can be ajexan- called disgraceful—before the mud walls of Alexandria. A dria, pitched battle seemed impending between the Imperial army and 144-5 the forces of the League. But, gallantly as they had resisted him when he appeared as an aggressor beneath their walls, the Italians still shrank from meeting their King and Emperor as an enemy on the open field. Negociations were opened ; each side was ready, saving its own rights, to entrust its cause to the negocia- decision of chosen commissioners.2— The question to be debated tions be- would of course have been as to the extent of the Imperial rights, teen the . Ἀ . . Emperor as no one denied the Emperor’s possession of some rights. As ana the far then as Frederick and the cities were concerned there seems Cities no reason why the disputed points might not have been settled (1175) then as well as nine years later. That they were not so settled seems to have been no fault either of the Emperor or of the Republics. Possibly indeed Frederick was not yet humbled enough to make such concessions as he afterwards mace. But it was neither by King nor Commonwealth that the ng ociations broken off were actually broken off; the cities might have madé verms with by the ‘ ~ “ae . Papal Cesar, but the Church was unwilling to make terms with the Legates, schismatic.2 The war was renewed; the next year saw the 1 Kinnamos, p. 314. Otto St. B. c. 20. Sismondi (ji. 195) seems to me to attach far too much value to the account of the siege by Buoncampagno (in Muratori’s sixth volume), a rhetorical critic of the next century, to whose rhetoric he now and then adds a touch of his own. 2 Vit. Alex. ili. 465. See the text of the Concordia Imperatoris et Societatis Lombardic in Pertz, iv. 145. 3 Alex. iii, 466. Cf. Rad. Mil. 1192. Romuald, 216. Battle of LEGNANO, defeat of Frederick, 1176. 610 OF FEDERALISM IN ITALY CHAP, famous fight of Legnano, where, for perhaps the only time since the days of old Roman conquest, the Italian overcame the German in the open field. Not sheltered by ramparts, not strengthened by auxiliaries, the forces of some half-dozen Lombard cities, gathered round the carroccio of Milan, put to fight the armies of the Roman Empire.! Cesar himself was left Change in Frederick's policy. Negocia- tions for Peace, 1176-7. Frederick reconciled with Venice and the Church, 1177. Rights of the Empire as under- stood by the Lombards, to skulk, unattended, and, like Aratos,? already mourned as dead, to the shelter of his still faithful Pavia. Frederick now knew that he was vanquished ; the plans of more than twenty years were utterly shattered ; from that day he no more drew his sword against Italian freedom; he confined his exertions to securing by diplomatic skill as large a portion as he could of his disputed rights. Then followed long negociations which we have the advantage of having narrated in detail by an eye-witness and principal actor.2 A year earlier the cities had seemed less inflexible than the Church; now that Frederick was pre- pared to renounce his schism, Alexander did not escape the charge of forsaking the cause of the cities. In that famous and much misrepresented interview at Venice, Frederick received absolution from Alexander and came to terms with his temporal enemies. He concluded a separate peace with Venice,® as an independent power, and the Republic thereby incurred some ill- will on the part of the Lombards for what was held to be a desertion of her allies.’ He also concluded a truce for fifteen years with the King of Sicily, and entered into negociations with the Lombard League.’ The cities set forth their claims ; they were ready to acknowledge in the Emperor all such rights as had been held by his predecessor Henry the Fifth. These 1 Vit. Alex. iii, 467. Rad. Mil. 1192. Otto St. B. c. 28. The Ursperg Chronicle (p. 310) has a curious euphemism. Imperator rursus impugnare coepit Lombardos, commissumque est prcelium inter eos prid. kal. Julii. De quo tamen sine victoria recessum est, 2 See above, p. 310. 3 Rom. Sal. 217-240. This Prelate was the Ambassador from the King of Sicily at the Congress. 4 Rad. Mil. 1193. Deserendo fidem quam Longobardis promiserat. 5 The strange Venetian fables about this interview are refuted by Sismondi (ii, 227) and Raumer (ii. 218). They are accepted by Daru (Hist. de Venise, lib. iii. c. 18), and revived by Cantu (iv. 552). 6 See the text of Pax cum Venetis in Pertz, iv. 151. 7 Rom. Sal. 222. Lombardi autem e diverso suspectos habebant Venetos, asserentes illos pacis cum lis initse foedera violasse, et sseepe Imperatoris nuncios contra hoc quod statutuin inter eos fuerat recepisse. This of course includes earlier breaches of the engagement, as in the case of Ancona. See above, p. 609. 8 See Pertz, iv. 151-7. Χ TRUCE BETWEEN FREDERICK AND THE LEAGUE 611 rights they seem to have limited to the personal services and personal gifts which were usual when the King of Germany came to claim the Italian crown at Milan and the Imperial crown at Rome They claim, on the other hand, to retain their League with one another, and to retain the fortifications of their cities ; the right to choose their own consuls they do not claim —they seem to have so completely taken it for granted. This was asking more than Frederick was at once prepared to yield ; peace was not made, but a truce for six years was agreed on Truce for between the Lombard League on one side, and the Emperor and *!x years . ΜΝ . ne 2 etween the princes and cities of his party on the other. And, now εἰς mn. that the war was over, the Emperor regained his advantage ; the peror and magic of the Imperial name, the attraction of Frederick’s personal the League character, began again to do their work. More than one city of ΤΙ. the League forsook the common cause, and made private terms Various with its now gracious and placable sovereign. Cremona had ‘ities join . ye Frederick. returned to its Imperialist loyalty even before the Congress of Cremona, Venice.? And, in the interval between the truce and the final 1176. peace, Tortona, which Frederick had destroyed, and which had Tortona, been rebuilt in defiance of his power ;* Alexandria, whose very 189. existence was a standing record of enmity to his cause, were both admitted to Imperial favour. Alexandria, the city of the Moxa 33 patriotic Pontiff, submitted to be formally refounded, and to Ὁ receive from her Imperial parent the name of Caesarea.” At 1 See Rom. Sal. 221 et seqq. and the Petitio Socictatis in Pertz, iv. 169. On the Royal rights see Raumer, v. 78, and Canti, iv. 509. Frederick’s agents demanded the rights as they stood under Henry the Fourth (Third of Italy), but the Italians insisted on the standard of Henry the Fifth, Menricus posterior, postremus (Pertz, 151, 169), a description which evades the difference between Italian and German reckoning. They rejected Henry the Fourth as a tyrant and ἢ Ἷ 1 ee * A ἢ 2 , ᾿ .)2 Pann We Sve schismatic. Item Imperator Hen ious (sale cuctoritate Imperit) Ἄν» Pet Dominus sed Tyrannus vocari, etc. Rom. Sal. 228. 2 See the Treuga cum Lombardis, Pertz, iv. 155. 3 Vit. Alex. iii. 469. In dicbus illis Cremona respiciens ret mine turpiter dejerando a confederatione aliarum civitatum im udenter recessit, et ad Imperatorem non sine magna infamia se convertit; ἃ ey ‘onem ᾽ ; : . ee ge o¥nde indignatione Ecclesie et aliorum Lombardorum odium et inimicitiain ᾿ . . The rps ge . . ‘Guste incurrit. Reconciliatio Cremone in 1186 (Pertz, iv. 183) must not be confounded with this. It belongs to much later events, which will be foun Κ΄, ὦ: ᾿ς Chroniel : eas in Sicard’s Chronicle, 603, and Sismondi, ii. 620. 4 See the Reconciliatio Terdonew, Pertz, iv. 165. " he Cardinal of Aragon (Vit. Alex. iii. u.s.) goes on to say, ‘‘ Terdona quoque 2 vost multum. temporis id ipsum reprehensibiliter fecit, et eadem infamia con. ny reliose se involvit.” It is clear, however, that an interval of seven years, ὦ ‘din the whole negocia- tions at Venice, came between the reconciliation of ciincluding ior Tortona. 5 Sigonius (p. 632) places the reconciliation of ΠΡ ΕΤ after the o absque grava- Peace of Constanz, 1188, The treaty takes the form of a pardon, 612 OF FEDERALISM IN ITALY CHAP. last, terms of peace were agreed on in a negociation at Placentia,} which led to the final conclusion of the Peace of Constanz, that famous Charter which closes the great volume of the Civil Law.? It shows how great was the abiding influence of the Imperial name that this treaty, concluded by a prince with rebellious subjects, by whom he had been defeated in battle, and to whom he yielded all their most important demands, was at last drawn up in the form of a pardon. The merciful Emperor extends his grace to certain cities which had offended him, and he grants them certain rights and privileges of his Imperial favour.2 But Peace of Constanz, and the same date is given in Pertz, iv. 181. But as Caesarea is reckoned among the allies of the Emperor at the Peace (see Pertz, iv. 180 and note), Sismondi (ii. 242) is doubtless right in placing it in 1183. The change of name from Alexandria to Cwsarea may be likened to the changes from Mantineia to Antigoneia, from Siky6n to Démétrias, and from Thebes to Philippopolis. See above, pp. 279, 386, 480, 464, note 1. None of these changes seems to have been permanent. New Amsterdam, however, has kept its name of New York. 1 See Pertz, iv. 167-175. 2 It is to he found at the end of the Corpus Juris Civilis, Amsted. 1663 ; also in Pertz, iv. 175. Cf. Sigonius, 629. 3-The Charter begins thus: Imperialis clementie mansueta serenitas eam semper in subditis suis dispensationem favoris et gratie habere consuevit, ut quamvis districta severitate excessuum delicta debeat et possit corrigere, magis tamen studeat propitia tranquillitate pacis et piis affectibus misericordizs Romanum Imperium regere et rebellium insolentiam ad debitam fidem et debite devotionis obsequium revocare. Ea propter cognoscat universitas fidelinm ITmperii tam presentis ctatis quam successurx posteritatis, quod nos solita benignitatis nostra gratia ad fidem et devotionem Lombardorum qui aliquando nos et Imperium nostrum offenderant, viscera innate nobis pietatis aperientes, eos et Societatem ecorum et fautores in plenitudinem gratie nostra recepimus, offensas omnes et culpas quibus nos ad indignationem provocaverant clementer eis reinittentes, eos- que propter fidelia devotionis suze servitia que nos ab eis credimus certissime recepturos, In numero dilectorum fidelium nostrorum computandos censemus,. Pacem itaque nostram quam eis clementer indultam concessiinus, presenti pagina jussimus subterscribi, et auctoritatis nostra sigillo communiri. It is almost more amusing to mark the high Imperialist tone of the Swiss writer Tschudi j3 the sixteenth century. A Landamman of Glarus might have been expected to sympathize with the Confederates, but the Swabian blood and speech were too str@2g in him. ΗΒ tells the tale thus: ‘Anno Domini 1.189 hielt Keiser Fridrich Barbarossa ein grossen Richstag sambt sinem Sun Ky nig Heinrichen dem Sechsten zu Costenz in der fiirnim- bisten Statt Alamannig:Und beschreib daselbshin alle Fursten, und namhafitisten in ganzem Lamparten, ouch aller desselben Lands-Stetten fiirnimiste vollmachtige Gewalthaber und Rats-Bo,tten, dass Si allda Im und sinem Sun huldetind von des Richs wegen. Also waren Si gehorsam, erscheinend alle zu ingehndem Christ- monat December genant, uit schwurind Inen nachfolgenden Eidt, wie Si von Recht und alter Gewonheit 2,1 tun schuldig warend den Rémischen Keisern und Kiinigen.” Tschudi, Chron. “Helveticum, i. 90. (Basel, 1734.) The Abbot of Ursperg, nea: Te? the time, lets out a little more. “ΕΠ tempore Χ THE PEACE OF CONSTANZ 613 these rights and privileges extended to an entire abolition of all but direct sovereignty on the part of the Emperor. From this #mounted moment the King of Italy became a mere external suzerainty to to a sur ; his Lombard subjects, and, in the course of less than a hundred of all years, his very suzerainty died away. Frederick recognized the direct complete internal independence of the Lombard commonwealths ;1 72.0, they were to choose their own Consuls; the Consuls, however, and all the citizens, were to swear allegiance to the Emperor,’ and in the more important civil causes there was to be an appeal from the magistrates of the cities to the Emperor or the Judge whom he should appoint. Further than this, the royal rights were limited to the ancient services due on the Imperial progress to Rome. On the other hand, the cities retained the right of fortification, and the Lombard League was to be retained and renewed ® as often as its members thought good. The League is distinctly recognized as a contracting power—somewhat more distinctly in the oath of allegiance* than in the lofty language of the Charter itself. Still every magistrate and every citizen recognizes Frederick and his successors as Emperors and Kings ; they will bear them true allegiance ; they will reveal all plots reignty. jam bellis nimis fatigatus Inperator, Lombardis omnibus condixit curiam apud Constantiam ubi Principes et potestates corum se repriasentaverunt, et pacta quadam de faciendo servitio Imperatori de singulis civitatibus Lombardi ibidem statuta sunt, que adhuc dicunt se tenere in scriptis nec ad serviendum ultra heec compelli volunt. Sicque pax reformata est’ (p. 311). 1 This is clearly the effect of the first two clauses of the Charter. 1. ‘‘ Con- cedimus vobis, civitatibus, locis, et personis Societatis, regalia et consuetudines vestras tam in civitate quam extra civitatem, . . . videlicet ut in ipsa civitate omnia habeatis sicut hactenus habuistis vel habetis. 2. Extra vero omnes con- suetudines sine contradictione nostra exerceatis, quas ab antiquo exercuistis vel exercetis. 3. Scilicet.. . ὧν exercitu, in munitionibus civitutwm, in jurisdictione tain in criminalibus caussis quam in pecuniariis, intus et extra, et in ceteris que ad commoditatem spectant civitatum.” 2 This oath might easily sink into a mere form, or, at most, would only exclude violent and avowed enemies of the Empire. The essential power of choice remained to the cities. Frederick’s own claim, in the days of his power, had been much wider. Ab omnibus judicatum et recognitum est in singulis civitatibus Potestates, Cousules, ceterosque magistratus assensu populi per ipsum [{mperatorem] creari debere, Rad. Fris. iii, 6. But even this allowed the citizens some share, though it is not clear what, in the choice of their magistrates. 3 Clause 20, 28. Sigonius (p. 637) describes the renewal of the oaths two years later. 4 Pertz, iv. 180. Pacem Domini Friderici Imperatoris et filii ejus Regis Heinrici et sue partis factam cum Societate Lombardorum, et civitatibus ejus Societatis. This makes the League, as a League, far more prominent than it is in the passages already quoted. A body so spoken of was surely on the high road to becoming a real Federation if the need of union had been felt in the least. The Second Lombard League 1228. The First League primarily political. 1159, 614 OF FEDERALISM IN ITALY CHAP. ----.- against them; they will preserve to them the crown of the Empire and of the Kingdom ;! if they should lose either, they will help them to recover it. But all these obligations were, as the terms of the Charter itself show, consistent with practical independence on all those points on which independence was prized most dearly. By the Peace of Constanz the kingdom of Italy, in the old sense, was reduced to a mere name, and no Federal Republic, no national monarchy, was substituted for it. As the importance of the Lombard League in Federal history is so purely negative, it is hardly necessary to follow out its career, when it was revived in the next century against Frederick the Second.? I have dwelt on its first period at some length, because it seemed important to show how a real Federal system might arise, or might fail to arise, out of circumstances very closely analogous. ‘The Peace of Constanz took away all excuse for the formation of any central Government ; each city gained the acknowledgement of that full local sovereignty which it prized far more dearly, without giving up its formal allegiance to the Prince whose lofty titles Italy still reverenced.