I
THE IDEA OF UNITY
WITH the general transformation of men’s outlook the cities of Greece were led to lend themselves more readily than in former days to change, to regulate their relations with other Greek cities in accordance with ideas less narrow and less jealous. Towns in which commerce and industry had developed to any considerable degree attracted a heterogeneous collection of people—craftsmen in search of a livelihood—and sent out their sailors to visit all the shores of the Mediterranean. By this coming and going a constant interchange of men, of merchandise and of ideas was effected. Blood was intermingled and prejudices disappeared one by one. In the interior of each country, citizens and metics alike, from being continually brought together, generation after generation, by the same necessities of economic and social life, felt the same love for their common country: the ports in particular were melting pots where day by day lasting fusions were made. From one country to another, more and more clearly, more and more consciously, the conception of Hellenic unity was being formed.
It was this which had in former days allied the combatants of Salamis and Platæa, of Himera and of Cumæ against the Persians, the Carthaginians and the Etruscans. The brotherhood of arms which had saved Greece was sung enthusiastically by contemporary poets. Pindar, although the son of a town unfaithful to the national cause, found magnificent strains in which to salute Athens “enwreathed with violets, the rampart of Hellas,” and associated with her in glory Ægina, Sparta and Syracuse.1 In the Persians of Æschylus the sublime pæan which preludes victory is a call to the “children of the Hellenes” united to deliver the temples of their gods and the tombs of their ancestors. All these memories Herodotus transmitted to posterity in order above all to render homage to the Athens which he cherished as a foster mother, but also to show that the object at stake in the struggle had been the destiny of a race, of a language, of a religion, of a whole civilization.2
In the midst of the Peloponnesian war when Grecian hands were freely shedding Grecian blood, voices were raised protesting that these were fratricidal struggles, that honour demanded that instead of emulously begging for Persian gold, all should march out united against that people. If Aristophanes never wearied of imploring for peace, it was not only because he believed it to be essential for the peasants of all the belligerent cities, but also because he remembered the kinship of the “Panhellenes” which asserted itself before the sanctuaries of the Amphictyonies and which ought to unite them against the barbarians.3 Thucydides probably shared these ideas, at least as far as the Persians were concerned: this man, who kept before his eyes so lofty a conception of historic veracity and the duties which it imposed, did not dare, doubtless from feelings of patriotic shame, to mention the peace of Callias, and, whilst he recounts the humiliating conduct of the Lacedaemonians at the court of the Great King,4 he is silent concerning the negotiations, equally dishonourable, which the Athenians in their turn engaged upon. Even on the opposite side one sees Callicra- tidas, one of the noblest figures of the time, blushing for the Persian alliance, opposing to the inexpiable hatreds of the cities the idea of Greek solidarity, working for a general reconciliation.
In spite of the innumerable conflicts which followed the great Peloponnesian war, the idea of Panhellenic unity made enormous progress in men’s minds during the fourth century. As in the past, but with a precision which the vague beliefs had never had and which the reasoned theories attained to, Hellenism was defined in contrast to barbarism. It was recognized that, by its very climate and its conception of the city, Greece enjoyed an essential superiority over the monarchies of torrid countries and the tribes of cold regions, that Nature had placed between Greeks and barbarians a gulf as great as that between men and beasts, that, moreover, she had created a race of masters and races of slaves, thus giving to all that was Greek obvious rights over all that was not.5 But even those who based their conception of Hellenism on a physical principle, unity of race, added to it a loftier principle, education (παιδεία), manner of thought (διανοία), in short, civilization.6
Consequently the Greek must not think of himself as the member of a single city, but as forming part of a community embracing all cities of Greek origin and customs. Plato wanted to see his projects of political reform realized by the tyrants of Sicily. Isocrates, looking round for someone to whom to expound his, failing Athens and Sparta, turned to a prince of Cyprus, before admitting that a Macedonian was also a Greek. Extensive though Greece was when thus defined, the ethnical and moral unity of the men who inhabited it made every war between cities seem a civil war; a disease, said one,7 madness, said another,8 a fratricidal war. There must be no more of it. Such was the language that the most famous orators used before the assembled crowds at the great Olympic gatherings (panegyris). Gorgias of Leontini set the example in 392 : he exhorted the Greeks to put an end to the struggles which weakened them all and, united, to undertake in the East the only one which was worthy of them. Developments of this sort converted the “panegyric” speech into a literary genre, practised in turn by Lysias and Isocrates. Gorgias did not fear to let the Athenians know what he thought: in a speech devoted to the memory of citizens who had fallen on the field of honour, he regrets that they should have paid with their lives for victories less glorious than those of Marathon and Salamis,—praises and regrets which find expression again in another Epitaphios delivered by a contemporary of Lysias.
It was impossible for the ideal of unity not to be translated in certain spheres into reality. From the beginning literature and art had constituted a sort of common patrimony of the Greeks. That community grew more intimate. In the old days schools of sculpture had been distinguished by local peculiarities; henceforth there was a general evolution marked only by individual characteristics. We know how diverse alphabets had been up to that point; the Ionian alphabet, the most complete of all, triumphed over the others : in Attica in the last quarter of the fifth century it began to dominate in private usage and to penetrate into official documents; under the archonship of Euclides (403-2) it was officially adopted. But it was Athens which, uncontested, stood at the head of Hellenism. Even in the time of Pericles she boasted of being the school of Greece9 and proclaimed herself on the tomb of Euripides as “the Hellas of Hellas.” In the writings of Isocrates she justified her claims. She is the “capital” of Greek civilization (aστυ τη Έλλαδο)10 because she embodies all its elements in a magnificent form, because she concentrates in herself all which gives it grandeur, humanity, wisdom, reason, and diffuses it among the others.11 An admirable panegyric, confirmed by the facts. The Attic dialect became the language of culture for all Greeks. Other dialects continued to serve for local purposes : the Ionian of Hippocrates is preserved in his books on medicine, the Dorian of Pythagoras in numerous mathematical works; but Attic was the literary language, the language common to all cultured people, the koine. In order to strengthen the connection between their country and the Greek world the kings of Macedonia employed it as the language of State.
Could the idea of unity spread from the intellectual and moral to the political sphere ? Here, unfortunately for Greece, it was for a long time faced with insurmountable barriers. We have seen that it was tending to bring the Greeks into alliance against the rest of the world. Why did it happen, however, that barely a quarter of a century after the Persian wars the Greek cities began, never to cease, to make appeals to the Persians for help against each other, and that, in the spring of 386, an edict issued from Susa became law for all of them, imposing on them for many years the “King’s Peace”? The reason lay in the fact that deeply embedded in the hearts of the Greeks was a passion which counterbalanced pride in the Hellenic name and contempt for the barbarians: an invincible love of autonomy. The purest patriotism could not reconcile itself to the idea that the city, founded by the gods and maintained by their ancestors, should cease to be a free and independent community, absolute mistress of its constitution, its laws, its army, its finances. We must not forget that the greatest minds, in metaphysical speculations as well as in realist theories, did not consider that political science could be applied to a State other than the polis. Thus two forces were ready to clash: moral unity and the passion for particularism.
Alone, Greece was incapable of securing the triumph of centralization. Only an impetus from without could overthrow the barriers which bristled everywhere; she was to be unified only by conquest. Greece had to be defeated before the political regime of the city could disappear. But before disappearing it was to suffer change as the result of new ideas and new needs. We shall see small societies, once so exclusive, opening their gates more freely to individuals. We shall see them, compelled by the necessity of defending themselves against a powerful enemy, renouncing a part of their sovereignty and lending themselves to tentative efforts towards limited union and federalism.
II
BESTOWAL OF CITIZENSHIP AND ISOPOLITEIA
When one knows what citizenship of Greek towns meant in theory and then sees what it was in fact in the fourth century, particularly at Athens, one realizes that legal enactments are of no avail against the force of customs.
Immediately after the democratic restoration of 403 the Athenians re-established the law of Pericles which protected the body of citizens against the intrusion of metics. This law had been constantly violated or side-tracked during the last years of the Peloponnesian war, as a result of military exigencies and political disorders. On the proposal of Aristophon, amended by Nicomedes, it was decided that it should be once more enforced, though it was not to operate retroactively.12 For the future all conceivable precautions were taken. From a consultation of legislative texts only it would seem that never had the bestowal of the privilege of citizenship been so hedged in with formalities or so difficult. The decree which conferred it had to be justified by exceptional services rendered to the people; it had to be confirmed in full assembly by at least six thousand votes; finally, it could be attacked by a public action against illegality.13 Usurpation of the right of citizenship fell beneath a very serious indictment, to which no less severe a penalty than slavery and confiscation of property was attached (γραφή ξενίας).14 From time to time, when it became evident that many cunning evaders were slipping through the meshes of the law, attempts were made to strengthen the defences by means of control of the registers. The books of the demes, which were equivalent to our municipal registers, were subjected to a general revision in 346-5,15 as they had been a century earlier. Those of the phratries, which might also serve as evidence, were liable to similar revisions.16
But it was all useless: this plethora of precautions and certain outbursts of popular indignation17 imply persistent frauds. Rich and influential metics had no difficulty in hunting out a suitable little deme where, at not too excessive a price, their names would be enrolled without questions being asked. The rotten borough of Potamos had a well established reputation in this respect.18 There or in a similar one, the demarch himself might undertake the business and secure the necessary accomplices, at the rate of five drachmas a head.19 Failing the deme there was the phratry to fall back upon, and a clever man could insinuate himself into a family of lawful citizens by the subterfuge of adoption or slip into a batch of legitimate naturalizations.20 Thus continually forming and reforming was a class of illegally registered citizens, the τταρyyέρατττοι21
Two or three times in a century the anger of the people would burst out, but nevertheless they themselves were not above extending and debasing the right of citizenship by the ever increasing number of honorific decrees. Even by the end of the fifth century this kind of abuse was a butt for jokes or a subject for tears : comedy did not treat very tenderly the instrument maker Cleophon, a vulgar and ignorant demagogue, the offspring of a Thracian mother and an unknown father.22 Very soon orators began to fulminate as violently and as frequently against easy naturalizations as against illegal enrolments. Isocrates laments that so noble a title, which ought to inspire respect and pride, should be dragged in the dust. Demosthenes, in one of those tirades which he knew by heart and which he brought into one speech after another, contrasts the time when the most glorious recompense which foreign sovereigns could win was a nominal exemption from taxes, with these degenerate days when citizenship has become merely base merchandise offered to slaves, the sons of slaves : “It is not,” he says to the Assembly, “that you are by nature inferior to your fathers; but they possessed pride in their name, and this pride you have lost.”23
Lovers of the past, of course, very easily become despisers of the present. And again we do not see in the fourth century, as we do in the Hellenistic epoch, bankers accumulating as many nationalities as they have branches and cities officially selling at a fixed rate letters of naturalization. Isocrates is obviously exaggerating when he goes on to say that foreigners take the place of citizens in war.24 Nevertheless there was much truth in these exaggerations. The evidence which orators and inscriptions give us strongly suggests that decrees conferring citizenship increased in number and diminished in value. The emergency decree proposed by Hyperides after the defeat of Chæronæa, which promised the status of Athenians to metics who armed themselves for the defence of the State, was likewise in line with tradition.25 But Athens showed herself less and less parsimonious of individual privileges. She awarded the title of citizen for services of all kinds: to a politician such as Heracleides of Clazomenæ, to a mercenary leader such as Charidemus, a simple metic of Oreus, to bankers of servile origin such as Pasion, Phormion, Epigenes, Conon, to merchants such as Chærephilus and his three sons.26 She even made citizens honoris causa by decrees which could be very useful to friends of Athens driven from their country (Astycrates of Delphi, Peisitheides of Delos), but which were often merely honorary distinctions, foreign decorations almost (Storys of Thasus, Dionysius the Elder, Tharyps and Arybbas, kings of the Molossians).27 A curious fact, well fitted to arouse the anger of Demosthenes, shows how lightly honours of this kind were bestowed: citizenship was accorded successively to Cotys king of Thrace and to his murderers.28
The Athenians were not blind to the fact that they were violating principles which they professed to respect: so far as they could they multiplied and rendered more complicated the formalities and still more the actual papers of naturalization and their wording.29 But the constant pressure which new ideas and new customs exert cannot be counter-acted by methods of procedure and declarations.
Characteristic as was the tendency to multiply naturalizations it was only one sign of the times. A practice which was to be of the greatest value in the future for modifying the system of petty sovereignties was the admission en masse of one city into another. Even in the fifth century the example of the Samians and the Platæans, who were made citizens of Athens, had not remained unique. In the same epoch two towns of Asia opened their gates to the inhabitants of two Sicilian towns : Antandrus, to the Syracusans ; Ephesus, to the people of Selinus.30 It was really simply a way of honouring soldiers who had come to the aid of their allies; but the general form given to this distinction indicated, nevertheless, a tendency towards the indefinite extension of citizenship. In the fourth century there were similar cases, and these were of potential political significance. The Cyreneans strengthened the ties which bound them to Thera by recognizing as brothers the sons of their old mother country.31 For the first time we see, not merely one town conferring civic privileges upon another by a unilateral convention, but two towns reciprocally conferring citizenship by a bilateral convention : a treaty concluded about 365 between Ceos and Histiaia stipulates that each of the contracting States shall accord to the citizens of the other freedom of trade and, to individuals making application, civic rights.32 This exchange of citizens between States which remained on a footing of equality, retaining each its sovereignty, its constitution and its laws, was later to be known in Greek public law by the name of isopoliteia,
LEAGUES AND FEDERATIONS
Another institution marks a further advance : namely the association of cities in wider communities. In the fifth century we saw a number of leagues and federations coming to birth, developing or declining. The fermentation at work in Greece in the fourth century multiplied these attempts at political concentration in which elements of the representative system made their first appearance. Whilst Elis and Rhodes were maintaining more or less peaceably the unity which they had established by synœcism, and whilst the sympolities of Arcadia and of Chalcidice were leading a troubled existence, a great number of groupings, till then amorphous, were beginning to take shape. At the same time Lacedæmon, Athens and Thebes were making vigorous efforts to reconstitute on new lines the leagues and federations which they had ruled during the Peloponnesian war and were attempting to find in them the power which would give them dominion over the Greek world.
Immediately after her victory over Athens Sparta strengthened her position in the Peloponnesian league. She had at her command all the might which the authority of her harmosts and the organization of the dekadarchoi gave her throughout Greece. She exacted from all the cities which she had compelled to secede from the Athenian empire the tribute which they had previously paid ; and from Athens herself she exacted tribute.33 Moreover the weight of her influence was felt among the Peloponnesians. Decisions continued to be made conjointly by the Council of the confederate towns and the Spartan Assembly; but the Council no longer deliberated separately before voting; it took part only in the debates of the Assembly—a procedure which deprived it of its full liberty.34
During this time any attempt towards a synœcism, a sympolity or a confederation made outside the Lacedaemonian league met at once with the opposition of the oligarchic parties, who could only hope to maintain traditional privileges within the narrow framework of the autonomous cities, and with the systematic hostility of the Spartans, who wished at all costs to prevent the formation of States sufficiently extensive and powerful to stand against them. Not until the war against Corinth, the first attack directed against the hegemony of Sparta, were the Peloponnesians in a position to develop such projects. In 393, Corinth, having fallen into the power of democracy, decided to incorporate herself in Argolis. About 390, the cities of Achæa—which had always taken advantage of the festivals celebrated in the sacred wood of Zeus Homarios to come to a general understanding on foreign policy—converted this kind of amphictyony into a federation, which extended its civic privileges to an Acar- nanian town.35 Sparta did not fail to take action. Summoned to their aid by the oligarchs of Corinth she re-established the duality favourable both to their interests and her own.36
But what steps were to be taken against Thebes whom the confederation of 447 was making more and more powerful ? What checks could be brought against Athens who was leading up to the reconstitution of her empire by treaties of defensive alliance and who was already taking it upon herself to interfere in the domestic policy of the allied cities, to change their constitutions, to impose garrisons and governors upon them, to demand contributions from them, to forbid them to give refuge to men banished from Athens ?37
The treaty of Antalcidas (386) was a master stroke for Spartan policy. By imposing autonomy on all Greek cities as an absolute obligation the King’s Peace not only crushed the reviving Athenian empire which disturbed the Persians even more than the Spartans, but it also put an end to the Boeotian confederation, brought Corinth, detached for ever from Argos, back into the Lacedæmonian league, and, finally, made possible the dissolution of all syncecisms as contrary to the new right of the peoples.
In Bœotia the eleven federal districts were suppressed; the towns became isolated units, governing themselves as they thought best, that is according to the military dictates of Sparta.38 All the dependencies of Thebes were taken from her39 and, as a check against her, Platæa was reconstructed. No longer was there common money: once again every city struck its own, which, though it might have on one side the Boeotian shield as a geographical indication, on the other had its own device and its own name.40 A series of individual treaties swelled the Peloponnesian army with new contingents.41
To the great joy of the oligarchs the population of Mantinea was, in 384, scattered to its five villages once more: it is chiefly from information given about this dioikismos that we learn of the earlier synoikismos.42
Remote Chalcidice thought itself secure. For half a century its institutions had been firmly consolidated, and, from being a sympolity, it was in a fair way to becoming a unitary State.43 Without formally creating a federal citizen-ship, a general law offered its equivalent to all Chalcidians: if a man had civic rights in one city he automatically had the right of marriage and the right of property in all the others.44 Civil equality was thus guaranteed, independently of political equality, throughout the whole community. Such an arrangement, binding on all the towns, in itself implied a considerable restriction of autonomy—a restriction equal for all, at any rate in theory. In fact the republic officially styled itself “koinon of the Chalcidians.”45 It had the exclusive right of striking money, and the cases in which coins bear the name of Olynthus as well as that of the Chalcidians are exceptional.46 But though ostensibly on the same footing as the other towns, the real hegemony which the capital exercised was barely dissimulated. The federal Assembly sitting at Olynthus scarcely differed at all from the Olynthian Assembly. Its powers were considerable. It concerned itself with foreign affairs, with political treaties and commercial agreements, it superintended military affairs, including the direction of campaigns, chose the strategos, the first magistrate of the confederation and, finally, voted the federal contributions, which consisted of customs duties levied in the ports and the emporia.47 Thanks to its organization the Chalcidian State attained a comparatively strong position. Its alliance was bought by Macedonia at the price of commercial advantages and territorial concessions.48 It extended its power by drawing the peninsulas of Pallene and Sithonia into its sphere of influence by means of the towns of Potidæa and Torone. Success was rewarding its efforts on all sides when two towns, called upon to enter the confederation, appealed to Sparta for help. The Spartans rushed to their assistance (382). After three years of fighting the sympolity was compelled to dissolve.
Sparta had worked well. In Arcadia, in Bœotia, everywhere on the continent where associations of enemy cities were to be feared, she had re-established autonomy. But her very triumph intensified the desire for unification wherever she had suppressed it. The march on Olynthus had begun the occupation of Thebes; in 379 Thebes was delivered by a night attack. At day-break the hastily summoned Assembly appointed four Bœotarchs.49 It was a proclamation that the Boeotian confederation was about to be reborn : a declaration, too, that it could only be reborn by the consent of the whole people, that this time it was to be democratic. Much work had to be done before it could réassumé its former proportions : Platæa had once more to be destroyed, Thespiæ reduced to the position of a subject State, Orchomenus to be brought to submission, and, as it eventually turned out, razed to the ground and its whole male population massacred.
In form and in law the new confederation resembled the old;50 its basic principle was the autonomy of the towns: their privilege of citizenship was not debased into a collective citizenship,51 they were left the task of leading their contingent in the army,52 but the right of striking money was taken from them.53 But, in reality, the Boeotians approached much more nearly than before to a unitary regime, thanks to a more powerful hegemony. The suppression of the districts of Thespiæ and Orchomenus and the annexation of their territory reduced the number of Bœotarchs from eleven to seven;54 since Thebes kept four of them, she commanded by herself a majority in the governing committee. She consequently controlled foreign policy, and her representatives at international congresses claimed that the name of Thebans was equivalent to that of Boeotians. There was another important change tending strongly in the same direction : the damos formed by the mass of the citizens was no longer represented in the Council by a number of delegates proportioned to the importance of the towns; instead it sat in Assembly on fixed days.55 Since the Assembly met at Thebes it consisted in large part of Thebans. All affairs and, in particular, foreign affairs, were thus treated of directly between the people and the Bœotarchs; for the official head of the confederation, the eponymous magistrate, the archon, had no power whatsoever. The Bœotarchs who formerly had convened the Council now convened the Assembly; they presented to it their reports, prepared its decisions and executed them; they negotiated with the outside world and commanded the military contingents of the seven districts. But they were constantly in dependence on the Assembly: they were elected by it and might be re-elected ; not only did they present their accounts to it at the end of the year, but throughout their period of office they were responsible to it and might be deposed.56 Although the Assembly was competent to deal with offences violating the federal pact, side by side with it, as previously, there operated a High Court whose members were chosen by lot and who sat in judgment upon magistrates accused of jobbery.57 This constitution might have led Bœotia, by a wisely prudent progression, to a more complete unity. Unfortunately Thebes saw in it only an excellent instrument for strengthening her foreign policy, only a means to power.
Bœotia could never have regained her unity in 378 had she not been covered on her southern frontier. But Athens, similarly provoked by the perfidy and violence of Sparta, had similarly reorganized her confederation. At the first opportunity the two countries concluded a treaty against the common enemy,58 and Athens, reviving the system of alliances which she had inaugurated in 389 and had been forced to abandon in 386, concluded analogous treaties with Chios, Mitylene, Methymna, Rhodes and Byzantium.59 These bilateral agreements between one city and six others were immediately converted into a mutual pact between the seven, and new adherents were added to the original nucleus during succeeding years. The maritime confederation of Athens was once more coming into being.60
First and foremost it was agreed that all the participating cities should remain autonomous and enjoy equal rights in the federal Council: thus the King’s Peace was respected and Athenian hegemony was restricted in advance. In order completely to still the fears of those who were apprehensive of a return to the methods of the first confederation the Athenians promulgated, in February or March 377, the decree of Aristoteles. They guaranteed the autonomy promised to the cities. They undertook to interfere in no way in domestic affairs, to impose neither a governor nor a garrison upon any of them, to exact no tribute and to respect local jurisdictions. Very special guarantees were given against the establishment of cleruchs: the Athenians not only renounced all property previously acquired in federal territory, but, in addition, deprived themselves of the right of acquiring it in the future, whether under public or private claim, by purchase, mortgage or any other method. These provisions were to be valid and obligatory for ever: the author of any proposal designed to change them was to suffer atimia and confiscation before trial, before being condemned to death or exile.61
It was inevitable, however, that the new confederation should subject the autonomy of the cities to the hegemony of Athens.62 In it were involved two principles which had to be reconciled. The association implied a dualism clearly shown in the official title which it assumed: “the Athenians and the allies” (oi ‘Αθηναίοι και oi σύμμαχοι). The federal party had, therefore, to organize a conjoint mode of activity. It brought into co-operation and harmonious working the deliberative organs of Athens and a federal Council, the “Synedrion of the allies” (συνέδριον των συμμάχων), in which the Athenians were not represented, but which sat permanently at Athens.63 Thus were made “ the resolutions of the allies and the Athenian people,” the dogmata which determined the federal constitution (τά δόγματα των συμμάχων και του δήμου των ‘Αθηναίων).64 Each city might send one or several synedroi or representatives,65 but it had only one vote: since the ballot was taken on a simple majority principle, Athens was fairly well assured of the co-operation of the small cities. Obviously such a system, which aspired to secure equilibrium between a great power and a group of small independent powers, could endure so long as common safety was in danger, but not indefinitely.
All went well till 371. The relations of the Synedrion and the Athenian Ecclesia and Boule were in conformity with the provisions of the federal pact. Athens possessed the initiative and control in foreign affairs, but she did nothing decisive without consulting her allies. Since it was she who had created the confederation by separate treaties, she continued to treat with cities who wished to enter it, and admission was announced by a decree of the Assembly issued on the recommendation of the Council.66 But the matter was of vital concern to the Synedrion, since it involved the introduction of a new member with a right to vote and since all the confederates were bound, in case of aggression against one of their number, to lend assistance by land and by sea with all their resources and all their power. Moreover, the exchange of mutual pledges, without which admission was not complete, entailed the assembling of the allies, the parties to the oath and, consequently, the consent of the Synedrion,67 But treaties which were concluded with States which were and remained outside the confederation were submitted to the Athenian Assembly alone by a probouleuma of the Boule based on a dogma of the Synedrion,68 and did not become binding on any city unless it pledged itself to it. Again, in 871, at the congress of Sparta, whilst the Lacedæmonians took the oath both for themselves and their allies, the Athenian confederates swore separately, town by town, after Athens had done so.69 It was exactly the opposite of what took place at the peace of Nicias,70 and nothing shows better the path followed by Sparta and Athens for half a century. In short, all the decisions which concerned the confederation were made at this time in the same way as the constitutional dogmata had been : the Synedrion could do nothing without the Ecclesia, nor the Ecclesia without the Synedrion. There resulted a modus vivendi which established a division of powers between Athens and the confederates.
The hegemony of Athens consisted essentially in the control of foreign affairs, in the command of the federal army and in the free disposition of the fleet, which was almost exclusively composed of Athenian ships. Over everything else the Synedrion had supreme control. By the very fact that the federal pact forbade the levying of a phoros the confederation could only raise money with the consent of its members. The common treasure did not belong “to the Athenians and the allies,” but to the allies alone. There was no tribute, there were no contributions (συντάξεις)71 Assessed, allotted, collected and administered by the Synedrion they neither could nor ought to be used save for common expenses, in particular for war.72 If they rapidly increased it was because the majority of the cities soon sought to buy themselves out of military service, which originally had been the most important of their obligations. In this way fines imposed by federal jurisdiction accrued to the common treasury. The confederation had, in fact, a right of supreme jurisdiction. Before the Synedrion sitting as a high court appeared individuals or persons accused of violation of the federal pact. In accordance with the decree of Aristoteles, the guarantee of this pact, the Synedrion received denunciations against Athenians guilty of acquiring land in the territory of the confederate towns, confiscated the property in question and divided the proceeds of its sale between the informer and the common treasury.73 In accordance with the same decree any citizen or magistrate who should propose or put to the vote a motion whose object was the rescission of any clause whatsoever, “should be judged before the Athenians and the confederates as guilty of seeking to dissolve the confederation, and should be punished by death or banishment from Athenian and confederate territory,” without prejudice to the preliminary confiscation of his goods.74 These were provisions of the highest importance. They indicate so compliant an attitude on the part of Athens towards her confederates that they call for certain modifications in order not to appear improbable. It must be recognized that in a case where the Synedrion was both judge and party Athens did not deliver her citizens to it bound hand and foot. The Synedrion, which, in general, was on the same footing as the Athenian Boule, doubtless could not, any more than the latter, give executory force to all its judgments: beyond certain penal limits the condemned man, if he were an Athenian, had to be allowed the right of appeal to Athenian jurisdiction. Nevertheless the pact of the second Athenian confederation marks a wholly remarkable step forward in international law.
Sparta was forced to accept all these developments, though she made some attempt to stand against them. She employed at first the same methods as her adversaries. She wished to oppose to the Thebans and the Athenians a league stronger than theirs by strengthening her hegemony : but, military city that she was, she could only think in terms of her army. Already in 383-2, just as she was entering upon the war against Chalcidice, she had authorized the Peloponnesian States, at a congress which was held, to buy themselves out of service : a serious innovation, which enabled professional soldiers to be recruited, but which disaccustomed the citizens to fighting. In 378, in order to outwit Thebes and the Athenian confederation, she divided all the countries dependent on her into ten recruiting divisions: (1) Lacedæmon; (2 and 3) Arcadia; (4) Elis; (5) Achæa; (6) Corinth and Megara; (7) Sicyon, Philus and the coast towns of Argolis; (8) Acarnania; (9) Phocis and Locris; (10) Chalcidice.75 But, in 375, the sympolity of the Chalcidians, which Sparta had just destroyed, was reconstructed and, to protect itself against retaliatory attacks, incorporated in the Athenian confederation.76 The Acarnanian population was scattered in villages and for long they had come together only for purposes of war. They had resolved, however, to create a common representative body at Stratos and to strike common money,77 but, in 390, they had been compelled to accept Spartan domination.78 At the same time as the Chalcideans they took a similar step.79
In 371 Sparta decided to adopt other tactics. She convoked representatives of all the powers to a congress at which a general peace, based on the King’s Peace, was to be concluded. Everyone was in agreement on that score, but it remained to be seen what were their conceptions of autonomy and how they reconciled them with federal law. On the day appointed for the oath the Lacedaemonians swore as such in the name of all their allies; no one objected. With the Athenians all the allied States swore in succession. The Thebans were of the number. They swore to and counter-signed the instrument of peace, while adding to the name of “Thebans” a note specifying that their oath and their signature were valid for all the Boeotians. Protests were raised against this interpretation. The Thebans then asked that the name of Boeotians should be substituted for that of Thebans. This would have meant the formal recognition by the whole of Greece of the federal State. The Lacedaemonians declined absolutely to agree to this change ; the Thebans stuck to their last proposal and rejected a treaty which would have nullified in one day the efforts and the successes of eight years.80 It was the definitive rupture with Sparta and with Athens. A month later the power of Sparta was shattered on the plain of Leuctra (August, 371).
A new epoch began for all the associations of cities. Thebes had a free hand not only in Bœotia but also beyond her northern frontiers. On top of the confederation on which she could rely, she erected another and a vaster one, which she created in central Greece. The Phocians, the Locrians and the Heracleans, detached from the Lacedæmonian league, united with their neighbours the Malians and the Ænianians and were joined by a section of the Acarnanians, by the Eubœans and soon by the Byzantines, the latter having seceded from the Athenian confederation. All these peoples undertook to defend each other in case of aggression; they sent their delegates to a Synedrion which sat at Thebes and recognized the obligatory force of decisions made by their representatives in concert with the Boeotian representatives.81
But it was too much to ask of the good will of the ones and the moderation of the others. The Phocians never agreed with the Thebans, and when they were accused of sacrilege by their enemies before the Amphictyonie Council and sentenced to an enormous fine, they rushed to arms (356) and re-established a confederation which had had a vague existence for at least two centuries.82 The citizens of their twenty-two towns met in an Assembly to exercise power of war and peace and to appoint or, if necessary, to depose magistrates.83 During the Sacred War the chief of these magistrates were the strategoi.84 One of these, the strategos autokrator, had the supreme command of the army; he was invested with the powers of a dictator and on the coins his name replaced that of the Phocians which formerly had been there :85 he had even the right of naming his successor, a right which, in fact, placed the country under the domination of a dynasty. In 346 Phocis, defeated, disarmed and more than half deserted, was placed under archons, while her federal obligations were confined to paying the victors every six months a crushing war tax.86
Among the Arcadians the defeat of Sparta justified all hopes. Hardly had Epaminondas appeared in the Pelopon- nese (Spring, 370) than they took their revenge. The Mantineans of the five villages rebuilt their town and re-established their synœcism;87 they set up a government of limited democracy which suited peasants too busy to frequent the Assembly and who preferred to leave everyday business to the elected magistrates.88 Immediately afterwards, in response to the appeal of the Mantinean Lycomedes, all the Arcadians, save those of the North, decided to form a State on the model of the Boeotian confederation.89 A capital was needed, and, in order to avoid competition between Mantinea and Tegea, the two age-long rivals, a commission of ten oikistai was appointed to undertake the foundation of a new city. In 369 the great town of Megalopolis arose. The dimensions of its walls were such that in case of need it could house all the Arcadians of the South-west and the Centre, along with their flocks. Its population was to be recruited immediately from the Mainalians, the Eutresians, the Parrhasians, the Cynurians, the people of Ægytis, Skiritis, Tripolis, etc., and it was to absorb at least forty districts.90
The new State, “the Arcadicon,”91 thus formed by a synœcism, was given a federal regime. The cities retained their autonomy, their old institutions, their Council, their magistrates and they continued to have their own coinage side by side with the common coinage.92 There was no federal citizenship above local citizenship : men were Arcadians with the names of Tegeans, Mantineans, etc. But the sym- polity was the more able to restrain the sovereignty of the cities in that they were very soon divided into political districts after the Athenian fashion. The federal constitution was strongly reminiscent of limited democracy. It recognized no hegemony, but gave the cities representation in proportion to their population. The citizen body was constituted by the Ten Thousand,93 that is to say probably by property owners in a position to serve as hoplites at their own expense, to the exclusion of the poor. All these, but only these, had access to the Assembly or Ecclesia.94 An immense building, the Thersilion, was constructed at Megalopolis for the Assembly. Its powers extended to all important affairs: it concluded treaties of peace and alliance, declared war, sent and received ambassadors, regulated the pay of the troops, fixed the entrance fees of the cities, conferred honorific distinctions. To its deliberative power it added judicial power: it passed sentences on federal or civic magistrates or on ordinary citizens convicted of infringement of the federal statutes or of resistance to federal decrees, and it arbitrated in disputes which arose between cities.95 Since the Assembly sat only at intervals and since it was too numerous to prepare legislative work, it had for auxiliary a Council or Boule. But the only body which functioned permanently was an executive committee of fifty members. It represented the towns unequally, having five delegates per town from seven of them, two and three from two others, and ten from Megalopolis. They were officially called demiourgoi; but since they shared among themselves the different administrative functions and thus formed colleges of magistrates, they were often called archons.96 Since military and diplomatic affairs were of primary importance the chief magistrate of the confederation was the strategos,97 who had at his command a permanent army-corps, the eparitai.
Such an attack on the immemorial principles of autonomy and isolation, the compulsory transfer of a considerable mass of men and the necessary re-allotments of land, created many difficulties and provoked much resistance. Some small towns furnished Megalopolis with only a part of the contingent demanded and existed as more or less free communities; the inhabitants of some flatly refused to abandon their houses and their lands, and had to be compelled by force, the eparitai being marched out against them. We know of one, Trapezous, whose population was massacred or emigrated to the Euxine. As early as 363 the old animosities of cities were reviving, exacerbated by bitter disagreements on domestic policy. There was a scission. Mantinea reverted to oligarchy and began to make advances to Sparta; Tegea, supporting the capital, remained faithful to democracy and the Theban alliance. In the battle of Mantinea (362) the Arcadians fought among themselves, either for or against Epaminondas. A reconciliation was effected, but it was neither general nor permanent. In 361 the peasants returned en masse to their old homes, and in order to make them return to the capital a Theban army had to accomplish a systematic destruction of the villages. So difficult was it for the Greeks to renounce their local independence in favour of even a limited union !
And yet the formation of the Megalopoliticon marked a notable advance in the struggle against centrifugal forces. For the first time Arcadia possessed its “great town,” and one whose area covered a third of the federal territory. Moreover her example influenced the surrounding districts, even those which had stood apart from the movement. The villages of Triphylia united at Lepreon and henceforth adhered to the Arcadian confederation.98 The canton of Heræa, midway between Arcadia and Elis, was converted into a city with nine demes.99 Since three localities neighbouring upon Orchomenus had joined the confederation the Orchomenians, to counteract the weakness resulting from their isolation, annexed the Euaimmians by synœcism, by concluding with them a very curious agreement with clauses concerning religion, marriage, justice, the division of lands and common liability for public debts.100
The Athenian confederation could not escape from repercussions of the great events which had distinguished the year 371. The congress of Sparta was for it the beginning of the breach with Bœotia, while the battle of Leuctra removed the Spartan menace. Like Thebes, Athens immediately sought to turn the situation to account. All the cities who wished to maintain the King’s Peace and, consequently, autonomy in its narrowest sense, were invited to send plenipotentiaries to Athens. This meant the exclusion of the Thebans. Whilst the latter consoled themselves with creating the confederation of central Greece the congress of Athens resolved upon the formation of a Hellenic league which was to embrace in one large unity Lacedæmon with its league and Athens with its confederation.101 A spectacular conception and superficially full of promise, but in reality it was no more than a paltry diplomatic success, doomed to die as soon as it was born. Sparta being no longer formidable and Thebes becoming day by day more hostile, the members of the Athenian confederation very soon found irksome the bonds which tied them to the latter. Discontent was to lead to defection, and the struggle against defection was to justify and intensify the discontent. The hegemony of Athens, light, on the whole, from 378 to 371, was going, therefore, to weigh heavily upon the federal constitution and to distort its originally equitable provisions.
Henceforth mutual distrust characterized the relations of the Synedrion and the Ecclesia. Athens had the right to treat alone with powers outside the confederation, provided that the latter was not involved, but it was very difficult for the undertakings made by the principal city not to become binding upon the others indirectly, and, on the other hand, it was very easy for Athens to abuse her right by concluding alone treaties which directly concerned her associates. The fact that certain decrees, relating to alliances binding only upon Athens, were nevertheless adopted only after consultation with the confederate States was merely a pandering to the amour-propre of punctilious partners. All that the Synedrion could do now when it really took part in negotiations of federal interest was to present its dogmata to the Ecclesia through the medium of the Boule or, at the very most, if the Boule consented, bring them before the Ecclesia itself.102 In any case the decrees of the people alone had force, whether they were in accordance with or opposed to the dogmata : the synedroi were compelled to take with the Athenian jurors the customary oath,103 and if one of them were to be included in an embassy sent for further negotiations, it was the Ecclesia which chose him.104 Sometimes, moreover, the Synedrion did not even bother to conceal the real state of affairs: a dogma might declare in advance that whatever was decided by the Athenian Assembly would be regarded as “a common resolution of the allies.”105 In short, in place of being a legislative organ on the same footing as the Ecclesia, the Synedrion had degenerated into a consultative body like the Boule.
Was it likely that, under these conditions, the other guarantees given to the confederates would stand against the encroachments of a hegemony which became the more exacting the more it was contested ?
The financial system was completely upset. In principle, the syntaxis was only paid by towns which did not furnish a naval contingent,106 but, in fact, the defection of the large towns, who alone were in a position to have a navy, resulted in all the towns which remained faithful paying in specie, and thus the contribution strongly resembled tribute. A correlation was established between the right to sit in the Synedrion and the obligation to send the syntaxis107 Nor did the Synedrion any longer fix the sums to be paid: the Athenian Assembly directed foreign policy, therefore it was for her to estimate the cost. Even if a town made an agreement with a strategos as to the proportion which was to fall to it, the agreement was only valid after ratification by the Ecclesia.108 It was Athens alone who gave orders to each town either to send funds to the federal treasury or to hand them over to such and such a strategos for such and such a purpose, or to send them to the commander of its garrison for the payment of his men.109 If there were delay once more it was the Athenians who elected officials to undertake the collection of arrears, by force if necessary.110
As to the judicial power of the Synedrion one might almost say that it had ceased to exist. In 357-6 certain members of the confederation had taken part in an attack upon the confederate town of Eretria. Here was an occasion, if ever, for federal jurisdiction to intervene. But it was the Ecclesia which took action. A decree ordered the Boule to prepare rules of penal procedure for prosecuting the guilty and laid down that, for the future, the taking of arms against Eretria or any other town of the confederation would entail the penalty of death and total confiscation for the benefit of the federal exchequer.111
Even the autonomy of the towns suffered rude assaults after defections had made counteraction necessary. Athens despatched everywhere garrisons and governors to superintend affairs. She interfered in internal conflicts in favour of democracy and demanded high payment for her services. After having established peace at Ceos she permitted insurgents to appeal from local justice to her tribunals, then extended that ruling to all sentences, while at the same time she obtained for herself a monopoly for the exportation of red-lead.112 On one point, however, Athens respected the promises made in 378-7: she did not send cleruchs into federal territory. But at the close of 366-5 she did not hesitate to post them on strategic points which were not amenable to the confederation or had been reconquered after defection: at Samos,113 at Potidæa,114 in Chersonesus.115 There was much to disquiet even those who were not themselves menaced.
The general transformation of an hegemony which ill concealed its weakness by its violence was inevitably to provoke resistance and revolt. At first there were partial risings which were suppressed. Then the cities formed local unions. To enable themselves to secede the four towns of Ceos, Carthæa, Poiessa, Ioulis and Coressus formed a sympolity. Each retained its Council and its Assembly which continued to confer local citizenship:116 but they had a joint Council, a joint Assembly, a common privilege of citizenship and the prerogative of supreme sovereignty, a common coinage.117 About the same time Byzantium conceded its privilege of citizenship to two towns of lesser importance, Selymbria and Chalcedon.118 Finally the Social War, the war of secession, broke out. In two years (357-355) the confederation was shattered. The Athenians retained only fragments, which were soon to be taken from them by the Macedonian conquest.
IV
THE LEAGUE OF CORINTH
In the face of these multifarious attempts to introduce a little unity into the anarchic relations of the cities, attempts which almost invariably ended in the violent clashing of groups, one is at first bewildered as at the sight of innumerable waves rising, crashing and annihilating each other. If, however, one igriores the historical contingencies which produced and destroyed this welter of associations two great currents can be distinguished.
On the one hand there was the system of federal leagues, such as the Lacedæmonian league and the Athenian confederation. They grouped together allied cities widely separated, giving them the minimum of common government, without general citizenship, without any means of direct control over individuals. In theory they left to each city almost complete autonomy in all that concerned domestic policy, and their sovereignty consisted solely in the control of diplomatic and military affairs. Having for nucleus a State much more powerful than the rest, they acknowledged the hegemony of that State. They were, therefore, subjected to a dualist regime whose balance was inevitably precarious. Since the principal organ of the league was a Council in which all the cities had an equal voice and whose decisions were binding upon all, the dominant city was successful for a longer or shorter period in grouping round herself a majority. But when the purpose for which the league had been founded had been achieved (the struggle against the Persians or Sparta, the struggle against Athens), the hegemony no longer rendered the services which were its justification, it appeared and became oppressive ; in order to maintain itself it supported a party in each city, until the moment came when the principle of autonomy took its revenge and gained once more the upper hand.
On the other hand there sprang up a mass of federal leagues which bound together neighbouring and congeneric cities (Boeotians, Chalcidians, Arcadians, etc.). These were the sympolities. They respected in the mass the anterior privileges of the cities : and even though they never attained to complete unity, they did not fall far short. They had a federal citizenship which was based on local citizenship; that is to say every citizen of any one of the towns was a citizen of the confederation: being a Theban made a man a Boeotian ; by the very fact that a man was a Tegean he was also an Arcadian. From one town to another the articles of the confederation assured civil rights, but not political rights: it is probable that in the majority of sympolities, as in those of the Chalcidians and the Orchomenians, a citizen of the confederation had the right of free residence, of lawful marriage, and of property on all federal territory. This provision is sufficient to show that, in certain cases, the activity of the confederation extended to the individuals of particular towns without the intermediary of local authorities. It is evident, moreover, that its institutions led of themselves towards unification by their political colour, by favouring either democracy or oligarchy. However varied federal sovereignty might be in regard to its constitution and its particular treaties, it had always for symbol the right of striking money, which further implies a common system of weights and measures, for principal functions the direction of foreign policy and the administration of the army, for guarantee a supreme jurisdiction. According as the government was oligarchic, democratic or semi-democratic deliberative power pertained to a Council, to an Assembly or to both: but executive power was never exercised save by high magistrates o’ a diplomatic or military order, Bœotarchs or strategoi. That fact alone forbids one to rate too highly the progress realized by the sympolities in the direction of centralization. Fundamentally it was still a question of alliance, of common defence, of opposing groups, and the ideal was not the attainment of Hellenic unity but the formation of a small State on the model of Attica or Laconia.
Hellenic unity was only realized after the catastrophe of Chæronea, and then by Philip of Macedon and at the point of the sword. The conqueror was not content with having subjugated the Greeks of Europe; he wished to pose as the champion of the Panhellenic idea in order to extend his authority over those of Asia. If the forces of his old friends and his old enemies were to be amalgamated, a general peace and a mutual understanding were essential. He convoked delegates of all the cities to Corinth. To this constituent assembly he gave his instructions—instructions which were commands. In this way a league was formed which recalled in many respects the hegemonic leagues of the past, but which was differentiated from them by certain essential traits: the unlimited authority of a sole head and definitive intervention in the domestic policy of the cities.119
The official name of this league of Corinth was very simple : “the Hellenes” (oi ‘Έλληνες); it was only in common speech that it was spoken of as “the confederation of the Hellenes” (to KOIVóV των ‘ΕΧλήνων). The Macedonians did not form part of it, for general opinion did not recognize them as Hellenes; but their king, with all his power, was the chief, the hegemon, of the league. At the beginning of the federal charter came the inevitable bait: all the cities are free and autonomous; they shall not receive garrisons nor shall they pay tribute. But in this one there are unusual restrictions upon the principle postulated: the league must resist any attempt made to overthrow existing constitutions (constitutions which were for the most part oligarchic, thanks to a vigorous pressure exercised by Philip for several months). In addition, it prohibited unlawful executions and banishments, confiscations, any new divisions of lands, all wholesale emancipation of slaves. In short, it was its privilege and duty to interfere everywhere where the need was felt, to protect the propertied classes against revolution. Consequently every city was bound to prevent exiles from preparing on its territory armed attacks against any other city of the league. In a more general fashion, the cities in their relations with one another had to remain faithful to the sworn peace, to place no shackles on the freedom of the seas and to settle their differences by judicial methods, that is by means of the arbitration of a third party. All were bound not only themselves to refrain from machinations against peace, but to assist with their contingent in repulsing attacks upon any one of them, and to consider the violator of the treaty as excluded from the peace, as a common enemy.
The organ of the league was the Council, the “Synedrion of the Hellenes” (σννέδριον των ‘Ελλήνων or κοινόν).120 It was representative of the cities. The delegations of which it was composed, however, had not all an equal voice as in the earlier constitutions of the Peloponnesian league and the Athenian confederation, but one or more votes in proportion to the population represented, in accordance with the principle adopted by the Boeotians and the Arcadians.121 Usually it sat at Corinth and concerned itself with all federal affairs, with questions of peace and war principally, but also with all questions relating to the political and social control of the cities. In order to maintain legal order and to secure arbitration upon differences which arose among them, it worked in conjunction with special magistrates. It acted as a supreme Court to deal with all violations of the federal pact and with acts of high treason: it might, for instance, sit in judgment upon a citizen of a federated town who took service in a foreign army against the league or its chief, and could condemn him to exile or confiscate his property.122 But the Synedrion of the Hellenes was merely a tool in the hands of a master. It was the hegemon who convoked it or ordered it to be convoked by a mandatory; it was he probably who appointed, like missi dominiez, persons whose duty it was, together with the Council, to watch over suspect cities. He was omnipotent, because his name was Philip, because his name was to be Alexander, because he was and remained, as his title indicates, the commander of the army, the leader in war. As a first move he ordered a census to be made in all the cities of men in a position to bear arms, in order to establish a percentage for the determining of contingents to be demanded : he needed 200,000 foot-soldiers and 15,000 horsemen.
Such was the unity achieved at the bidding of the Macedonian. No longer leagues which split Greece into two, no longer small confederations, but the whole of Greece organized in a koinon and proclaiming compulsory concord.
But we must see what, in reality, this peace was and what the political and social value of the union which was effected. What was this peace ? The first act of the newly born league was a vote for war against the Persians and the appointment of Philip as strategos autokrator. Without gaining a respite from internal dissensions Greece was constantly to be exposed to repercussions of the tempests which were shattering the world. And the principles which were to guide the coming generations ? We have a foretaste of these in reading the clause of the federal pact which, desiring to maintain for ever the existing order, forbade the emancipation of slaves as a revolutionary measure.