Part 16

Between 250 and 245 B.C. the fortunes of Gonatas were at a low ebb. He evidently bent before the storm, unable to confront Alexander and Aratus in Greece and the admirals of Philadelphus in the Ægean. Relief came to him from an unexpected source--the renewal of the war between Egypt and Asia, when, on the death of Antiochus II, his sister-wife Laodice took up arms against the Egyptian queen and her babe on behalf of her son Seleucus Callinicus. For, helped by the untimely death of Philadelphus, and despite the intervention of the Egyptian fleet, she succeeded in compassing the death of her rivals;[127] whereupon the new Ptolemy, Euergetes, took the field in person and made a general attack by land and sea upon her and her adherents. This tragic incident was one of the few pieces of good luck experienced by Antigonus. Another was the premature death of his nephew Alexander (246 B.C.), followed as it was by the Ætolian conquest of Boeotia, and the decision of Nicæa, Alexander's widow, to surrender Corinth and the rest of her kingdom to Macedon, the arrangement being that she was to take the place of the barren and discredited Stratonice as wife of the crown prince Demetrius. In 245-244 B.C. the balance in Asia inclined sharply in favor of Laodice, and at the same time Antigonus, aided by his patron god Pan, recovered Delos and the Islands. Having thus regained what the rebellion of Alexander had cost him, and having settled his account with Egypt, Antigonus had now to deal with Aratus of Sicyon alone. The Achæan was too quick for him, however. By a night attack, in time of peace, he treacherously seized Corinth (243 B.C.), and at once added it, together with Megara, Epidaurus, and Troezen, to the Achæan league. The response of Antigonus to this audacious coup was to form a pact with his old friends the Ætolians to divide Achæan territory between them; whereupon, as the only escape from so great a peril, Aratus put the responsibility where the responsibility really belonged, by having Ptolemy Euergetes elected general of the Achæan league on land and sea for 242 B.C. Euergetes brought the Laodicean War to a point where an advantageous peace was possible by a victory over Callinicus in this critical year; but his attempt to help Aratus, who tried to "liberate" Athens while his "commander" engaged Gonatas in the Ægean, was frustrated by the defeat sustained by his admiral Sophron at the hands of the veteran Antigonus off the island of Andros. Macedon still held the Ægean. In the mean time its allies the Ætolians, already dangerously strengthened by the occupation of Boeotia, had worsted Olympias, the queen regent of Epirus, in several engagements, and were on the point of incorporating all of Acarnania in their league. Antigonus thought the time had come to call a halt. Euergetes and Callinicus were of the same mind. Accordingly, the long war was concluded in 242-241 B.C. by a general peace arranged on the basis of _uti possidetis_. Antigonus held Argos, Hermione, Phlius, Ægina, Megalopolis, and Orchomenus in the Peloponnesus, in Central Greece Athens alone, and in the Ægean Euboea and the Cyclades, as well, seemingly, as Lemnos, Imbros, and Scyros, the colonies of Athens. Thessaly was of course his. His garrisons stood in Demetrias, Chalcis, and Piræus. Of the "shackles" of Greece Corinth alone was out of his hands. In 240-239 B.C. he died at the age of eighty, having been a king forty-seven years, all but ten of them in Macedon.

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I have sketched the career of Antigonus Gonatas in some fullness chiefly because it has only recently become possible to give anything like chronological precision to an account of this remarkable man.[128] His reign deserves detailed consideration, however, because of the position it occupies at one of the culminating points of Greek imperialism, the only other point of equal importance being that in which Alexander the Great introduced deification of rulers. The record given above shows clearly, I think, that the power of Macedon did not suffice to hold Greece in subjection on the principles followed by Antigonus Gonatas, and against the opposition of Egypt. Even the final triumph of 242-241 B.C. left Egyptian garrisons in Thrace, the Hellespont, Ionia, and islands as far advanced into the Ægean as Thera and Astypalæa, Samos and Lesbos, Thasos and Samothrace. It left Achæa in possession of Corinth and Megara, Epidaurus and Troezen, as well as Sicyon and at least a foothold in Arcadia. It left Ætolia in possession of part of Acarnania, Dolopia, Æniania, Malis, Doris, Locris, Phocis, and in close alliance with Boeotia. Heraclea at Thermopylæ and Delphi with its Amphictyonic council were Ætolian. Hence when the new king of Macedon, Demetrius II, married Olympias's daughter Phthia, and took Epirote Acarnania under his protection (240-239 B.C.); and when Ætolia, thus check-mated, entered into a defensive and offensive alliance with Achæa, the territory of the two leagues, now united in opposition to Macedon, met, and inclosed completely the Corinthian Gulf. The one had grown strong despite Antigonus and the other with his connivance. He had been forced to give Ætolia a free rein from need of its aid against Egypt, Epirus, and Achæa. Now the policy of Epirus was subservient to that of Macedon as it had been prior to the accession of Pyrrhus to its throne in 295 B.C., but the two leagues were able to fight on fair terms with the two monarchies, and in 238 B.C. they defied Macedon, now supported by Epirus, without having Egypt as their ally. The failure of the Greek policy of Antigonus Gonatas may be best gauged by the fact that twenty-seven years earlier Athens and Sparta had dared to do the like, but only when Egypt, and probably also Epirus, were fighting on their side.

The chief reason for this striking difference is that in the interval the Achæans, following the lead given to them by the Ætolians, had come to life and shed their ethnic cocoon. They had long since been a _koinon_, or league; but up to 251 B.C. their league, like that of Boeotia prior to 387 B.C., like that of the Ætolians prior to the seizure of Delphi in 292 B.C., had been confined strictly by the limits of their ethnos. The Ætolians had enlarged their territory under the ægis of the Delphian Amphictyony. The Achæans had no such favoring circumstance. In their case expansion by the incorporation of "foreign" peoples was the policy and achievement of a citizen of the first "foreign" city to be absorbed, Aratus of Sicyon, who saw a greater opportunity for power as the head of the neighboring league than as the "tyrant" of his native state, holding office, like the priest at Nemi, till murdered, or till he had lost the confidence of Antigonus. At his instigation the Achæan league was carried into the territory of the "foreigner," the necessary prerequisite for such a development being, however, that the ethnic bond between the Achæan cities had been canceled and replaced by a federal bond. The tenacious theory that common citizenship presupposed community of descent was therewith discarded. Its abandonment opened to the league possibilities of growth never possessed by either the city-state or the ethnic state. Of these the Ætolians and the Achæans took advantage to the best of their abilities.

They were wise enough, moreover, to perceive that not only were city institutions indispensable for an up-to-date polity--whence the Ætolians on forming their league in 322-314 B.C. abandoned their three ancient tribes and their multitudinous villages and organized in their stead a score or two of cities[129]--but also that their federal system must recognize and accept the preexistent city-states as its units. This, as we have seen,[130] had not been done in Boeotia or in the Hellenic league organized by Philip II, in each of which the federal synod, being constructed on the idea of representation according to population, made districts and not cities the units; so that the smaller cities felt themselves discriminated against and tended to rebel against being clubbed together. How far equality of cities prevailed among the Achæans it is impossible to say with certainty: we are simply informed that the voting there was by cities. But we are, I think, permitted to infer that the principle followed was "one city one vote." For it is unlikely that the old Achæan cities, on admitting Sicyon, Corinth, Megalopolis, and Argos, deliberately exposed themselves to the fate of the little lake cities in Boeotia by giving these large "foreign" cities voting power proportionate to their populations. This conclusion holds, I believe, both for the Achæan representative assembly, or synod, which was made up, seemingly, of successive fractions of the citizens of the constituent cities,[131] and for the Achæan primary assembly, or _syncletus_, which was open to all citizens over thirty years of age. It holds, too, it seems, for the two Ætolian assemblies, the ordinary and the extraordinary, which were both primary,[132] but not for the Ætolian council which was constituted of delegates apportioned to the constituent cities according to their size. The Achæan and the Ætolian leagues represent in this respect a reaction from the earlier leagues. Their hope was to change the stress of the cities, which came into play, from a centrifugal into a centripetal force by basing their federations squarely on the city-states.

This they could do, up to a certain point, the more easily because each ethnos had lacked a city-state of outstanding political and economic power. Equality of city-states did not conflict flagrantly with realities in either Achæa or Ætolia. Hence the principle that each city-state, irrespective of strength in the Aristotelian sense, should have a single vote in the federal assembly, and an equal voice in the choosing of the federal cabinet (_demiurgi_; _apocleti_), and the federal executive (_strategus_, hipparch, secretary of state, treasurer or treasurers) appeared equitable. In Boeotia and Hellas in the earlier time the league had been created by the superior strength of Thebes and Macedon respectively; and these capital states had taken care that the initial leadership should be preserved by the institutions of the leagues. The Achæan and the Ætolian leagues, on the other hand, were partly, no doubt, the result of a compromise between the constituent units, but mainly the consequence of foreign pressure. The federal movement was not based primarily upon the activity of any one city, but upon a need generally felt. Hence the capital of the Achæan league was Ægium, and the capital of the Ætolian league Thermon--neutral meeting-places, like Washington, Ottawa, and Canberra. That was something new in the annals of the Greek leagues.

The creative force of foreign policy is manifest in still other characteristics of these Hellenistic leagues. It was almost inevitable that in those days of executive efficiency states should be monarchically organized. Hence, whereas there had been eleven Boeotarchs in the Boeotian league and seven generals in early third-century Acarnania, a single general stood at the head of the Ætolians from the founding of their league and at the head of the Achæans after 255 B.C. That gave a unity of action otherwise impossible, the lack of which, though negligible perhaps in domestic affairs, had been found disadvantageous in foreign affairs. It was a necessary concession to a monarchical age, one which, however, had been made reluctantly and with an important reservation which took from the serum its malignancy: the generalship could be held by the same individual only every alternate year. He might be the uncrowned king of the league one year; the next he must be a private citizen.

In still another respect distrust of monarchy and aversion to the "tyranny" on which Antigonus Gonatas had based his Greek empire, are betrayed in the institutions of the Achæans. The rule of a city by a tyrant and membership in the league were regarded as incompatible with one another. This was, doubtless, a requirement of the federal laws, which, consisting of treaties negotiated between the original cities in 275 B.C. and at the admission of new cities thereafter, of oaths by which these treaties were sanctioned, and of general enactments made from time to time by special legislative process, bound the citizens of the individual cities no less than did the local laws which they themselves passed. Otherwise the city-states were at liberty to adopt whatever form of government they chose. The league championed neither democracy nor oligarchy, though its working favored the well-to-do classes. At most it compelled a certain uniformity in local administration, its general attitude being admirably symbolized by its monetary arrangements, wherein the standard was determined by the federal authority while the coins were issued by the constituent cities.[133]

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The very constitutions of the Achæan and the Ætolian leagues disclose the importance of the part which the Greek policy of Antigonus Gonatas played in the creation of these dangerous adversaries of himself and his country. It is true that his son, Demetrius II, fought them to a standstill, wrested from Ætolia a large part of its acquisitions, and might have dissolved both leagues by force, had not Epirus deserted him and gone over to their side; had not the Illyrian pirates whom he let loose on this new enemy provoked the Romans to cross the Adriatic; and had not the Dardanians moved down on Macedon and defeated and killed him in battle. Such "had nots" belonged, however, to the constant possibilities, and complications of this sort were ever occurring in the struggle of Macedon for the hegemony of Greece. On this occasion their issue was so disastrous for Macedon that the hour of the two leagues seemed come.

But what should have been their triumph proved to be their destruction. For the frustration of their hopes Polybius,[134] who voices the opinion of Aratus, held the Ætolians responsible, and it is likely that he was in the main right. For just at this critical moment, when the Achæans were face to face with the most serious problem which their federal system presented, namely, the reluctance of states, like Sparta and Athens, which were markedly stronger than the common run of the Achæan cities, to accept mere equality with them, the Ætolians not only left them in the lurch and made an advantageous peace for themselves with Antigonus Doson, the new king of Macedon, but, by ceding to Sparta their Arcadian cities (Tegea, Mantinea, Orchomenus, and Caphiæ), they made it possible for Cleomenes, the young Spartan monarch, to rally round himself all the Peloponnesian opposition to the Achæans, and to make a brilliant effort to establish once again the Spartan hegemony in the peninsula. Another view of the matter is that the downfall of the Achæan league--which, to escape Cleomenes, threw itself into the arms of Antigonus Doson--was due to the intervention of Ptolemy III, who backed up Sparta, Athens, and Ætolia by his friendship and his money,[135] and would have gladly seen Achæa eliminated in order that Greece might present a united front to Antigonus Doson. In any case it was Antigonus Doson who reaped the benefits, and it seems unlikely that they were wholly an unearned increment. What he was capable of he had already shown by joining heartily in the international guarantee of the neutrality of Athens which had robbed Aratus of that choice prize. He was clearly no common man, and had he not died an untimely death shortly after the great victory he gained over Cleomenes at Sellasia (222 B.C.), he would probably have been much better known in history. His energetic and tactful conduct in this crisis contrasts sharply with the nerveless backdown of Egypt, for which the only excuse was the imminent demise of Euergetes and the threatening attitude of Antiochus the Great. It cannot be denied that Antigonus Doson made a good use of all his opportunities.

His settlement of Hellenic affairs was characterized by the revival of the general synod established by the great Philip.[136] Representatives of the Hellenic states met in formal assembly at Corinth (224 B.C.), and chose the king of Macedon as their hegemon. Subsequently the synod was to meet at a time and place to be designated by its head. A mere enumeration of the states which took this action tells the story of the constitutional development of Hellas in the Macedonian age. They were Macedon, Thessaly, Epirus, Acarnania, Locris, Phocis, Boeotia, Euboea, Achæa, and probably the Islanders. Of these the first was a kingdom,[137] but all the others were leagues. The city-states, which had been everything in Philip's synod, have disappeared, swallowed up in the federations. Whether each of the units had now an equal number of votes, or, as in the time of Philip, a number proportionate to its size, we do not know, though the second alternative is the more probable one. In both cases Macedonian deputies took part in the meetings of the synod and served as heads of the Macedonian interest. Together with the deputies from Thessaly and other subservient states they probably formed a majority in the synod. In both Philip II and Antigonus Doson, Macedon had, accordingly, at once hegemons and kings. We hear of nothing in the revived Hellenic league comparable with the Committee of Public Safety of the old one; but nothing similar was now required, since the generals of the constituent leagues were the natural representatives of these bodies when the synod was not in session. They had thus a place provided for them in the scheme of Antigonus Doson.

The republican reaction against the policy of Antigonus Gonatas had by no means spent its force. This is shown in the seriousness with which it was now reckoned with by Antigonus Doson. He could not ignore the well established practice of the league assemblies to decide all important questions of foreign policy. Hence his synod differs from that of Philip II particularly in this important respect, that its action in declaring war, concluding peace, and other like matters was taken subject to ratification by the league authorities, and was, seemingly, binding only on such of them as ratified it.[138] His synod, in other words, stood to the league assemblies as the Achæan synod stood to the Achæan _syncletus_. Naturally, the confederates could not withdraw from the hegemony at pleasure, much less join its enemies; so that the refusal of a league to accept a decision of the synod to declare war meant only that it assumed a position of neutrality. In Philip's time each city had had to pay per day a fine of thirty drachmæ for every horseman, twenty drachmæ for every hoplite, ten drachmæ for every light-armed soldier, and seven or eight drachmæ for every sailor who was absent from a duly authorized expedition.[139] Now the leagues could refuse to coöperate without suffering any penalty. They surrendered their liberty to fight one another, and their right to contract alliances with outside states; but they did not surrender their diplomacy entirely to the hegemon, though they agreed to enter into no negotiations with any outside king.[140] They gave their hegemon no right whatever to interfere in their local concerns.[141]

Such were the generous concessions to local sentiment by means of which Antigonus Doson sought to place the hegemony of the kings of Macedon in Hellas on a secure basis. Never before in the history of the people had a conqueror made so noble a use of his power. Antigonus Doson went in fact so far in conciliating the Greek states that had he withdrawn Macedonian troops from Demetrias, Chalcis, and Corinth,--the three shackles of Hellas,--added new conquests like Orchomenus, Sparta, and Messene to the constituent leagues instead of to the central organization, and possessed less personal prestige, it is difficult to imagine how the Hellenic league could ever have been brought into action. Probably all that he cared to be absolutely sure of was the neutrality of the confederates who did not support him in the field.

In any case that was all that his successor Philip V was able to accomplish, when, in 220 B.C., he had the Hellenic synod accept the repeated challenge of war offered to him by the Ætolians, who, taking advantage of the accession of a young and untried king to the throne of Macedon, assailed his hegemony in Greece while it was still precarious. Had Doson lived to wage the Social War (220-217 B.C.), he might have crushed the Ætolians by sheer weight of numbers, and have completed the unification of Hellas. Philip V fought bravely and skillfully and won the respect of both his friends and his foes; but before any definite issue of the struggle had arrived, the campaign between Hannibal and the Romans had reached such a point that the hegemon of Hellas dared not neglect it any longer.

"Let Greece," said Agelaus of Naupactus at the peace conference which followed,[142] "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. If it is too much to hope that it should be so always, let it at least be so just now; let 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 conquers 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 on its guard, and Philip above all. Your truest defense, O King," he continued, "will be found in the character of the chief and protector of the Greeks. Leave off destroying Greek cities; leave off weakening them till they become a prey to every invader. Rather 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 supporter 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 neighboring 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 dealing independently with any of the questions which may arise among us."