The First Achaean League
And first: When the burning of the Pythagorean
clubs in Magna Grecia was followed by great constitutional
disturbances, as was natural on the sudden disappearance of
the leading men in each state; and the Greek cities in that
part of
Italy became the scene of murder, revolutionary warfare,
and every kind of confusion; deputations were sent from most
parts of
Greece to endeavour to bring about some settlement
of these disorders.
1 But the disturbed states preferred the
intervention of the Achaeans above all others, and showed
the greatest confidence in them, in regard to the measures to
be adopted for removing the evils that oppressed them. Nor
was this the only occasion on which they displayed this preference. For shortly afterwards there was a general movement
among them to adopt the model of the Achaean constitution.
The first states to move in the matter were
Croton,
Sybaris,
and Caulonia, who began by erecting a common temple to Zeus
Homorios,
2 and a place in which to hold their meetings and
common councils.
They then adopted the laws
and customs of the Achaeans, and determined
to conduct their constitution according to their
principles; but finding themselves hampered by the tyranny of
Dionysius of
Syracuse, and also by the encroachment of the neighbouring barbarians, they were
forced much against their will to abandon them.
Again, later on,
when the Lacedaemonians met with their unexpected reverse
at Leuctra, and the Thebans as unexpectedly claimed the hegemony in
Greece, a feeling of uncertainty prevailed
throughout the country, and especially among the
Lacedaemonians and Thebans themselves, because the former
refused to allow that they were beaten, the latter felt hardly certain that they had conquered.
On this occasion, once more, the
Achaeans were the people selected by the two parties, out of all
Greece, to act as arbitrators on the points in dispute. And
this could not have been from any special view of their power,
for at that time they were perhaps the weakest state in
Greece;
it was rather from a conviction of their good faith and high
principles, in regard to which there was but one opinion
universally entertained. At that period of their history, however, they possessed only the elements of success; success
itself, and material increase, were barred by the fact that they
had not yet been able to produce a leader worthy of the
occasion. Whenever any man had given indications of such
ability, he was systematically thrust into the background and
hampered, at one time by the Lacedaemonian government, and
at another, still more effectually, by that of
Macedonia.
