Creating a Common Polity. Emily Mackil
Aitolian force invaded western Achaia but was forcefully attacked, with some two thousand men taken prisoner and their arms and baggage captured as plunder; the Achaian admiral crossed the Corinthian Gulf and seized a body of slaves and three ships with their crews.177 The Achaians were now fighting fire with fire, using the very methods favored by their enemies to defeat them. They followed up these seizures with plundering expeditions to two of the richest and most strategic of the coastal poleis of Aitolia, Kalydon and Naupaktos.178 Philip, meanwhile, made important gains in central Greece at the Aitolians’ expense, winning control of Phthiotic Thebes, which he renamed Philippi, and by the late summer of 217 he had gained control of western Phokis, thus fulfilling some of the principal aims of the war on behalf of the allies.179
From a position of strength and expansion in the 220s, the Aitolians had suffered considerable losses by 217. Far from gaining a stronger foothold in the Peloponnese, they lost control of vital areas in central Greece and suffered depredations in Aitolia proper. It was in this context that they appear to have rewarded, if not directly commissioned, the work of several poets to promulgate a message of Aitolian unity throughout the koinon. Aristodama of Smyrna, an epic poetess, was praised by the city of Lamia in a decree of the Aitolian koinon dated to 218/7 for having “commemorated the ethnos of the Aitolians and the ancestors of the people.”180 Another decree in her honor, issued by the Lokrian polis of Chaleion, survives from a copy erected at Delphi and must belong to the same year.181 It is clear, then, that Aristodama was making the rounds, performing poems that commemorated the Aitolians. The fact that both honorific decrees attesting to her activities survive from member poleis that were not ethnically Aitolian may suggest that a particular emphasis was placed on encouraging loyalty in these areas, where the risk of defection in the crisis conditions of the Social War was very high. But it would be surprising if she did not travel to the Aitolian heartland as well.182 Similar work appears to have been carried out by the epic poet Nikander of Kolophon, who was active either in the last quarter of the third century, and so a contemporary of Aristodama, or in the second quarter, when the Aitolians capitalized on their victory over the Gauls to establish themselves at Delphi and expand their koinon vigorously.183 He was the author of an Aitolika, a lost regional epic about the Aitolians, as well as other works that recounted traditional Greek myths in emphatically Aitolian settings, including not only ancient Aitolian places like Kalydon but also newer members of the koinon like Malis.184 Whether Aristodama continued the work of Nikander or was his contemporary, the apparent content of her poetry and the evident itinerary she followed in performing it suggest that at the end of the Social War the Aitolians sought to bolster the unity and integrity of their koinon by elaborating, if not developing, a history of the Aitolian ethnos through poetic performance. It is a striking response to crisis.
At the Nemean Games in the summer of 217, Philip received a letter informing him of Hannibal’s overwhelming victory over the Romans at Lake Trasimene. According to Polybios, the king showed the letter only to Demetrios of Pharos, who had taken refuge with him after violating his own treaty with the Romans in 220; it is likely that Demetrios had more experience with the Romans than anyone else present, and he had more than his share of ambition. The story goes that he whispered these ambitions into the ear of the still young king and urged him to end the war with the Aitolians.185 The timing was fortuitous: the Achaians had not lost any ground in the war; Akarnania and Epeiros, although they had suffered a recent Aitolian invasion, were significantly better off than they had been in 220, and Philip had succeeded in wresting western Phokis and Phthiotic Achaia from the Aitolians. None of the Allies, then, had any significant motivation to continue what had turned out to be a costly war; the Aitolians, smarting from the recent Achaian depredations in their own territory and their losses in neighboring regions, were also eager for peace. A conference was held at Naupaktos in the late summer of 217, at which peace was concluded on the simple condition that each party should retain those territories of which they were at that time in possession.186 Polybios gives us few details, preferring instead to record a rousing speech by one Agelaos of Naupaktos, who warned the assembled Greeks to cease making war on one another, for there was a dark cloud rising in the west: whether Hannibal or the Romans won the war in which they were then engaged, the victor would not be content with sovereignty over Italy and Sicily.187 If the speech is genuine, it was prophetic. But the Romans became involved in the affairs of the Greek koina long before they were able to end the war with Hannibal.
THE FIRST AND SECOND MACEDONIAN WARS: ROME, AITOLIA, AND PHILIP V, 215–196
The first Greek state with which the Romans made a treaty was the Aitolian koinon, but it was probably concluded, from the Roman perspective, for largely negative reasons: to break the power of Philip in Greece and the Adriatic, and to prevent the restoration of Demetrios of Pharos to Illyria.188 It was only insofar as the Aitolians shared these aims, for entirely different reasons, that these strange bedfellows formed a partnership in 212 or 211.189 The treaty, as recorded by Livy, committed the Aitolians to attacking Philip by land, while the Romans would support their efforts at sea. Akarnania was promised to the Aitolians, and both parties were effectively prohibited from making a separate peace with Philip.190 A fragmentary copy of the inscribed treaty was found at Thyrrheion in Akarnania, and from it we learn important details: the Aitolians were free to act as their leaders (archontes) saw fit, and they were to gain possession of any poleis taken by the Romans in the war, while the Romans would control the territory (chōra) of such communities. The last complete clause of the inscription explicitly allows for expansion of the membership of the Aitolian koinon: “If any of these poleis revolt or advance against the Romans or the Aitolians, their men, cities, and territories shall be added to the Aitolian state [politeuma] for the sake of the Romans.”191 The promise of Akarnania and the recognized right of the Aitolians to expand their state, together with the Aitolians’ continued isolation from the Hellenic Alliance, made the conflict almost a continuation of the costly but ineffective Social War. The only significant change was the presence of the Romans, who nevertheless committed few resources to the war against Philip, focusing their energies instead on the much nearer and more immediately threatening enemy, Hannibal.
The Aitolians immediately set about attacking the most strategic and valuable places in Akarnania, winning control of Oiniadai and Nasos as well as Zakynthos.192 Philip’s attacks on Aitolian interests centered on Thessaly, which experienced almost constant hostilities. The Romans’ only significant intervention in the war came in 211/0, when by joint actions with the Aitolians the Opountian Lokrian coastal polis of Antikyra and the entire island of Aigina were seized. Although the Romans took the booty from these victories, the places themselves belonged to the Aitolians, who then sold Aigina to Attalos of Pergamon at the meager price of thirty talents.193 The real price was perhaps higher, for in the autumn of 210 Attalos was elected stratēgos of the Aitolian koinon, an office that although honorific still signified a major development in the political alignments of the period.194 Around the same time, the Aitolians persuaded the Spartans to join their alliance, which made Spartan opposition to the Achaian koinon explicit.195 Like the Social War, this one inflicted significant collateral damage: over the next three years, Greeks who were not directly involved sought on two separate occasions to introduce negotiations to end the war but were unsuccessful.196 Achaian military weakness was becoming costly even to Philip, who encouraged the Achaians to strengthen their own military, thereby reducing their dependence on his own forces.197 It was through his Achaian supporter, Philopoimen, elected as stratēgos for the first time in 208/7, that a major reform of the Achaian military was undertaken.198 This newly trained Achaian army inflicted a decisive defeat on the Spartans and their allies at Mantineia in 207, which proved the success of Philopoimen’s military reforms and encouraged a waxing desire for Achaian independence from Philip, reversing the policy of accommodation to Macedon that had been established by Aratos in order to save the Achaians from Kleomenes.199 Philip’s delicate bargain of promoting Achaian military self-sufficiency to enable him to wage war against the Romans had backfired. It may have been his own realization of this fact that made him refuse to hand over the western garrisons to the Achaians as he had promised.200 The Achaian victory at Mantineia was of course also a defeat for Sparta’s Aitolian allies,