II. Achaea and the Peloponnese in the Late Fifth-Early Fourth Centuries

Klaus Freitag

The present contribution investigates the relationship of Achaea to Sparta in the late fifth and early fourth centuries BCE [1] in order to find out whether ethnicity played a role in that relationship and, if so, in which contexts. For this reason, I will not discuss the ethnogenesis of the Achaeans, especially since C. Morgan’s work, [2] some in combination with J. Hall, [3] has provided fundamental observations on the evidence and illuminated many aspects of the mechanisms that caused the ethnic identity of the Achaeans to emerge. [4]

The Achaeans of the Northern Peloponnese probably did not belong to the Peloponnesian League led by Sparta before 417 BCE. Two years earlier, in 419 BCE, the Athenian Alcibiades had marched through the Peloponnese with Athenian and allied troops, and on this occasion the Athenians reached Patrai in Achaea, where Alcibiades decided to connect the acropolis of the city to the harbor by long walls. However, the intervention of Corinth and Sikyon prevented the realization of the project. [5] It is not possible to put such information in a concrete political context from an Achaean perspective. Not only is it unclear how the other Achaean cities reacted to this situation, but we do not even know whether or not Patrai followed an independent course that led the citizens to join Alcibiades—whatever this meant in concrete political and diplomatic terms.

At any rate, a little later Thucydides mentions briefly that after the battle of Mantinea the Spartans introduced in Achaea a new order of their liking (Thucydides 5.82.1). We can only speculate on the precise implications of this. In 417 BCE in the cities of the Achaeans, and also at the level of the Achaean League—if such a federal unit already existed at this time—the democratic constitutions, supported by a strong peasantry, [6] were transformed into “moderate” oligarchic regimes. “Moderate” means that access to active and passive voting rights was confined to citizens of hoplite status, and possibly above a certain age, thereby limiting the number of citizens with full rights. However, after the Spartan intervention the number of citizens with full political rights was probably still rather high, especially since the political order in the individual Achaean cities in the following years remained generally unchallenged and relatively stable. [7] Based on Thucydides’ laconic comments, it is only a supposition that manipulation of the political structures of the Achaeans by the Spartans was a sort of punishment for their cooperation with the Athenians under Alcibiades. [8]

Whether the Achaeans as a whole or the individual cities became full members of the Peloponnesian League is unclear, as is how long they belonged to the League. [9] It is possible that the Spartans concluded some sort of special alliance with the Achaean League. The citizens of Pellene, close to Sikyon, who belonged to the Achaean ethnos, had taken their own political course earlier on, splitting from the other Achaeans and becoming allies of Sparta as an independent and self-conscious political entity. [10] Among the admirals honored with statues in the monument dedicated by Lysander at Delphi to commemorate the battle of Aigospotamoi, Axionikos, the captain from Pellene, is called by Pausanias Akhaios ek Pellenes, an Achaean from Pellene, [11] but we cannot be certain that the city at this point belonged to the Achaean federation. However, the epithet “Achaean” makes it clear that the Pellenians considered themselves as belonging to the Achaean ethnos.

As Mauro Moggi has recently shown in a fundamental contribution, it is unclear whether a federal state existed as the form of political organization of the Achaeans already in the fifth century BCE. [12] It is entirely possible that the Achaeans completed the last step from loose cooperation based on ethnicity to a federal state with a developed constitution under the leadership of Sparta and as members of the Peloponnesian League. At any rate, it is important to stress that the Spartans did not take any measure, even later, to eliminate a common political organization of the Achaeans, whatever its form. Rather, there are reasons to think that the Spartans recognized the integrity of the Achaean federal state. At any rate, the Achaeans belonged to the Peloponnesian League as a unit and expressed their will, within the limits granted by the structure of the League, with one single voice. It is possible that in the Peloponnesian League the Achaeans had one vote with Pellene having a separate one, as the Lysandrian monument indicates.

From the time of the Peloponnesian War to the year 362 BCE, the situation in Achaea seems relatively stable. The Achaeans reacted occasionally, but were generally rather inactive and favored the conservation of the status quo as far as Peloponnesian politics was concerned. Already in the fifth century they had kept out of major conflicts. They did not join the alliance against Persia, [13] and at the beginning of the Peloponnesian War, according to Thucydides, the whole of the Peloponnese was on Sparta’s side except Argos and Achaea, which was connected by philia to both sides. [14] Of the Achaeans, only Pellene fought on the Spartans’ side from the outset, while the others joined only later.

Before 389 BCE, the Achaeans had granted the federal citizenship to the Kalydonians. [15] This measure is extremely important for two reasons:

1. The political procedure of the Achaeans shows that by this time there was a sort of double citizenship, i.e. the Kalydonians possessed, like the other Achaeans, both citizenship of their own city and citizenship of the federal state. [16] The existence of forms of federal organization along these lines can be seen in inscriptions from the late fifth century. A Som[ ] ophon Achaios Olenios shows up in the famous inscription from Sparta listing contributors and contributions to Sparta’s war fund (edited by W.T. Loomis with new fragments). [17] This man from Olenos, an Achaean city west of Patras, is indicated with a sequence of personal name, ethnic name, and city ethnic, as will become usual in later times. This suggests the existence of a double level of citizenship, tied to Olenos’ membership in the Achaean state. [18] Dates proposed for this inscription vary between the Peloponnesian and the Corinthian War. An Attic honorary decree from the year 399 BCE shows a similar situation: the honoree is a certain Aristeas, an Achaean from Aigion (ton Akhaion ton Aigia). [19] These documents should be compared to a recently published inscription from Gorgippia, a Milesian colony on the northern shore of the Black Sea. It is a grave inscription dated between 490 and 480 BCE and commemorating one Philoxenos, son of Kelon, who came “from Helike of the Peloponnese” (Pelaponnaso ex Helikes). The inscription does not yet refer to Helike as Achaean; rather, in order to specify the location of the distant city of the deceased, it mentions its location in the Peloponnese. [20]
2. While sources that concentrate on Panhellenic or Peloponnesian developments, as already pointed out, show the Achaeans as rather inactive and neutral, they did engage in noteworthy political activities in a specific area: the coastal region of the Gulf of Corinth facing Achaean territory. Expanding their range of action across the gulf, the Achaeans were also crossing their ethnic borders in the strict sense of the word. In the Homeric Catalogue of Ships the cities of Pleuron and Kalydon were still Aetolian, [21] but during the archaic and classical ages they had drifted apart from Aetolia and in the fifth century according to Thucydides they were located in a region called “Aeolis.” [22] With this extremely ambivalent designation, the inhabitants of the coastal region between Oiniadai and Kalydon were possibly trying to relocate themselves on the map of Greek ethnic identities in a way that facilitated cooperation between their region and (for instance) Achaeans, Boeotians, and Corinthians, and at the same time separated them decidedly from Aetolia in the strict sense. The integration of Kalydon in the Achaean koinon, which cannot be precisely dated, is not to be explained only as a consequence of some specific political situation, but rather as the result of close economic and cultural relations, which grew over a long time. The contacts seem to have been especially close between the coastal areas around Kalydon and Patrai. This is shown by several indices: the place-name Olenos is found both in Achaea and on the Aetolian coast facing Achaea; [23] according to Thucydides, the people of Zakynthos, at the entrance of the Gulf of Corinth, were descended from the “Achaeans of the Peloponnese”— whoever exactly these Achaeans should be understood to be; [24] and when Achaeans participated in Pericles’ expedition against Oiniadai in the mid-fifth century, this probably happened against the background of the preexisting political project aiming to take control of the Aetolian-Acarnanian coast and create there a sphere of influence. [25] If the Athenians had successfully established a lasting foothold in Oiniadai, they would probably have left the city to the Achaeans, by the same token as they gave nearby Naupaktos to the Messenians. In any case, during the fourth century Pleuron, Kalydon, and for a while also the Western Locrian city of Naupaktos and possibly other places on the Aetolian and Locrian coast such as for instance Phana, belonged to the Achaeans. [26]

In 389 BCE the Achaeans were compelled to put a garrison in Kalydon to defend it against attacks from the Acarnanians. In this time of need, they sent an embassy to Sparta to ask for military support. [27] The military situation had become more critical because the Acarnanians were supported by their allies the Boeotians and Athenians, the latter having also stationed a fleet in the harbor of the nearby Acarnanian city of Oiniadai. [28] The envoys of the Achaeans made it clear to the Spartans that they felt they were being treated unjustly by them. According to Xenophon, they spoke as follows: “We for our part, Spartans, join you in war whenever you order us to and follow you wherever you lead us; but now that we are besieged by the Acarnanians and their allies, the Athenians and Boeotians, you take no thought for us. Now we cannot hold out if the situation remains like this, but either we shall abandon the war in the Peloponnese and all of us cross over and make war against the Acarnanians and their allies, or else we shall make peace on whatever terms we can.” [29] According to Xenophon, the Achaeans reinforced their complaint with the implied threat to abandon the Peloponnesian League if in the future they did not receive any effective military help from the Spartans. Therefore the ephors and the assembly decided to march with the Achaeans against the Acarnanians. Two morai led by Agesilaos and followed by a corresponding proportion of allied troops crossed the gulf with the full strength of the Achaeans to invade Acarnania. The Spartan king was able quickly to gain the upper hand and to inflict severe damage on the Acarnanians, but the Achaeans were not at all happy with the course of the expedition. [30] They insisted that Agesilaos should attack certain Acarnanian cities, but in fact he was not able to conquer any of them. As the fall came, Agesilaos retreated from Acarnania. At this point, the Achaeans maintained that Agesilaos had not achieved anything, because he had not taken a single city, neither by spontaneous surrender nor by conquest. [31] Xenophon’s report shows that the political and military goals of the Achaeans were not merely defensive: they clearly hoped to gain control of further cities thanks to Agesilaos’ intervention. When the following year the Spartan king threatened to invade Acarnania again, the Acarnanians signed a peace with the Achaeans and concluded an alliance with the Spartans. [32]

It is noteworthy that the relationship of Sparta with the Achaean League did not change after the King’s Peace, at least to the extent that apparently in Sparta nobody thought that the Achaean League should be dissolved. The relationship seems to have remained intact, although it is only in connection with the catastrophe of Helike that the ancient sources again offer information on the foreign policy of the Achaean League. The destruction of Helike and Bura happened in 373 BCE. [33] A point that has not received much attention in research so far must be emphasized: at the moment of the catastrophe there were ten Spartan ships in the harbor of Helike. [34] The Spartan fleet used that harbor to control the Gulf of Krisa and especially the crossings from Boeotia. Moreover, with their interests in Asia Minor the Spartans played a role in the turn of events that ancient tradition saw as the cause of the catastrophe. In the classical age, Helike had in the sanctuary of Poseidon Helikonios a very important religious center. In current research, the early Achaean League is seen as a sort of amphiktyony around the sanctuary of Poseidon at Helike. [35] Already in the Iliad Helike—together with nearby Aigai—is mentioned as an important place in the cult of Poseidon. [36] The events surrounding the catastrophe are known especially thanks to Diodorus and Strabo, both depending on older authors, especially Ephorus and Herakleides Pontikos. The story began before 373 BCE in connection with the activities of the Ionians intended to restore the Ionian cultic community. The reason for this, according to Diodorus, was that their common festival had been moved to Ephesos. [37] Following the advice of the Delphic oracle, again according to Diodorus, they were interested in cultic objects from Helike, which had belonged to their forefathers. Strabo diverges from Diodorus on this and says that the Ionians intended to ask for no less than the cult statue of Poseidon, and to fall back on the cultic objects from the sanctuary only if their first request was rejected. [38] According to Diodorus, the embassy first appeared in front of the Achaeans, who accepted their request with an official decree of the League (dogma). However, the inhabitants of Helike in this situation remembered an oracle according to which they would be in danger if Ionians sacrificed at the altar of Poseidon, and accordingly rejected their request. They also submitted that the sanctuary was not the common property of the Achaeans, but their own. When the Ionians nevertheless showed up in Helike, the Helikians destroyed their property and captured the theoroi. This sacrilege, according to Diodorus, provoked the destruction of the city by Poseidon. Strabo diverges on some details: in his version, the embassy of the Ionians turned with their request directly to Helike, not first to the federal government of the Achaeans. Only when they heard the rejection did they make contact with the federal organs of the Achaeans. [39] After the favorable decision of the League, the envoys went back to Helike only to receive a renewed rejection. Strabo does not mention any direct offence by the Helikians against the embassy. Pausanias, however, goes so far as to say that “Achaeans” expelled Ionian suppliants from the sanctuary and murdered them. The implacable wrath of Zeus Hikesios contributed to the destruction of the city. [40] At any rate, the following year Helike was totally destroyed by a devastating seaquake.

In spite of discordances between the sources, there is no serious reason to doubt the historicity of the Ionian embassy. Under the supervision of Delphi, a close web of political and religious-cultural relations between Ionians, Spartans, Achaeans and Helike had been activated, as L. Prandi has shown in a fundamental study. [41] Further evidence underlines the ancestral ties between the sanctuary of Poseidon of Helike and the cities of Asia Minor, especially those that belonged to the Ionian League, whose original cult center was on the Mykale Peninsula. [42] According to the most common version, the Achaeans had always been in the Peloponnese, like the Arcadians, but what later became their land, on the coast of the Gulf of Corinth, had originally belonged to the Ionians. [43] The Achaeans had been chased away from their original fatherland and in their turn expelled the Ionians from the Peloponnese. However, they did not terminate the cult at Helike, but rather continued it. In mentioning the twelve cities that formed the Ionian amphiktyony, Herodotus speculates that already when they were in the Peloponnese the Ionians might have been divided into twelve communities. [44] Later authors expand this story. Helike was supposedly the place from which the Ionians fled the Achaeans. Teisamenos, grandson of Agamemnon and son of Orestes, allegedly died fighting against the Ionians and was buried in Helike. Later, following an injunction from the oracle of Delphi, the Spartans brought home the bones of Teisamenos and buried them in Sparta. [45] This story has been the object of controversy, too, because it could simply be a reduplication of the transferral of Orestes’ bones from Tegea narrated by Herodotus. [46] The Spartans’ ambivalent relationship to the Achaean heritage is visible in other instances, too: when, according to Herodotus, the Spartan king Kleomenes answered the priestess on the Athenian acropolis, who had received him, saying that access to that sanctuary was forbidden to Dorians, with the words “I am an Achaean, no Dorian,” [47] he was exploiting the different levels of identity of the Greeks. In this case, Kleomenes, or rather whoever invented this story, pushed the Dorian identity into the background in favor of a tradition in which the Spartan kings could connect their origin to Perseus or Herakles. [48]

The Achaeans remained on the side of Sparta even after the battle of Leuctra. Polybius and Strabo say that in 371 BCE the Thebans and Spartans submitted their quarrel to arbitration by the Achaeans. [49] According to Polybius, after the Thebans’ victory Greece was dominated by uncertainty. In such a situation, both Thebans and Spartans chose to ask the Achaeans, alone among the Greeks, for arbitration in their disputes, not because the Achaeans were particularly powerful, for actually back then they were almost the least powerful of all Greeks, but rather because of their reliability and justice in all respects—a reputation they enjoyed among all Greeks without exception at the time. Certainly Polybius’ passage is biased and exaggerated in its insistence on the Achaeans’ lack of power, as well as on their high repute and valor, which has often led scholars to consider this passage a late construct by Polybius himself and to reject its historicity, especially since there is no evidence for a decision by the Achaeans. John Buckler writes: “It is simpler and more satisfying to conclude that the purported arbitration never took place except in the patriotic excesses of Achaean tradition.” [50]

In the following years, it is unclear how the relationship between Sparta and the Achaeans should be characterized. Xenophon says that the Achaeans remained neutral in 367/6 BCE: they had progressively drifted away from Sparta without joining the Theban alliance. [51] Again Pellene was the first target of Theban attacks and was compelled to pass to the Theban side in 369 BCE, probably together with neighboring Sikyon. [52] Only in 367/6 BCE did the Thebans and their Peloponnesian allies turn their attention explicitly to Achaea, which had remained generally neutral up to that point. Their precise goals and the background to their actions are controversial. [53] At any rate, the Thebans wanted to consolidate their prestige and re-establish their reputation inside the Boeotian-Peloponnesian alliance after the failure of peace negotiations.

At this time, the Achaean cities were still ruled by oligarchies. When Epaminondas invaded Achaea in 367/6 BCE, it is clear that no major military clashes took place, but rather the ruling oligarchies agreed with Epaminondas that they would enter an alliance with Thebes on condition that their regimes remained untouched and nobody was exiled. After guaranteeing these conditions, Epaminondas retreated without further military activities, according to Xenophon. [54] Diodorus however mentions a concrete military initiative by the Theban: after taking control of Achaea, he “liberated,” according to Diodorus, [55] the cities of Dyme, Kalydon, and Naupaktos, expelling from them the Achaean garrisons. It is worth noting that, in spite of the agreement, Epaminondas did intervene with force in the Achaean sphere of influence, in that he made sure that Achaean garrisons were evicted from three strategically important positions. Clearly the Achaeans had, to protect these places, installed garrisons in advance, organized by and according to a decision of their League. The Thebans depicted their intrusion into the internal affairs of the Achaeans in a propagandistic way as a liberation. Besides Dyme, the measure affected Kalydon and West Locrian Naupaktos, which also belonged to the Achaeans at this time. All three were coastal cities, important as such and also for controlling access to the Gulf of Corinth. This decision may have been related to Epaminondas’ plan to create a Boeotian fleet, but it is impossible to tell for sure who took control of Kalydon and Naupaktos. Considering that the Aetolians had already shown interest in Naupaktos at the time of Agesilaos’ expedition of 389 BCE, it is likely that they took control of them, all the more so since they were now allies of the Thebans. [56]

Nobody was happy with Epaminondas’ acts. The Peloponnesian allies, especially the Arcadians, Achaean exiles who hoped to return home, and not least internal opponents of Epaminondas at Thebes made sure that his decisions would be radically overturned. An argument that emerged was that the actions had favored the Spartans. [57] Theban harmosts were sent to Achaea, and they made sure that the ruling elite had to abandon the cities and was replaced by democratic regimes. The exiles, who had mostly retreated to Elis, mustered their forces soon thereafter and were able to bring all the Achaean cities back under their control one after the other, using force where necessary. [58] The democratic interlude in Achaea did not last long. After the old order had been re-established, the Achaeans were again securely on the Spartan side. When Elis changed sides in 365/4 BCE and left the Theban-Peloponnesian alliance, and the conflict against the Arcadians escalated, the Achaeans stood on Elis’ side together with the Spartans and helped the Eleians as far as they could. [59]

In the history of the fifth and fourth centuries BCE the Achaeans usually appear as a unit, settled in a relatively clearly defined territory in the Northern Peloponnese, from Cape Araxos to the Sikyonian border. The list of members of the Achaean League is also relatively constant: Herodotus (1.145), Pseudo-Skylax (34), Polybius (2.41.7–8), Strabo (8.7.4) and Pausanias (7.6.1) show a noteworthy continuity over time. Variations and new appearances can be easily explained case by case, especially in the course of the expansion of the Achaean koinon during the third century BCE. [60] Ethnic homogeneity, or more carefully put, a feeling of belonging together, did not, however, automatically mean a sympolity or a federal state in the strict sense. Pellene, which belonged to the ethnos, mostly went its own way, developing early on a particularly close relationship to Sparta because of its own interests and outlying geographic position. The main pattern in common political initiatives by the Achaeans from early on was characterized by neutrality in the Peloponnese and since 417 BCE a close connection to Sparta, and furthermore an active interest in the Aetolian-Acarnanian coastal region. When, during the second half of the fifth century, Achaea moved towards a more strict form of federal constitution, it was soon ready and able to integrate cities like Pleuron, Kalydon, and Naupaktos, which strictly did not belong to the Achaean ethnos.

The Achaeans bore a name rich in tradition. [61] In the Homeric poems “Achaeans” is a name that indicates on the one hand the inhabitants of a relatively clearly defined territory (Northern Greece; the Northern Peloponnese including Argos; and Crete), on the other, the Greeks who convened against Troy. However, it is totally unclear when the name Achaeans was used for and by the inhabitants of the Northern Peloponnese. Suggestions vary from assuming a tradition going back very early into the post-Mycenaean period to the idea that the usage was consolidated only during the sixth century, possibly under Spartan influence. [62] It should also be noted that during the classical age the name was not used only by the Achaeans of the Peloponnese, but also by those of central Greece, who participated as “Achaeans” in the Delphic Amphiktyony [63] and whose cities harbored cults of gods with the epithet “Panachaean.” [64]

Like Catherine Morgan, I also tend to favor a later date for the emergence of an Achaean identity in the Northern Peloponnese, which is attested for the first time in Herodotus. [65] However, this means—again a point demonstrated convincingly by Morgan—that the phenomenon of Achaean colonization in southern Italy has to be interpreted as a complex process that can be understood in general terms only in the light of archaeological evidence and research on ethnicity. [66] The South-Italian “Achaeans” developed their conceptions of their own origin especially in competition with other South Italian Greeks, and these processes soon had repercussions in mainland Greece.

From the point of view of the present volume, the result of this investigation is essentially negative. Ethnic arguments played no perceptible role in the relations between Achaeans and Spartans towards the end of the fifth century and at the beginning of the fourth. Between Spartans and Achaeans, power relations and interests were clear and well defined. Under Spartan leadership the Achaeans had been able not only to stabilize their federal structure, but also to obtain territorial expansion on the northern coast of the Gulf of Corinth. Ideological conflicts centered upon ethnicity between Spartans and Achaeans—assuming that they ever took place with any intensity—had been settled long before the fourth century.