landscape.173 For Alexander portioned out the territory of Thebes to the neighboring Boiotians, who by 323 were deriving great revenues from it; in the same period a contemporary witness could report that “the city of Thebes . . . is being plowed and sown.”174
The effects of the Theban revolt and destruction of the city rippled outward. Alexander advanced the process of rebuilding Orchomenos and Plataia begun by Philip after Chaironeia. In doing so he strengthened old opponents of Thebes and provided a vision of a Boiotia without its leading city.175 The Athenians had, however, to be rewarded for staying out of it, and it was probably now that they received Oropos at Boiotian expense.176 The Aitolians, conspicuous for their support of the Thebans, now sent embassies to Alexander “by ethnos, seeking pardon for having revolted, in response to the news brought from Thebes.”177 The dispatch of multiple embassies has signaled to some that the Aitolian koinon had been dismantled, perhaps by Philip in retaliation for the Aitolians’ attempted seizure of Naupaktos after Chaironeia.178 The conclusion is hardly inevitable: not only is the dismantling of a sovereign state by Philip otherwise unparalleled, but what Arrian, at a considerable remove, interpreted as separate embassies sent by ethnos may well have been simply a group of ambassadors who represented the several ethnē of which the Aitolian koinon was composed.179 We simply do not know enough about Aitolian diplomatic practices in the fourth century to conclude that embassies sent by ethnos are unusual and signal a collapse of the koinon. Ultimately what matters is that in their revolt, as in their attempt at conciliation, the Aitolians were united, and in these years were treated by outsiders as a single state. So the Aitolians received a collective grant of promanteia from the polis of Delphi in 335 or 334.180 Although the real motives for the grant are difficult to divine, it is nevertheless significant as the first clear evidence we have for any relationship between the Aitolians and Delphi, and it helps to contextualize the apparent interest of the Aitolians in Delphi and the amphiktyonic world in the early third century, which will be explored in the next chapter. In short, if Philip had in fact dismantled the koinon, the measure had virtually no effect; we know that the Aitolian koinon, like the Arkadian and Boiotian koina, was very much in existence in 323.181
When Alexander left Greece to conquer the Persian empire in 334, he took the attention of Greek writers with him. We have little evidence for developments among the koina of mainland Greece in this period. The ephemeral revolt from Macedonian control led by the Spartan king Agis in 331/0 attracted some Peloponnesian support, including the participation of the Achaians, and it may have been as punishment that so many of the Achaian poleis were now saddled with tyrants installed by Alexander (or his agents).182 The struggle to expel them is part of the story of the next chapter, inextricably bound up with the story of the redevelopment of the institutions of the Achaian koinon. Resistance to Macedonian rule remained strong in Aitolia.183 The Boiotians were less restive, relieved to be rid of the Thebans who had determined regional politics since the end of the Peloponnesian War and grateful to Alexander for having brought about such a drastic change. The history of Boiotia in the fourth century is, effectively, a history of Thebes and the demands it placed on its fellow Boiotian poleis, which were, in the period after 379, virtually its subjects. The history of the region in the Hellenistic period is a different story altogether, a story of remarkably equitable institutions, which included Thebes on an equal footing with the other poleis after the city was rebuilt and, eventually, accepted as a member of the koinon again. It is in the Hellenistic period that we finally begin to see the internal structures of the Achaian and Aitolian koina in some detail, just as we are at last able to follow much more closely the histories of their interactions with the rest of the Greek world, tracing lines of sight rather than simply noticing scattered points of light.
1. Diod. Sic. 14.17.7; cf. Xen. Hell. 3.2.25. Xenophon dates the war to 398/7, and Diodoros to 402/1. Diod. Sic. 14.17.9–10 reports that the Aitolians assisted their kin the Elians in this war, evidence, if in fact T48 (see comm.) belongs to the fifth century, that despite their alliance with Sparta they remained independent. The notice seems to reflect a troop commitment by a single Aitolian state authority, not mercenaries, but we have no contemporary evidence that might shed light on the nature of the Aitolian state that sent them out.
2. Hell.Oxy. 17.2 (Bartoletti) with Lendon 1989.
3. Spartan war against Persia: Xen. Hell. 3.1.1–2.20. Boiotian disapproval: Xen. Hell. 3.5.1–2; Hell. Oxy. 7.5 (Bartoletti) with Rung 2004. Spartan imperialism: Andrewes 1978; Hornblower 2002: 183–86; Cawkwell 2005.
4. Thessaly: Ps.-Herodes Peri politeias 6, 24 (advocating a Spartan-Thessalian war on Macedonia); Diod. Sic. 14.38.3–4 for Spartan involvement in stasis at Herakleia Trachinia (on which more will be said below) and 14.82 for a Spartan garrison at Pharsalos. Sicily: Diod. Sic. 14.10, 63, 70 (for Spartan support to Dionysius I, tyrant of Syracuse, in a local stasis and against the Carthaginians). Egypt: Diod. Sic. 14.79. On all this see Hornblower 2002: 181–91.
5. Xen. Hell. 3.5.1–2 reports bribery; Hell.Oxy. (Bartoletti) 7.5 with Rung 2004.
6. The accounts differ in their details, but the basic outlines are the same: Xen. Hell. 3.5.3–4 (dispute over taxes); Hell.Oxy. 16.1 (Bartoletti), 18.2–5 (rustling sheep); Paus. 3.9.8 (Lokrians harvesting crops and stealing sheep from Phokian territory). There is debate over which Lokris was involved, Ozolian (Hell.Oxy. 18.3 [Bartoletti]; Paus. 3.9.9) or Opountian (Xen. Hell. 3.5.3). See Lendon 1989: 311–13; R. J. Buck 1994: 30–35; Buckler 2004: 402–4.
7. Hell.Oxy. 17.2 (Bartoletti); cf. Gehrke 1985: 173–75.
8. Xen. Hell. 3.5.4–5. Hell.Oxy. 18.4 (Bartoletti) presents the Spartans as being rather more reticent, sending envoys to ask the Boiotians not to invade Phokis. (The Boiotians, of course, dismiss them, and the outcome is the same.)
9. Xen. Hell. 3.5.4, 6–16, with Bearzot 2004: 21–30; Hell.Oxy. 18.4 (Bartoletti). González 2006: 39 suggests that Orchomenos revolted because it shouldered a tax burden (18.18% of “federal dues”) disproportionate to its territorial size (with Hysiai, 10.3% of “the federal territory”). The numbers are extrapolated from Hell.Oxy. 16.3–4 (Bartoletti), but the conclusion that every district paid the same amount in taxes is based on an uncertain assumption. See below, p. 298.
10. Xen. Hell. 3.5.6–16; RO 6. The Athenians also made an alliance with Lokris in the same year: Tod 102.
11. Diod. Sic. 14.82.1–4; Xen. Hell. 3.5.2, 4.2.10–14, 18.
12. Xen. Hell. 3.5.18–19; Diod. Sic. 14.81.1–3, 89; Plut. Lys. 28.1–30.1; Paus. 3.5.2–6. Cf. Westlake 1985.
13. Xen. Hell. 5.1.29.
14. Nemea: Xen. Hell. 4.2.9–23; Diod. Sic. 14.83.1–2. Koroneia: Xen. Hell. 4.3.15–20; Diod. Sic. 14.84.1–2.
15. Corinth: Xen. Hell. 4.4.1–5.2.
16. Xen. Hell. 4.8.12–15 for the entire peace conference. For the Argive seizure of Corinth in 393, the subsequent civil war, and its resolution see Xen. Hell. 4.4.1–14, 5.1.34, 36; Diod. Sic. 14.86, 92.1; Andoc. 3.26–27. Cf. Bearzot 2004: 31–36.
17. Bickerman 1958 and Ostwald 1982 established the distinction in the language of interstate relations between eleutheria and autonomia, Bickerman placing the development of the latter concept in the context of the Greek cities under Persian rule, Ostwald in the context of the shift from Delian League to Athenian empire, but both agreeing that autonomia was a relative and restricted status that protected weaker communities from arbitrary abuses by stronger ones while at the same recognizing their ultimate authority in certain spheres. Hansen 1995b argues for a stronger, unrestricted view of autonomia as self-government, which he applies to Boiotia (Hansen 1995a). Cf. the debate between Hansen 1996 and Keen 1996.
18. Andoc. 3.13, 20; cf. Philoch. FGrHist 328 F 149b. See further Cawkwell 1976: 271–72 n. 13 with references.
19. Xen. Hell. 4.6.1.
20. Naupaktos: Xen. Hell. 4.6.14. Cf. Merker 1989; Freitag 2009: 17–19. It was probably in connection with the annexation of Kalydon and Naupaktos that the Achaians besieged and captured the Aitolian community Phana, an event described only by Pausanias (10.18.1) upon seeing the statue of Athena