two signal reverses at the hands of Philip: they lost Zakynthos again and saw their regional sanctuary at Thermon plundered by Macedonian troops for a second time.201 Having lost almost everything they had gained in the previous six years, and despairing of substantial help from the Romans, who remained heavily committed to the Hannibalic War, the Aitolians made a separate peace with Philip in the autumn of 206.202 It was probably shortly after this treaty was concluded that the Aitolians, apparently overwhelmed by both public and private debt, appointed the leading politicians Dorimachos and Skopas as nomographoi, apparently to revise the laws in the direction of debt relief.203 The war had clearly hit them hard; these measures suggest that their willingness to make peace with Philip in contravention of the terms of their alliance with the Romans was motivated at least in part by economic pressure. Nor were they to be coaxed from their new position of quietude by the Romans, who concluded peace with Philip in the following year at Phoinike, under Epeirote encouragement, with all the koina of mainland Greece and the Peloponnese on his side.204
Despite ongoing skirmishes, the broad-based coalition created by the Peace of Phoinike certainly facilitated the adoption of something like a common peace, but it also meant that as soon as any hostility flared up again, it was likely to consume the whole group in a single conflagration.205 So when the Romans, after hearing complaints from the Athenians, Attalos, and the Rhodians, resolved on another Macedonian War, Philip’s allies were faced with a new conflict.206 The Roman legates paid visits to the Aitolian and Achaian koina. We have no record of the Achaians’ response to the Roman embassy that visited Aigion in the spring of 200, but there are reasons to believe that it was divided, some remaining committed to the pro-Macedonian position that had prevailed since 235 while others saw alliance with Rome as a means of regaining independence from the Macedonian kings.207 The latter group must have gained credibility when in the autumn of 200 Philip presented himself to the Achaian assembly and offered to fight the war against Nabis and the Spartans for them on the condition that they provide troops for his garrisons at Oreus, Chalkis, and Corinth. The Achaians quickly realized that his intention was to prevent them from siding with the Romans in the war he was already waging against them and that these troops would act as hostages to that end; they politely declined and raised a citizen levy to battle against Nabis’s attacks on Achaian towns.208
The Roman army arrived in Greece in 199 under Flamininus to wage war against Philip. Hostilities unfolded around central Greece, with Thessaly bearing a particularly heavy burden, and Phokis, Lokris, and most of Euboia captured by the Romans by the spring of 198.209 The Aitolians had been persuaded to join the Romans in 199; in Livy’s portrayal their role was largely limited to plundering those territories still loyal to Philip. In the autumn of 198, while Flamininus was besieging Phokian Elateia, the Achaians received embassies from the Romans and their Greek allies. In an impassioned speech Aristainos, the Achaian stratēgos, reminded his assembled citizens of the Achaians’ vulnerability if they should refuse to join the Roman cause: the Roman and allied fleet would attack the northern shore of the Peloponnese, where the oldest cities of the koinon were situated, driving the population into the interior, while Nabis and his forces would attack them from the south. After several days of discussion and negotiation, the Achaians voted to abandon Philip and conclude alliances with the Romans, Attalos, and the Rhodians.210
During the course of the war itself, the Achaians and Aitolians suffered only losses. Both Corinth and Argos were lost to Philip in the autumn of 198, and it was only when Nabis joined the Roman alliance in the spring of 197 that the threat from the south was temporarily neutralized.211 The Aitolians lost Lysimacheia, Keos, and several Thessalian cities that had been members of their koinon since the early third century, including Phthiotic Thebes, Larisa, and Pharsalos. But by that time the majority of central Greece was under the control of the Romans and their allies, including Boiotia, which joined with some reluctance.212 The war ended on the battlefield at Kynoskephalai in the summer of 197, where Philip was soundly defeated by the Romans.213 The terms of the peace treaty were on the whole favorable to the victor, but the Achaians received Corinth, having to accept the temporary presence of a Roman garrison in the citadel, while the Aitolians, who were now punished for abandoning their early alliance with the Romans, were allowed to keep only Phthiotic Thebes of all the Thessalian communities that had been members of their koinon.214 Despite the mistrust that prevailed between them, the Romans allowed the Aitolians to control Phokis and Lokris, thus representing a return to the earlier third century.215 It is worth noting that Aitolian control of these regions was regarded as being compatible with the public proclamation at the Isthmian Games that the Phokians and Lokrians would be “free, without garrison or tribute, and subject to their own laws.”216 “Their own laws” had become the laws of the Aitolian koinon.
The Boiotians had, during the war, remained loyal to Philip, but unanimous support for this pro-Macedonian position was lacking, and as soon as the Macedonian king was defeated at Kynoskephalai, the matter was violently disputed and brought a suspicion upon the Boiotians which the Romans were never able to dismiss. After the battle, the Boiotian koinon sent an embassy to Flamininus requesting the safe return of those Boiotian citizens who had fought on Philip’s side. The request was granted, but rather than undertake a political shift in favor of the Romans, they quickly appointed as boiotarch a man named Brachylles, who like his father and grandfather was a staunch Macedonian partisan.217 The leaders of the pro-Roman faction within Boiotia, led by one Zeuxippos, were struck with anxiety, anticipating that they would be harshly treated when the Romans withdrew from Greece, and upon Flamininus’s advice sought the assistance of the Aitolian stratēgos Alexamenos in perpetrating the murder of Brachylles.218 When the deed was done by some Italian and Aitolian assassins, Zeuxippos and his supporters were immediately suspected and fled into exile.219 The Boiotians, however, assumed that the Romans had actually incited the murder. “Having neither men nor a leader for rebellion,” they simply began to rob and murder all the Roman soldiers they could find. A strategy that was initially motivated by political interest was soon driven by economics: brigandage against Roman soldiers was quite profitable. Enough men were killed to justify a Roman inquiry, in the course of which bodies were dredged up from the swamps of Kopaïs and “other crimes were found to have been committed at Akraiphia and Koroneia.”220 If the political dispute originated at Thebes, it is clear that it quickly occupied much of Boiotia. Outraged, Flamininus ordered the Boiotians to surrender those responsible and to pay a fine of five hundred talents, one talent for each of the Roman soldiers whom he claimed had been killed. To judge from the response, the order was issued to the koinon: “The cities made the excuse that no deed had been done by public resolution.”221 The consul declared war and moved troops against Akraiphia and Koroneia, apparently regarded as hotbeds of anti-Roman activity; it may not be coincidental that Koroneia was home to the sanctuary of Athena Itonia, which had retained its regional and political significance since the battle of Koroneia in 446 and may thus have represented a strike against the koinon itself.222 The Boiotians quickly sought to come to terms and after negotiations they agreed to pay the Romans a fine of thirty talents; their rebellious polity was, however, left entirely intact, a measure of Flamininus’s ideological commitment to the freedom of the Greeks.223
Since the beginning of the First Macedonian War, the foreign policies of both the Aitolian and the Achaian koina had undergone major changes. While the Aitolians persisted in their hostility to the Macedonian kingdom, their relations with Rome soured but were nevertheless still operable. In Achaia, an increasing commitment to the cause of Achaian independence from Macedon led to an alignment with the Romans. It was only in Boiotia that anti-Roman sentiment was strong enough to lead to direct hostilities. The treaty concluded after Kynoskephalai was on the whole advantageous to the koina of mainland Greece: although they lost many of their Thessalian possessions, the Aitolians regained control of Phokis and Lokris, while the Achaians at last were freed of Macedonian garrisons in the western portions of their territory, regained Corinth, and eagerly expected the departure of the Roman garrison troops from Acrocorinth. These changes were not, however, accompanied by institutional change or political reform. It was only the pressure of mounting debt in Aitolia that drove some legal reforms, the contours of which are entirely lost to us. There is little doubt that the Boiotian cities were experiencing