LITMIR.BIZ

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legal structure concentrated primarily if not wholly in the hands of the Thebans.

      ACHAIA

      Our study of Boiotia began with the Hesiodic evidence for the growth of large poleis by the subordination of smaller ones. This pattern is in certain respects paralleled by developments across the Corinthian Gulf in Achaia (map 3), where we first find evidence for the organization of communities and their interactions in the classical period.¹¹⁵ An important but elusive passage in Herodotos provides our earliest literary hint (1.145–46):

      It seems to me that the Ionians created for themselves twelve poleis and were not willing to introduce more, because when they lived in the Peloponnese they had twelve merea, just as now the Achaians, who drove out the Ionians, have twelve merea. Pellene is first after Sikyon, then Aigeira and Aigai, in which is situated the ever-flowing river Krathis, from which the river in Italy takes its name. Then there are Boura and Helike, to which the Ionians fled when they were worsted in battle by the Achaians, and Aigion and Rhypes and Patrai and Pharai and Olenos, in which is the great Peiros River, and Dyme and Tritaia. These last are the only Achaians who dwell inland. These are the twelve merea of the Achaians now, and in the past they belonged to the Ionians.

      

      There has been much discussion of the precise meaning of merea in this passage. Literally “parts,” all these communities are later attested as poleis. It is exceedingly difficult to use Herodotos’s description of Achaia as evidence for the precise status of these communities at the time when he was writing.¹¹⁶ Rather than seeking positive evidence for a sociopolitical status that may have been meaningless to the Achaians of the early fifth century, it is perhaps more instructive to take the word literally: Achaia was comprised of “parts,” a word that itself entails a whole. Indeed the region is elsewhere described by Herodotos as a whole occupied by the Achaian ethnos at the time of the Persian Wars.¹¹⁷ The language of parts to describe the Achaian communities persists in later sources and may well reflect a local terminology. After giving a list of Achaian places that largely mirrors that of Herodotos, with changes in the region’s political geography in the intervening centuries duly reflected, Strabo (8.7.5) reports that “each of the twelve parts [merides] consisted of seven or eight communities [dēmoi].”¹¹⁸ Strabo is clear here: the twelve parts of Achaia that we know from later sources as poleis were comprised of multiple dēmoi, which may mean villages or simply communities. Here and elsewhere Strabo reports that the Achaian poleis familiar from later periods were formed by synoikism.¹¹⁹ While none of the literary accounts allows us to date this process with any confidence, recent archaeological evidence suggests that it began in the fifth century.¹²⁰ Although Aigion appears to have been inhabited more or less continuously since the Mycenaean period, the area of occupation increased significantly over the course of the classical period.¹²¹ To the southwest, excavations at Trapezá, identified as ancient Rhypes (map 3), have brought to light an acropolis fortified in the fifth century, with buildings and further fortifications to both the west and the east of this plateau.¹²² The presence of a temple belonging to the sixth century at the site makes it clear that the classical period was one of intensification rather than settlement ex novo, and that is likely to have been achieved by a combination of demographic growth and synoikism.¹²³ Pausanias reports that Patrai was formed by the synoikism of Aroe, Antheia, and Mesatis (map 3).¹²⁴ A systematic extensive survey of the territory of Patrai has shown that the necropolis of Patrai was new in the fifth century, with the focus of classical settlement in the urban center.¹²⁵ And finally, near the western coast of the northern Peloponnese, while it is clear that the urban center of Dyme was settled more intensively in the classical period than before, this development does not appear to come at the expense of occupation of rural sites, so we may here have evidence of significant population growth in the classical period.¹²⁶ Over the course of the fifth century, then, the communities of Achaia were adopting increasingly urban forms, frequently but not always at the expense of rural habitation. Strabo reports that Dyme (formerly known as Paleia or Hyperesia) derived its name from the fact that it was the westernmost of the Achaian cities; if this is correct it would indicate that notions of an Achaian territory were becoming fixed in the same period.¹²⁷

      This implies a sense of Achaian identity, for which we also find our first clear evidence in the fifth century. Both Herodotos and Thucydides describe the Achaians as an ethnos; according to Herodotos, their sense of belonging stemmed from the belief that they had occupied the territory on the north coast of the Peloponnese under the leadership of Teisamenos the son of Orestes, a leader of the Homeric Achaians, after expelling the Ionians in the upheavals that followed the so-called Return of the Herakleidai.¹²⁸ The articulation of an Achaian ethnic identity based on territory and descent from Teisamenos may go back to the sixth century, when the Spartans purportedly took the bones of Teisamenos from Helike, where he died in battle against the Ionians.¹²⁹ The use of Achaios as an ethnic, both collectively and for individuals, both internally and externally, on inscriptions of the fifth century provides clear evidence for the active relevance of this identity.¹³⁰ The question is when Achaian identity became politicized, contributing to political cooperation and the development of formal political institutions that encompassed all the Achaian communities.

      A passage of Polybios describing the adoption by the people of Kroton, Sybaris, and Kaulonia of “Achaian customs and laws” and the use of a common sanctuary of Zeus Homarios as a political meeting place has been taken, above all by F.W. Walbank, as evidence that the Achaian koinon existed in the mid-fifth century, but the problems with that interpretation have been systematically exposed by Catherine Morgan and Jonathan Hall.¹³¹ Walbank has recently defended his position, but problems remain.¹³² Morgan and Hall’s argument has three facets: first, we must suspect Polybios of retrojecting the existence of the Achaian koinon into hoary antiquity in order to prove his own contention that the Achaians had always been valued for their principles of equality and fairness; second, the inclusion of Sybaris in Polybios’s report poses a problem, for we know that the city was destroyed by Kroton circa 511/0, some half-century before the burning down of the Pythagorean synedria in southern Italy; and third, it is not at all clear that the Achaians used the sanctuary of Zeus Homarios as a political meeting place in the mid-fifth century. Regarding the first, we can be either suspicious (Morgan and Hall) or accepting (Walbank); it depends largely on temperament, and nothing can be proven. Regarding the second, Walbank proposes that Polybios here refers to Sybaris on the Traeis, founded by those Sybarite survivors who had contributed to the settlement at Thourioi in 446/5 and were expelled.¹³³ That is possible, but it should be noted that this Sybaris too was destroyed soon after its foundation.¹³⁴ Regarding the third, I think we can gain more clarity. The political significance of the sanctuary of Zeus Homarios can be pushed back to the fourth century, for a decree of the Achaian koinon dating to this period has been discovered in the area (T41); the appearance of Zeus on an Achaian didrachma in the 360s confirms this impression.¹³⁵

      But for the fifth century Herodotos (1.145–46) indicates that insofar as the Achaians had a common sanctuary, it was that of Poseidon Helikonios, which at the very least remained of interest to the Achaians as late as 373.¹³⁶ This evidence for the regional, and possibly political, significance of Poseidon Helikonios is ignored by Walbank, who prefers to prioritize the claim of Livy (38.30.2) that the Achaians met at Aigion “from the beginning of the Achaian council.”¹³⁷ It is on balance far likelier that the sanctuary of Zeus Homarios took on this regional political significance only after the destruction of Helike and the sanctuary of Poseidon Helikonios in 373. This is supported by Pausanias, who reports that the Achaians “resolved to gather themselves at Aigion. For after Helike was destroyed, from early on it surpassed the other cities in Achaia in reputation, and at the time it was also strong.”¹³⁸ The date of the beginning of the Achaian council is itself far from clear, but I shall argue below (chap. 2) that we have evidence for it only in the early fourth century. On balance, we have no compelling reason to think that an Achaian koinon existed in the mid-fifth century.¹³⁹ Rather, the Achaian communities were in this period experiencing growth and urbanization, conditions that may have contributed later to a need, or a desire, for formal, cooperative political institutions.

      The

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