The Second League
The period I mean is the 124th Olympiad. In this
note
occurred the first league of Patrae and Dyme,
and the deaths of Ptolemy son of Lagus,
Lysimachus, Seleucus, Ptolemy Ceraunus. In
-- 137 --
the period before this the state of Achaia was as follows. It
was ruled by kings from the time of Tisamenus, son of Orestes,
who, being expelled from Sparta on the return of the Heraclidae,
formed a kingdom in Achaia. The last of this royal line to
maintain his power was Ogyges, whose sons so alienated the
people by their unconstitutional and tyrannical government,
that a revolution took place and a democracy was established. note
In the period subsequent to this, up to the
time of the establishment of the supreme
authority of Alexander and Philip, their fortunes were subject to various fluctuations, but they always
endeavoured to maintain intact in their league a democratical
form of government, as I have already stated. This league
consisted of twelve cities, all of them still surviving, with the
exception of Olenus, and Helice which was engulfed by the
sea before the battle of Leuctra. note The other
ten were Patrae, Dyme, Pharae, Tritaea, Leontium, Aegium, Aegeira, Pellene, Bura, Caryneia. note In the
period immediately succeeding Alexander, and
before the above-named 124th Olympiad, these
cities, chiefly through the instrumentality of the Macedonian
kings, became so estranged and ill-disposed to each other,
and so divided and opposed in their interests, that some of
them had to submit to the presence of foreign garrisons, sent
first by Demetrius and Cassander, and afterwards by Antigonus
Gonatas, while others even fell under the power of Tyrants;
for no one set up more of such absolute rulers in the Greek
states than this last-named king.
But about the 124th Olympiad, as I have said, a change note
of sentiment prevailed among the Achaean
cities, and they began again to form a league.
This was just at the time of Pyrrhus's invasion of Italy. The first to take this step were the peoples
of Dyme, Patrae, Tritaea, and Pharae. And as they thus
formed the nucleus of the league, we find no column extant recording the compact between these cities. But about
five years afterwards the people of Aegium expelled their
foreign garrison and joined the league; next, the people
of Bura put their tyrant to death and did the same; simultaneously,
-- 138 -- the state of Caryneia was restored to the league.
For Iseas, the then tyrant of Caryneia, when he saw the expulsion of the garrison from Aegium, and the death of the
despot in Bura at the hands of Margos and the Achaeans,
and when he saw that he was himself on the point of being attacked on all sides, voluntarily laid down his office; and having
obtained a guarantee for his personal safety from the Achaeans,
formally gave in the adhesion of his city to the league.
