it is clear that other Greeks perceived of Achaia as a territory united by the shared ethnicity of its inhabitants, there is no reason to believe that the Achaians themselves had channeled this group identity into political institutions that transcended polis boundaries in the region.
AITOLIA
While archaeological evidence from the sanctuaries at Thermon and Kalydon (map 4) indicates communities in the region that were both prosperous and precocious in the early archaic period (see below, pp. 178–84), we know nothing about how these communities organized themselves or related to one another, and the little material evidence we have from other sites in the region offers little help. Fifth-century literary sources give us our first glimpse, but it is one that is narrowly restricted to the coastal area of eastern Aitolia and is for the most part refracted through the lens of Athenian and Messenian history.
In 456/5, the Athenians settled those Messenians who had survived the helot revolt on Mount Ithome, at Naupaktos (map 4), a place they had recently captured from the Ozolian Lokrians.147 The Messenians and Naupaktians immediately began to cooperate with each other and acted as staunch allies to the Athenians.148 Both groups made attacks on ethnically Aitolian communities: in 456/5, the Athenians seized Chalkis, which Thucydides describes as a polis of the Corinthians, although in early literary sources the city is resolutely Aitolian.149 It is possible that Athenian control of Naupaktos and Chalkis entailed control of the smaller communities of Molykreion and Makyneia situated between them.150 Around the same time the Messenians and Naupaktians dedicated a monumental pillar at Delphi as a tithe of spoils taken “from the Kalydonians” (T47), peopling a city central to the early mythic history of Aitolia.151
These attacks may have been the origin of the hatred that existed between the Aitolians and Naupaktians several decades later (Th. 3.94.3), and they may help to explain why Thucydides appears to report that Kalydon and Pleuron were not part of Aitolia in 426.152 More immediately, the Athenian and Messenian attacks on coastal Aitolia may have been the occasion for the conclusion of a treaty between the Aitolians and the Spartans, an inscribed copy of which was discovered on the Spartan akropolis (T48).153 The treaty establishes friendship, peace, and alliance between the Aitolians and Lakedaimonians (ll. 1–3), but the detailed terms of the treaty reveal an asymmetrical relationship that is in no way surprising:154 the Aitolians must follow wherever the Lakedaimonians lead (ll. 4–7) and have the same friends and enemies as they do (ll. 7–10). They are further prohibited from concluding separate peace agreements (ll. 10–14). The only recorded obligation of the Lakedaimonians to the Aitolians is that they will succor them with all their strength if anyone should attack “the territory of the [–]rxadieis” (ll. 16–19). The identity of the [-]rxadieis is uncertain, but as we shall see below, they are probably a population group within Aitolia. One further clause in the treaty points to the period after 456/5 as a likely context: the Aitolians are prohibited from receiving “fugitives who have committed any wrongdoing” (ll. 14–16). The only group of fugitives whom the Spartans were concerned about, to our knowledge, was the rebel Messenians. Their residence in Naupaktos, on the border with Aitolia, may have made the Spartans concerned about Messenian flight into their territory. The treaty, it should be underscored, is a treaty of friendship and peace, which should entail some prior conflict. We have no information about such a conflict in any surviving source, but it seems possible that the Aitolians had harbored some rebel Messenians and brought on Spartan hostility, which was subsequently settled. In the midst of the larger conflict between Athens and Sparta in this period, it is not surprising that the Aitolians may have pursued or agreed to an alliance with the Spartans after experiencing the attacks of the Athenians and Messenians. The inscribed treaty between the Spartans and Aitolians raises one big question that we cannot satisfactorily answer: What kind of political entity is signified by “the Aitolians”? In the complete absence of any other evidence for a formally organized and institutionalized Aitolian state in the mid-fifth century, we can say only that the Aitolians were a juridically and diplomatically recognizable entity. We do not know the territorial extent of this entity or anything about its internal organization. Thirty years later, as we shall see below, we find the Aitolians adopting a kind of loose representative structure, again in the context of interstate diplomacy, combined with evidence of internal cooperation but none of formal state institutions; at this time Thucydides calls the Aitolians an ethnos, and we should probably follow suit; but it is worth specifying to the extent possible what that meant in practice. We should perhaps see the Aitolians’ cooperation in the conduct of relations with foreign states as an early context in which their group identity was formalized in order to accomplish a shared goal, in this case one of preventing further territorial losses to the aggression of the Athenians, Messenians, and Naupaktians.
This situation appears not to have changed much by 426, when Thucydides’ detailed narrative, along with several important but difficult inscriptions that seem to cluster around the same date, shed welcome light on conditions in Aitolia. In the summer of that year, the Athenian army and navy were at Leukas under the general Demosthenes, attempting to take the island for their Akarnanian allies. With all his forces assembled, Demosthenes’ Messenian allies from Naupaktos approached and encouraged him to invade Aitolia, which they said was hostile to them. Buoyed by hopes of an easy victory that would pave the way to Athenian control of northwestern mainland Greece and provide him with an alternative land route into Boiotia, Demosthenes agreed.155 At this point Thucydides pauses to give a description, from the Messenian perspective, of conditions prevailing in Aitolia, upon which their invasion strategy should be based (Th. 3.94.4–5):
The ethnos of the Aitolians, they said, was great and warlike, but they lived in unwalled villages, which were widely scattered, and they used only light arms, so that it would not be difficult to overwhelm them before help could arrive. They bade him first to attack the Apodotoi, then the Ophiones, and after them the Eurytanes, which is the largest part [meros] of the Aitolians. They speak an unintelligible language and are eaters of raw meat, so they said.
While the report about linguistic isolation and an uncivilized diet can readily be understood as the bias of enemies exhorting their allies to attack, much of the rest of the passage appears credible.156
The Aitolians are perceived as an ethnos comprised of multiple parts; here three are listed, the Apodotoi, Ophiones, and Eurytanes (map 5). Later in the narrative of the same episode, Thucydides reports two more Aitolian population groups, the Kallieis and Bomieis, who belong to the Ophiones, from which we may infer that the ethnos of the Aitolians comprised merē that were themselves composite.157 The Aitolian population groups mentioned by Thucydides may not be the only ones: Strabo likewise reports that the Bomieis belong to the Ophiones and agrees with Thucydides in placing the Eurytanes on the same organizational plane as the Ophiones, but he adds Agraioi, Kouretes, and others.158 Strabo mentions these groups in his description of Aitolian geography and makes it clear that each group has its own territory. That we do not have the entire picture from Thucydides is further suggested by the appearance of the [-]rxadieis in the inscribed fifth-century treaty between the Spartans and the Aitolians (T48, l.17). This elusive document makes explicit what is only implied by Thucydides and Strabo: the Aitolian population groups have defined territories of their own (T48, ll. 16–18). The complexity of Aitolian political geography is further hinted at by two fourth-century inscriptions that marked the boundaries between the territories of the Arysaes and Nomenaeis (T50) and the Eiteaies and Eoitanes (T51), groups that are otherwise largely unknown.159 In short, the Messenians’ description of Aitolian sociopolitical organization in Thucydides appears to be accurate if incomplete and points to a region inhabited by distinct population groups with defined territories who nevertheless associated with one another as Aitolians.
But what of the Messenians’ claim that the Aitolians lived in unwalled villages? For the fifth century it may be largely correct. Demosthenes’ invasion of 426 ultimately targeted eastern Aitolia, home to the Ophiones. This area has been more systematically surveyed than others, and archaeological evidence points to the existence of some twenty-five settlements
