over the Greek cities, even as they fought one another to liberate them. The death of Cassander in 298/7, and the restoration of Pyrrhos to his Epeirote kingdom with the assistance of Ptolemy, changed the players on the field, though it did not change the rules of the game. By 294 Demetrios Poliorketes, having recovered from the loss at Ipsos, had himself declared king by the Macedonian army and set about securing control of central Greece, the largest single area of the Greek world not under his direct control.33 The Boiotian-Aitolian alliance proved remarkably effective: the rebellion from Demetrios began in 293 in Boiotia and was supported by both the Aitolians and their new ally Pyrrhos. The death of Cassander may well have freed the Thebans to pursue a path of greater integration with the rest of Boiotia; if this was a gradual process, the details are lost. What is clear is that in 293 they participated so wholeheartedly in the rebellion that their city was once again besieged, this time by Demetrios. Although the sources focus on this effort, it is clear that the rebellion engaged the entire region.34 And when it was finally quelled, Demetrios left garrisons not only in Thebes but also in the other Boiotian cities.35 Although the Aitolians rendered minimal military assistance to the Boiotians, their opposition to Demetrios was clear, and their strong presence at Delphi, which had become a grievance to the Athenians, now gave him the pretext for an attack in the guise of a sacred war. Probably in 291, the Athenians became anxious about the dedication of the shields at Delphi, and passed a formal resolution to ask Demetrios, whom they called their savior, “how they might most piously, nobly, and swiftly achieve a restoration of the dedications.”36 The shields in question were the same ones that had been the subject of the dispute between the Athenians and Thebans in 339.37 We have to infer that sometime after the Aitolians gained preeminence in if not control over Delphi, around 301, their Boiotian allies asked them to remove the offending shields. Demetrios arrived in Athens at about the time when the Athenians were worrying about this affront; this was the context in which they performed the famous ithyphallic hymn in his honor.38 In it the Athenians plead for nothing less than war against the Aitolians: they wish to see them “flung down” and “reduced to dust.”39 That Demetrios accepted their plea is implied by the fact that he took the unprecedented step of celebrating the Pythian Games of 290 in Athens, “because the Aitolians had a tight hold on Delphi.”40 Demetrios accomplished a damaging invasion of Aitolia and negotiated a treaty with them that protected free access to Delphi.41
Demetrios lost his kingdom in 287, the result of a powerful alliance of his enemies and the exasperation of his own troops. It is a sign of the improvisational nature of early Hellenistic kingship, and its foundation in the support of communities, that the principal means by which he sought to regain power was to canvass support among the Greek cities. One of those we know he visited was Thebes, where according to Plutarch he “returned to the Thebans their politeia.”42 Hidden behind this terse allusion appears to be the full reintegration of the Thebans into the Boiotian koinon, contemporary with the revolt of Athens from Demetrios in the spring of 287.43 This implies either that Demetrios exercised power over Boiotia as a whole, which is unlikely given Demetrios’s weak position at this date, or a remarkable unanimity on the part of the Boiotian cities toward the desirability of having Thebes as a part of the koinon again. We simply do not know by what mechanism or mechanisms this change was effected. What is clear is that from this point forward, the Boiotian koinon again included Thebes, but the Boiotians now adopted a strikingly different institutional architecture than the one that had facilitated the Theban hegemony of the fourth century, a change certainly made to prevent that outcome from repeating itself. It is now that we begin to see seven or eight (rather than the eleven of the early fourth century) districts, which ensured the active participation and sovereignty of even the smallest member poleis, and the aphedriates, those representatives of the districts who sacrificed on behalf of their constituencies in koinon-wide rituals and thereby reaffirmed the commitment of those communities to the larger state.44 Only a few years later we see that the Boiotian koinon was deploying cavalry in the territories of both Thebes and Oropos, explicitly categorized as being in Boiotia (T15.31–37), which bespeaks not only the reintegration of Thebes and the Boiotians’ commitment to its territorial integrity as part of the koinon, but also the return of Oropos to Boiotia after 287.45
INDEPENDENCE AND EXPANSION, 284–245
Demetrios’s bid to regain power was, however, ultimately unsuccessful, and though he was eventually succeeded by his son, Antigonos Gonatas, in 277, the weakness of the interim period had a profound impact on the ability of the communities of mainland Greece and the Peloponnese to pursue a path of independence and, in many cases, of greater regional cooperation. Antigonos’s weakness was quite apparent to the communities of old Greece, who now sought by various means to rebuild the political structures upon which their past glories and quiet periods of independence had rested.
For the Spartans under King Areus this meant a desire to rebuild the Peloponnesian League of the classical period by creating a network of alliances centered around Sparta.46 The Aitolians quickly became a target for the energies of Areus and his supporters, probably for several reasons: they perceived the Aitolians as having pro-Macedonian sympathies; they noted that their most powerful ally, Pyrrhos, had departed for Italy; and they knew that the freedom of Delphi, however specious, was a cause around which Greeks could be persuaded to rally. So the Spartans dredged up the usual claim—that the Aitolians had cultivated the sacred plain of Apollo at Kirrha—and with their allies declared a sacred war to dislodge them from Delphi.47 But the Spartan alliance collapsed under suspicions of imperialist aims, and the war was a failure.48 It was perhaps partly in retaliation for this Spartan-led attack that in 280 the Aitolians took control of Herakleia Trachinia, the old Spartan foundation in Malis, making it a member of their koinon. The background to this move is unclear; that there were simmering boundary disputes between the eastern Aitolian communities and Herakleia is likely, but the timing of the integration of Herakleia has also to be considered.49
During this same period, or perhaps immediately after the botched sacred war against the Aitolians, the Achaians sought to free themselves from the garrisons and tyrants installed and controlled by at least one of several Macedonian rulers since the reign of Alexander.50 In a process that began in the extreme west in the period 284–280, the Achaian poleis gradually and quite voluntarily rebuilt the koinon they had created in the fourth century.51 That it remained a very loose organization in its earliest years is suggested by the fact that the only Achaians to go to the aid of Delphi when it was attacked by the Gauls in 279 were the Patraians.52 No Achaian federal army was sent, and the armed forces of each polis appear still to have been free to act independently.
The defense of Delphi against the Gauls was manned also by Phokians, Boiotians, and Athenians, but it was the Aitolians who claimed the leading role in saving the sanctuary, and it was they who suffered most directly when a band of the invaders broke off and attacked Kallipolis, in southeastern Aitolia, in an attempt to draw the defenders away from Delphi and Thermopylai.53 In the aftermath of their victory, the Aitolians gained two seats on the amphiktyonic council, probably those formerly belonging to Herakleia Trachinia and to Ozolian Lokris, which were now part of an emergent “greater Aitolia.”54 Over the next decades, as we can discern from Delphic inscriptions, the Aitolians gained more seats on the amphiktyonic council, at the expense of traditional members, which may indicate the incorporation of those communities into the Aitolian koinon.55 These included Dolopia (by spring 276), Ainis and Doris (by fall 272), and part of Eastern Lokris (by fall 272).56 The means by which these regions were incorporated and the precise status they attained once they were is uncertain but will be discussed below.57 What is clear is that the Aitolian presence at Delphi became increasingly dominant. The expulsion of the Gauls in 279 was celebrated by an annual amphiktyonic festival, the Sōtēria.58 By 246/5, the Aitolians’ control over Delphic politics and their own status around the Aegean led them to transform the festival into a penteteric pan-Hellenic one; embassies were sent throughout the Greek world seeking acceptance of the new Sōtēria, an effort that appears to have been broadly successful.59
