the late sixth century exchange between Boiotian communities was facilitated by the production of a cooperative coinage, a coinage produced by multiple poleis on the same weight standard with a common type, again despite the lack of a state encompassing all these communities that could have demanded their cooperation in this matter or simply issued the coins itself. The norm of cooperation was reinforced by the same religious interactions that generated it as well as by the interactions and cooperation of individuals and communities in the economic sphere; it also contributed to military cooperation. Despite all this cooperation, the Boiotian communities were distinct state entities; they were poleis with their own laws, magistracies, and identities, although the details of these are rarely evident to us for the archaic period. And this fundamental fact strongly influenced the way in which the Boiotians cooperated; entrenched polis interests made the possibility of a unified Boiotian state, or the political synoikism of all the Boiotian communities into a single polis on the Attic model, highly unlikely. Thus we find resistance to early proposals that communities should contribute to the Boiotians.
An exogenous shock exposed the profound deficiencies of the Boiotians’ loose cooperative institutions: the region was conquered by the Athenians in 457, and at least some of its communities appear to have been subjected to tribute payment. At this critical juncture, it became apparent that the costs of developing new institutions to strengthen the ties between Boiotian communities, to regularize their old habits of cooperation, and to prevent departures from these habits were less than the cost of attempting to operate in the old ways despite the dramatically changed environment. When the Athenians were expelled from the region a decade later, the Boiotians developed a new set of institutions that regularized their cooperation. A new political entity, the koinon, was created that incorporated the old poleis. The poleis persisted as both states and social entities, but some of their powers were shifted to the koinon, which was governed by representatives of the poleis. Although this was a wholesale innovation, rather than an incremental change, the path was still influenced by the old institutions. Religion had always been a context for interaction, and it was by means of an essentially religious discourse that the Boiotians had articulated their group identity; as a result, the new koinon quickly made itself a part of the religious life of Boiotia and availed itself of the power of religious ritual to integrate and legitimate. At the same time it used its powers to strengthen and facilitate old patterns of economic interaction that had occurred spontaneously but at some risk when there was no state entity to govern and protect exchange between individuals of different states. As the evidence becomes richer and more detailed over the course of the classical and Hellenistic periods, we see the Boiotian koinon investing its authority in these spheres of behavior in complex and fascinating ways. The biggest innovation, of course, lay in the way that public decisions were made, above all relating to the conduct of interstate relations, diplomacy, and warfare. But the political innovation, the creation of what we can recognize as federal institutions, occurred against a backdrop of spontaneous cooperation and competition, frequent religious and economic interactions. It is for this reason that the koinon in Boiotia was never a narrowly political phenomenon: this was a state with a deep engagement in the religious and economic lives of its citizens and member communities.
This critical juncture of the mid-fifth century determined the path on which the Boiotians traveled for the rest of their independent political existence. There were incremental adjustments and refinements to the set of institutions established in this period, which accommodated both exogenous and endogenous change over the course of the fourth century and the early Hellenistic period. But the Boiotians had constructed their political reality as one in which poleis would retain local autonomy and an institutional presence in the direction of public affairs at the regional level, while the koinon would direct interstate relations and commit itself to protecting not only the political but also the religious and economic unity of the region. The process can be seen overall as one in which the behavior of individual agents generated norms of cooperation that became inadequate in the challenging political climate of fifth-century mainland Greece and were for that reason formalized in an innovative set of political, economic, and religious institutions. The behavior guided by these formal institutions recursively encouraged cooperation rather than competition among the Boiotian poleis.
Studying the institutional dynamics of the koinon, as revealed by a comprehensive analysis of the interactions of the communities that became its member poleis, reveals a great deal about how the koinon emerged and developed over time and about why being a member of a koinon was so attractive to so many poleis in the Greek world. Along the way, it exposes the koinon as a much more complex entity than previous studies have suggested: far from serving a narrowly political and military purpose, the koinon was a religious and an economic institution as well—a reality that was social as much as it was political. It is in this sense that the federal label is misleading, for it captures a part of the reality but misses the rest.
A ROAD MAP
All this needs to be explored and documented in detail, and in order to make any claims about koina in general the process needs to be examined in several other regions as well. The book is divided into two parts. Part I (chapters 1–3) provides a historical narrative of the development of the koinon in Boiotia, Aitolia, and Achaia. Widespread familiarity with the history of political cooperation in central Greece and the northern Peloponnese tends to be limited to one or two of several notorious periods: the so-called Theban hegemony of 371–362; and the wars of the Achaian and Aitolian koina with the Romans from the late third to the mid- second century BCE. Yet the internal histories of political cooperation in mainland Greece, and the relationship between those internal developments and the interstate relations that are the subject of the familiar grand narratives, have received less attention. Chapters 1–3 therefore present a narrative overview of the emergence and development of political cooperation that transcended polis boundaries and assumed the formal apparatus of a koinon, providing an historical context for the analysis and explanation of these developments in Part II.
Building on this narrative framework, Part II concentrates on exposing patterns and explaining them, isolating the religious (chapter 4), economic (chapter 5), and political (chapter 6) factors that contributed to an initial willingness to forge and participate in a koinon and that then went on to shape the nature of that state over time. These categories are in some ways artificial: they represent a strategy for breaking the problem up into manageable and intelligible pieces. But they have also been isolated in separate chapters because the ways in which interactions in these different spheres affected member communities and the koinon itself are qualitatively different. It is not enough simply to point, for example, to the presence of economic interactions between poleis prior to the emergence of koinon institutions, or to the engagement of the koinon in the management of a regional economy. We need to ask how and why such interactions would have facilitated the integration of member poleis while simultaneously requiring the maintenance of their identity as distinct states. We need to ask whether, why, and under what circumstances it would have been economically advantageous for poleis to become members of a koinon, and we need to understand how predatory or benevolent the koinon was with respect to the resources of its member poleis. Only then will we begin to answer our twin questions: How did the koinon develop, and why was it so attractive to so many Greek poleis? There are different questions to be asked about religion, economics, and politics. Their treatment in separate chapters facilitates the isolation of different factors that contributed to the larger phenomenon at the heart of this book. These threads are drawn together in the conclusion.
The arguments advanced in this book rely heavily on the evidence of inscriptions from areas of the Greek world that have not in recent years received sustained attention from epigraphers and historians. The fragmentary condition of many of the stones on which these documents are inscribed makes analysis of their content difficult; historical arguments based on such sources will be only as compelling as the readings of the documents are careful. Nor have these sources ever been collected in one place, although they are vital for our understanding of the koinon. For these reasons the epigraphic texts that are of central importance to the study of the koinon in Boiotia, Achaia, and Aitolia are gathered together in the epigraphical dossier comprised in the appendix.
