Arcadian League

Cities entering the Arcadian league seem to have surrendered a large degree of their autonomy to the federal government. The league maintained a standing army, and a section of the new capital at Megalopolis was filled with federal buildings and barracks for that army. The league conducted a unified foreign policy, either led by a chief executive or executives (which is not clear) holding the title of strategos.^[6]

The league had a democratic constitution, although how widely the franchise was extended is unclear. The body of voting citizens was known as the myrioi, or "ten thousand." If this number is taken as a rough estimate of the actual size of the body, the body would have consisted only of citizens of hoplite class or higher (the upper-middle class and up). If, on the other hand, the word is interpreted in its figurative meaning of "a very large number," it is possible that the body may have been much larger, possibly including all free males.^[6] A smaller council, the Boule, was composed of an unknown number of representatives from the various cities of the federation. This council probably handled administrative matters, and, if it served a similar function to the council of the same name at Athens, may have prepared resolutions to be debated by the myrioi. Finally, 50 officials known as demiourgoi probably served as a working committee of the Boule.^[6]

The league created the Epariti, a military unit with the role to preserve the independence of the Arcadian towns and defend the common interests of the league. They were 5,000 and were paid by the state.^[7][8]

After its establishment in 370 BC, the Arcadian League took an active role in the politics of the Peloponnese. Arcadian soldiers campaigned with a Theban army during Epaminondas's second invasion of the Peloponnese in 369 BC, and continued to campaign in 368 BC, defeating a joint Athenian and Corinthian force, then raiding successfully into Spartan territory, but in the summer of 368 BC, a Spartan force invaded Arcadia and wiped out an Arcadian force without suffering a single casualty, in what became known as the "tearless battle." Xenophon asserts that the Arcadians' allies, the Thebans and Eleans, "were almost as well pleased as the Lacedaemonians at the misfortune of the Arcadians – so vexed had they become by this time at their presumption."^[9] After this defeat, the Arcadians hurried the completion of the fortifications at Megalopolis to prevent further Spartan incursions.^[10] The league's military fortunes revived over the next few years, however, and in 365 BC the league fought and won a war against Elis.^[11]

A Theban army had invaded the Peloponnese in 366 BC, but the purpose of that expedition was to establish Achaea as a counterweight to Arcadian influence; although this effort was largely a failure, it antagonized leading Arcadians. Accordingly, in that same year, Lycomedes persuaded the myrioi to make an alliance with Athens; the Athenians, although reluctant to ally with enemies of their allies the Spartans, could not pass up such a chance to undermine Theban influence.^[12] In 364 BC, the Arcadian strategos Aeneas of Stymphalos intervened in Sicyon, expelling the tyrant of that city.

The split of the Confederacy in 363 BC was rooted in both financial and ideological disputes. The immediate trigger was a conflict over the financing of the eparitoi (a standing force). After the Confederacy’s war against Elis in 365 BC for control of Lasion, a war which saw Arcadian forces occupy Olympia, establish Pisa as a puppet state, and even conduct the Olympic Games themselves, the confederate magistrates controversially used Olympic funds to maintain the eparitoi. Mantinea objected strongly, preferring to contribute its share from its own treasury, and rejected the magistrates’ summons to appear before the assembly. When the eparitoi were sent to arrest Mantineian leaders, Mantinea refused them entry, escalating tensions further. Although the assembly later decreed that Olympic funds should no longer be used for the eparitoi, this did little to repair the rift. As poorer citizens dropped out of the eparitoi due to lack of funds, wealthier volunteers took their place, effecting what was essentially an oligarchic takeover of confederate control.^[13]

The political consequences were profound. Mantinea’s resistance, combined with a wider appeal of the oligarchic shift, led the magistrates to seek Theban intervention to prevent the confederacy from aligning with Sparta. Despite these efforts, the newly composed eparitoi did ally with Sparta, culminating in the Battle of Mantinea in 362 BC. There, Arcadian unity was visibly fractured: Mantinea, aligned with Sparta and Athens, opposed Tegea and Megalopolis, who fought alongside the Boeotians. This battle marked the definitive end of a united Arcadia.^[13]

Although it never regained the prominence it had held during the 360s BC, an Arcadian league in some form, whether a continuation or a recreation of the original league is unclear, continued to exist in the years after the Battle of Mantinea. Various references indicate that the league endured at least into the 3rd century BC. According to an obscure passage in Pausanias, the Arcadian League may have experienced a short period of revival between 250 and 245 BC, after the liberation of Megalopolis from tyranny.^[14] The date of its final disappearance is uncertain, but at the latest it had dissolved by the 230s BC, as at that point the Arcadian cities joined the Achaean League.^[5]

Modern scholarship, particularly the analysis of Thomas Heine Nielsen, nuances this narrative. As Nielsen concludes, while the Confederacy did indeed survive beyond 362 BC, it evolved into an organization increasingly centered on Mantinea, which likely never succeeded in uniting the whole of Arcadia again. Notably, Nielsen raises doubts as to whether Megalopolis ever rejoined the Confederacy. In fact, both Megalopolis and Mantinea may have each led rival confederacies after 362 BC, resulting in the curious possibility that two parallel Arcadian Confederacies existed simultaneously. Unfortunately, the available evidence is too fragmentary to reconstruct this situation in detail: “After 362 and at least until 322 there existed one or two organizations claiming to be the Arkadian Confederacy, but neither of them united the entire region”.^[15]

Further developments in the Hellenistic period also suggest that some form of the Confederacy persisted even after 323 BC. Scholar J. Roy argued that the continued use of the regional ethnic Arkas in inscriptions, particularly when used in a way that reflects constitutional matters, indicates the Confederacy’s survival until approximately 235 BC. Roy posits that this later league gradually dissolved as more Arcadian communities joined the Achaean League. W.W. Tarn similarly maintained that the Arcadian League demonstrated cohesion well into the Hellenistic period, observing that “In the Lamian War, Arcadia acts as a unit; and the League was in existence from 320/9 to 304/3, even if Cassander sometimes deprived it of a city. It must have entered Demetrios’ Panhellenic League of 303 as a unit.”^[16]

• Fine, John Van Antwerp (1983). The Ancient Greeks: A Critical History. Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press. ISBN 0-674-03314-0.
• Pausanias (1918) [2nd century AD]. Description of Greece. Translated by W.H.S. Jones and H.A. Ormerod.
• Roy, Jim (2012) [1949]. "Arcadian League". In Hornblower, Simon; Spawforth, Anthony; Eidinow, Esther (eds.). The Oxford Classical Dictionary (4th ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press. p. 135. ISBN 978-0-19-954556-8.
• Xenophon (1890s) [original 4th century BC]. Hellenica . Translated by Henry Graham Dakyns – via Wikisource.