The ethnic leagues, so named as they usually began with a confederation of neighboring, ethnically related poleis, were different from the hegemonic leagues in that no one polis clearly dominated the rest. Rather, these leagues attempted to create a "nation" out of the member poleis, where league citizenship overshadowed the more narrow polis citizenships. Such leagues included the Cretan League, the Aetolian League, the League of Islands, and the Achaean League.
The most influential of these was the Achaean League, founded in 280 b. c.e. by the union of four Peloponnesian cities. Over time, not only did all the other Achaean poleis join this league, but so did cities from other ethnic regions, such as the Arcadians. Eventually the League incorporated some sixty cities and around 13,000 square kilometers of territory. All poleis were admitted on a basis of equality, but their self-sovereignty was eliminated as they came under League authority. Rather than a system based on individual poleis, the League was divided into administrative districts, called synteleiai, thus helping to diminish traditional loyalties (Ehrenberg 1969, 126-127).
According to the historian Polybius, "For the first 25 years these cities shared in a league, appointed a common secretary according to a rhota (formal, written terms), and two generals. Later they made a new decision to elect a single general and to entrust him with substantial authority. Margos of Kery-nia was the first." From 280 to 255 b. c.e. two elected generals stood at the head of the League. After 255, only one general was in control. No general could serve two consecutive terms, so power was, to a certain extent, rotated among the more powerful League members. Below the generals were the demiourgoi, the main administrators who presided over the League assemblies. As with many poleis, the main legislative bodies were a boule and an ekklesia, open to all males over age thirty. Originally, before about 220, the boule and ekklesia met about four times per year in meetings called synodoi ("roads together," from which we get the modern word synod). In cases of emergency, an extraordinary council might be summoned, called a synkletos. At the end of the third century b. c.e., however, a law was passed forbidding the ekklesia from attending the synodoi, which became reserved exclusively for the boule. The ekklesia could only attend the synkletoi, arranged and announced in advance by the boule. Thus the more democratic arrangement of the League became increasingly oligarchic/centralized over the course of the third to second centuries (Ehrenberg 1969, 125-130). As will soon become evident, this was probably done to compete with the infinitely more centralized political systems of the Hellenistic monarchies.
World History
