Aitolian Federation
The Aitolian League was an amalgamation of cities in the ancient Greek landscape of Aitolia .
Until the 3rd century BC Aitolia was a rather insignificant region of Greece into it, even if a union of the Poleis there to form a federation ( koinon ) was already in place for the year 367 BC. Is documented. Given the clashes of the Diadoch Wars from 321 BC BC, during which Macedonia and other Diadochian kingdoms also fought their conflicts on Greek soil, and in view of the invasion of the Celts ( called Galatians by the Greeks ) from around 280 BC. The city federations of Greece gained in importance and were transformed into federal states, whose members primarily pursued a common foreign policy. In addition to the two old poles of Athens and Sparta, as well as the island of Rhodes, the Achaean League (with Sikyon and Corinth, among others) in the Peloponnese and the Aetolian League, whose territory stretched between Epirus , Acarnania and Boeotia , gained the role of new regional powers. What all these Hellenistic Central Powers had in common was that they tried not only to assert themselves in the shadow of the great powers, but also to expand at the expense of their neighbors. Soon many Greeks who were not Aitolians also belonged to the Aitolian League.
The Aitol (i) er passed a first test against the Galatians, who died in 279 BC. At Delphi could be defeated. A little later, 277, they succeeded in gaining control of the Delphic amphictyony without formally belonging to it. As a result of the rise of the Achaean League under Aratos of Sicyon , there was increasing rivalry between the two great Greek leagues, which was exploited by the Macedonian kings Antigonus II Gonatas and Demetrios II to maintain Macedonian hegemony over Greece. At times, Aratos succeeded in winning over the Aitolians as an ally against Macedonia, but as a rule both leagues were hostile to each other.
In 212 the Aitolians allied themselves with Rome against the Antigonid Macedonian king Philip V and the Carthaginians under Hannibal ; they could prevent the Macedonians from effectively intervening in the war between the Romans and Carthaginians (see Second Punic War ). In 206, however, due to a lack of Roman support, a separate peace had to be concluded with Philip. After the Second Macedonian War , in which the Aetolian League had been involved since 199 BC. As an important ally of Rome , the Aitolians expected the Romans to expand their power as reward for their loyalty to the alliance. Their disappointment was all the greater when the Roman general Titus Quinctius Flamininus instead proclaimed the "freedom" of all Greeks in 196 and only gave the Confederation control over a few conquered areas.
The Aitolians saw themselves cheated. If the Romans' intervention against the Macedonians was initially very welcome, they now sought an alliance with the Seleucid Empire under Antiochus III. whom they called to Greece as an ally against the Romans. Rome was able to overpower Antiochus and his Greek allies almost effortlessly (see Roman-Syrian War ). The Aitolians were thereupon 189 BC. Defeated by the capture of their most important port Ambrakia and committed to extremely high payments to Rome. They concluded a foedus iniquum ("unequal alliance") with the Romans , with which they actually had to recognize the sovereignty of Rome. As a result of this and the severe internal unrest that followed, the political significance of the Confederation was finally eliminated. After the Third Macedonian War it was limited in 167 to the original tribal area of the Aitolians ( Aetolia ); in the Bund, politicians allied with Rome took power by killing or deporting their rivals.
After 146 BC After the resistance of the Achaeans and Corinthians against Roman rule had been brutally suppressed, Aitolia was in fact controlled by the Roman governor of the province of Macedonia until it was finally annexed to the new Roman province of Achaea under Augustus (probably 27 BC) .
The Aetolian League is often rated much more negatively than its big rival, the Achaean League. This judgment, according to which the Aitolians were more primitively organized and primarily interested in booty and violent expansion, is still held in parts of research today; but it goes back essentially to the portrayal of Polybius , who himself writes from a decidedly pro-Achaean and pro-Roman perspective.
literature
- Werner Dahlheim : violence and domination. The Provincial System of Rule of the Roman Republic. de Gruyter, Berlin et al. 1977, ISBN 3-11-006973-3 , p. 112 ff.
- Arthur M. Eckstein: Mediterranean Anarchy, Interstate War, and the Rise of Rome (= Hellenistic Culture and Society. Vol. 48). University of California Press, Berkeley CA et al. 2006, ISBN 0-520-24618-7 , p. 300 ff.
- Peter Funke : The Significance of the Greek Federal States in Political Theory and Practice of the 5th and 4th Centuries. v. Chr. In: Wolfgang Schuller (Hrsg.): Political theory and practice in antiquity. Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, Darmstadt 1998, ISBN 3-534-13050-2 , pp. 59-72.
- Jörg-Dieter Gauger : Aitoler (bund), Aitolien. In: Hatto H. Schmitt , Ernst Vogt (Ed.): Lexicon of Hellenism. Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden 2005, ISBN 3-447-04842-5 , p. 25 ff.
- John D. Grainger: The League of the Aitolians (= Mnemosyne . Supplementum 200). Brill, Leiden et al. 1999, ISBN 90-04-10911-0 .
- Erich S. Gruen: The Hellenistic World and the Coming of Rome. 2 volumes. University of California Press, Berkeley CA 1984, ISBN 0-520-04569-6 .
- Joseph B. Scholten: The Politics of Plunder. Aitolians and their koinon in the Early Hellenistic Era, 279-217 BC (= Hellenistic Culture and Society. Vol. 24). University of California Press, Berkeley CA et al. 2000, ISBN 0-520-20187-6 .
- Joseph Scholten: The Internal Structure of the Aitolian Union: A Case-study in Ancient Greek Sympoliteia. In: Kostas Buraselis, Kleanthis Zoumboulakis (Ed.): Aspects of connecting poleis and ethne in Ancient Greece . National and Capodistrian University of Athens, Athens 2003, pp. 65-80.