Common Peace and League of Corinth, 338/7

Two non-joining fragments of a stele., found in Athens (a on the Acropolis, find-spot of b

unknown), now in the Epigraphical Museum. Phot. Kern, Inscriptiones Graecae, Taf. 30;
Heisserer, Alexander, 1011 pis. 23. Attic-Ionic, retaining the old o for ov in a. 12;
astoichedon 33 with irregularities in 11. 1921; b stoichedon. A. Wilhelm, Sb. Wien CLXV.
vi 1910 = Akademieschriftten, i. 371425; IG n^ 236; SIG* 260; U. Wilcken, Sb. Berlin
1929, 291318, esp. 31618; Schwahn, HeeresmatrikelundLandfriedePhilipps II.
vonMakedonien] Raue, Untersuchungen zur Geschichte des korinthischen Bundes] Tod
177; Svt. 403*. I; Heisserer, Alexander, 812. Trans. Heisserer, Alexander, 812;
Harding 99. A. See also Larsen, Representative Government, 4765; Ryder, Koine
Eirene, 10215, 15062; [Hammond&] Griffith, 60446; Hammond [&Walbank], 5719;
J. Buckler, /CSxix 1994, 99122.


then used the title 'king' (but he rightly rejected the suggestion [Dittenberger on
IG vn 4250 (sicj\ that 'of Macedon' inscribed over an erasure in A was a
replacement for 'king': 17 n. 26). Errington objected that Aristomedes was
already in Persian service by 340 (Didyrn. In Dem. ix. 4352 = Thp. FGrHn^F
222), and that tez/amn the Lebadea inscription is likely to have been an
informal description rather than a title claimed by Amyntas; but he accepted
Ellis's late date for our inscriptions and suggested that the two Amyntases were
sent to Oropus by Philip with news of his settlement. Griffith accepted
Errington's interpretation of 'king', but wanted a slightly earlier date for all the
inscriptions; Hammond dates IG vn 3055 to the early 3505 when he believes
Amyntas was king. For the use of the title 'king' cf. on 76. If Knoepfler is right,
Oropus could have awarded proxenies between 338 and 335 but not between
366 and 338, and the Amyntases are likely to have visited it in connection with
its liberation from Thebes. That seems to us the best context for our
inscriptions; if Alexander saw these Amyntases as a threat, their being
honoured by Oropus might help to explain his decision not to leave Oropus
independent but to return it to Athens. However, the dedication of Aristomedes
must be earlier; and Amyntas' consultation of the oracle of Trophonius need not
be linked with the other inscriptions. As for the language, oiViijs is Euboean,
and eiv and ru^ei are distinctively Eretrian, but some Eretrian features (e.g. the
use of rho in place of sigma) are absent. A. Morpurgo Davies remarks (in
Grespo et al., Dialectologies, Graeca, 261-79 at 273-8) that the earliest Oropian
inscriptions are linguistically Euboean; these two are transitional; subsequent
inscriptions are Attic, even at times when Oropus formed part of the Boeotian
federation.




Oath. I swear by Zeus, Earth, Sun, Poseidon,
Athena, Ares, all the gods and goddesses: I shall
abide by the peace (?); and I shall neither break
the agreement with Philip (?) nor take up arms for
harm against any of those who abide by the oaths
(?), neither by land nor by sea; nor shall I take any
city or guard-post nor harbour, for war, of any of
those participating in the peace, by any craft or
contrivance; nor shall I overthrow the kingdom
of Philip or his descendants, nor the constitutions
existing in each state when they swore the oaths
concerning the peace; nor shall I myself do anything
contrary to these agreements, nor shall I
allow any one else as far as possible.
17 If any one does commit any breach of treaty
concerning the agreements, I shall go in support
as called on by those who are wronged (?), and I
shall make war against the one who transgresses
the common peace (?) as decided by the common
council (synedrion) and called on by the hegemon; and
I shall not abandon



After his defeat of Athens, Thebes, and their allies at Ghaeronea in 338, Philip's
supremacy was accepted by all the states of mainland Greece except Sparta (Just,
ix. 5. m, cf. Arr. Anab. i. 16. vn, Plut. Alex. 16. xviu; D.S. xvn. 3. ivv has Arcadia for
Sparta). He first made individual treaties with a number of separate states (discussed
by G. Roebuck, CPxliii 1948, 73-92 = S. Perlman (ed.), Philip and Athens, 2oga-2i8):
this involved a number of territorial adjustments, and also the final dissolution of the
Second Athenian League (explicitly stated Paus. i. 25. iii). This was followed by on
or more meetings at Corinth (in general, D.S. xvi. 89, Just. ix. 5), in which Philip
united the Greeks in a common peace treaty ([Dem.] xvii. Treaty with Alexander2, etc.),
created an organization, known to modern scholars as the League of Corinth, which
had a synedrwn ('council': [Dem.] xvii. 15) and in which he held the position ofhegemon
('leader': cf. Dem. xviii. Crown 201, Polyb. ix. 33. vii, Plut. Inst. Lac. 240 A), and gained
approval for a campaign against the Persians, which he was to command (cf. Aesch
in. Ctes. 132, P. Oxy. i 12 = FGrHz^, iii. 913). This is the stage to which our inscription
belongs.
In 336 he sent out the first forces of this campaign (D.S. xvi. 91. ii-iv, xvii. 7), but
in the same year he was assassinated (D.S. xvi. 91. iv - 94). Alexander the Great succeeded
first to the throne of Macedon, then to the archonship ofThessaly (cf. on 44),
and finally to the leadership of the League of Corinth and the command of the campaign
against the Persians (D.S. xvn. 34, Arr. Anab. i. i. iiii, etc.). Belonging to the
period of Alexander's leadership we have another inscription (discussed below) and
a speech preserved with the Demosthenic corpus ([Dem.] xvii. Treaty with Alexander.
dated to the beginning of Alexander's reign by a scholiast [p. 196 1. 18 Dilts]; but 333
by W. Will, RM2 cxxv 1982, 202-13, Athen undAlexander, 67-70 cf. 62-3; 331 by G. L.
Cawkwell, Phoen. xv 1961, 74-8; 330 by [Hammond &] Griffith, 627, without discussion)
which accuses Alexander of breaking the promises made to the Greeks. In 319
Polyperchon in the name of'the kings and the leaders' proclaimed a renewal of the
dispensation of Philip and Alexander, which had effectively lapsed in the Lamian War
of the Greeks against Antipater in 323322 (D.S. xvin. 556); and in 303/2 a revived
league was founded by Antigonus Monophthalmus and Demetrius Poliorcetes (D.S.
xx. 102. i, Plut. Demetr. 25. iii, cf. D.S. xx. 46. v (307)), from which we have substantia
fragments of a long inscription (cited below).
Wilhelm established that our two fragments are from the Athenian copy of a document
which was probably published in many or all of the participating states: fr. a
contains part of the oath sworn by the participants, fr. b part of a list of participants
with numerals against them. The general sense of fr. a is clear; in its language this
treaty generally echoes earlier treaties, though at some points the vocabulary in which
it is expressed is not certain: in accepting restorations ofemne ('peace') in 11. 3,10, an
(koine eirene: 'common peace') 20, and ofsynthekai ('agreement') in 11.16 and 18, we have
been guided by the fact that the words eirene and synthekai are preserved on the stone,
in 11.14 and 4 respectively, and are used repeatedly in [Dem.] xvii, whereas symmachia/
symmachos ('alliance'/'ally') are not. In the list on fr. b we have avoided adventurous
restorations.
The arrangements of 338/7 have been much discussed, often in excessively legalis-I
tic terms. It is clear from [Dem.] xvn that the Greeks swore oaths which made them
participants in a common peace treaty (2, 6), and that the treaty stipulated that the
Greeks were to be free and autonomous (8), with their stability guaranteed in various
respects (io, 15, 16). They were represented in a synedrwn (15), and they were
in a relationship with the king of Macedon, such that interference by him in Greek
states could be considered a breach of the agreement (4, etc.), but the king was not
a member of the organization on equal terms with the Greek states: Philip will have
been the hegemon, working with the synedrwn (our inscription, a. 202), and 01 etrl rrj
KOLvr] (j)vXaKrj rera-y^iivoi ('those put in charge of the common protection', 15: cf.
the Committee of Public Safety [Gomite de Salut Public] established in France in
1793) will have been a board of agents appointed by Alexander to act for him while
he was away on campaign (Ryder, 1567, [Hammond &] Griffith, ii. 63946; against
Wilcken, Sb. Wien 1932, 13940, Gawkwell, Philip of Macedon, 1712). The words symmachia/
symmachos are not attested (cf. above); but the provision for common action
against any one who broke the peace (a. 18 sqq.; [Dem.] xvn. 6,10), as in at least some
of the earlier common peace treaties (cf. below), means that the participants were in
fact bound together by a defensive alliance, whether that language was used or not (on
the avoidance of the term 'alliance' in conjunction with a common peace cf. Ryder,
723), and by committing themselves to the campaign against the Persians they were
in fact committing themselves to an offensive alliance (Arr. Anab. in. 24. v; the Greeks
taking part in that campaign are frequently referred to as 'allies', e.g. Arr. Anab. i. 24.
iii). The decision to campaign against Persia probably belongs to a later occasion than
the original establishment of the League (esp. D.S. xvi. 89, Plut. Phoc. 16. v-vi): Hammond
[& Walbank] believes that an alliance was made at that stage, but Ryder and
[Hammond &] Griffith do not.
The gods named as those by whom the oath was sworn are plausibly restored as
those named in 53 (cf. Svt. 446, cited below). The early part of the undertaking is a
standard formulation for a peace treaty (cf. e.g. the Peace of Nicias in 421: Thuc. v.
18. iv), and is alluded to in [Dem.] xvn. 16. More striking is that the participants were
guaranteed not only freedom and autonomy ([Dem.] xvii. 8: not in our inscription)
but also the preservation of the constitution which they had when they swore to the
peace (11.1214). ([Dem.] xvn gives the impression of reproducing the actual clauses of
the treaty, though it may sometimes be enlarging on them for the author's polemical
purposes, and we need to remember, for instance, that 'tyrant' in the fourth century
may be no more than a pejorative term for a party leader to whom the user of the term
is opposed: 15 spells out a ban on illegal execution and exile, confiscation of property,
redistribution of land, cancellation of debts or liberation of slaves 'for revolution'; 4,
7, exempts tyranny from the preservation of constitutions. For a fear of tyranny in
Athens at this time cf. 79.) The participants in turn swore allegiance to the kingdom of
Philip and his descendants (as Athens had made the Peace of Philocrates with Philip
and his descendants in 346: Dem. xix. Embassy 48). (There has been argument as to
whether Philip used the title 'king'. Whatever may have been the case in Macedon
earlier [cf. on 75], the word basileia ['kingdom'] is preserved on the stone in a. n, but
this is not enough to prove that Philip used the title: see Borza, Before Alexander, 12-15.)
The obligation to support participants who were wronged was included in at any rate
the later of the previous common peace treaties (Ryder, 72-3); but the previous common
peace treaties had not provided a mechanism to give effect to that obligation,
whereas this treaty, with a synedrwn and a hegemon, does.
Attempts to reconstruct the list of members on fr. b are too speculative to be worth
pursuing. The numerals presumably indicate the number of units assigned to a state
or group of states, and their representation in the council and their military obligations
were probably in proportion to these. What survives comes from the end of the
list: those named are largely from the north, but are not given in a logical geographical
order: [Samothrace and] Thasos, islands of the northern Aegean, follow the Thes
salians (or some of them), but precede the Ambraciots, from the west, some community
or communities from Thrace, in the east, then peoples of northern Greece
including those on the borders of Thessaly, and the list ends with islands off the west
coast of Greece. None of the voting units here is a single city, if editors are right to
combine Samothrace with Thasos (proposed by Wilhelm on the grounds that they
are adjacent islands and would appropriately account for two units), but we cannot
be sure that that would be true of the complete list. Schwahn guessed that there may
have been about a hundred synedroi altogether.
What Philip has done in this treaty is combine several strands in recent Greek diplomacy,
to dress up his control of mainland Greece in clothes which would be acceptable
to the Greeks. A common peace treaty settles outstanding disputes and tries to
guarantee the stability of the present state of affairs; the apparatus of a hegemon and a
synedrwn, as in such leagues as the Second Athenian League, provides a mechanism for
enforcing the peace, which previous common peace treaties had lacked; proportional,
rather than equal, representation was used in the Boeotian federation of the late fifth
and early fourth centuries. But behind this facade lies Philip's supremacy: the Greeks
swore to uphold not only the constitutions of the member states but also the kingdom
of Philip and his descendants; however much the synedrwn might be independent of
Philip in theory (cf. below), he as hegemon would in practice be responsible for identifying
breaches of the peace and ordering action in response to them; and, whether the
League was reinforced by a full alliance or not, in undertaking the war against Persia
it became an instrument of Philip's policy.
When the Peace of Philocrates had been made in 346, Athens prompted by the
synedrwn of the Second League had wanted a common peace open to all the Greeks,
but Philip had rejected that and had insisted on a bilateral peace and alliance (Aesch.
in. Ctes. 6872); later, when he offered to renegotiate the Peace of Philocrates, Philip
was prepared to accept a common peace ([Dem.] vii. Halon. 30-2). This peace, and
its league of participants, at first included all the mainland Greeks except Sparta; it
was extended, probably in 336, to the Greeks of the Aegean islands (78, 84); in 334 the
Greeks of the Asiatic mainland were liberated and made allies of Alexander but were
probably not incorporated in this league (86).
The fragment of a treaty with Alexander (from Athens: IG n2 329 = Tod 183 = Svt.
403. II = Heisserer, 326 ~ Harding 102) refers to the sending of troops and their
provisioning: this may refer to the contribution which Athens was required to make to
the campaign (Heisserer, Alexander, 203); cf. the syntaxis of 86. It appears to end wit
instructions for publication at Pydna by 'those put in charge of the common protection'
(11. 1214: title largely restored). Alexander used the league to condemn Thebe
for its revolt in 335 (Arr. Anab. i. 9. ix); the rising of 331330 led by Sparta was referred
by Antipater, Alexander's commander in Europe, to the league and by the league to
Alexander (D.S. xvn. 73. vvi). Alexander's order in 324 that the Greek states were to
take back their exiles (cf. on 101; otherwise D.S. xvn. 109. i, xvin. 8. iivii; Curt. x. ii.
4-7; Just. xin. 5. ii-v) was a breach of the league's guarantee of constitutional stability,
but probably by then he had long since ceased to care about the rules of the league.
Fragments survive of a detailed inscription concerning the revival of the league
in 303/2 (best text Svt. 446; trans. Harding 138, Austin 42 [both iii only]; cf. Plut.
Demetr. 25. iv). How many of the details are new and how many have been repeated
from the original league we cannot tell, but among points worth noting are: the oath
is probably sworn by the same deities (139-40 = v. 23-4); what is sworn to can be
restored as an alliance with Antigonus and Demetrius and their descendants (140-2 =
v. 24-6: sym preserved), with an undertaking not to make war on participants or to
overthrow the kingdom of Antigonus, Demetrius, and their descendants (1427 = v.
2631); the synednon is to be presided over by five proedroi, to be appointed by lot when
the war [is over] (7683 = iii. 218) but until then appointed by the kings (91 = iii. 36);
its meetings are to be summoned by 'iheproedm and the king or the general designated
by the kings' (sic) until the war is over, and thereafter at the major festivals (703 =
iii. 1518; in an earlier formulation of this, 6670 = iii. 1115, the general is described
as 'the general left by the kings in charge of the common protection'); decisions are
to be binding, there is to be a quorum of over 50%, and synedroi cannot be called to
account in their own cities for the decisions of the synednon (736 = iii. 1821); cities
are to be fined if they fail to send synedroi, except when the synedroi are absent through
illness (914 = iii. 369); the .synednon is to have judicial powers (e.g. 66, 813 = iii. n,
26-8).