ACHAIA, ak-Vya, or ACHIEA ak-ea, according to }comer, southeastern the where was Phthia, the home of Achilles. In later history, a strip of Peloponnesus along the southern shore of the Corinthian Gulf, rising from the coast to wooded hills abounding in beasts of the chase; the uplands were fertile with grapes, olives and other fruits. The nome called Achaia (including Elis) in modern Greece (pop. 255,000), the northwestern part of Morea with capital at Patras, occupies the same location except along the west coast, on the Ionian Sea. When it first appears in authentic 'history (Herodotus), it is a confederacy of 12 towns —Pellene, Ngeira, Bura, Helice, 2E 'um, Rhypes, Patrw, Pharm, Olenus, Dyme and Trite a — headed by Helice, and keeping much to itself in Greek affairs. Helice was destroyed by an earthquake and swallowed by the waves 373 B. c., and ZEgium succeeded td the 'hegemony; and at some time unknown Olenus was deserted.
The League took no share in the Pelopon nesian war, but the Macedonian supremacy and the dynastic struggles after Alexander's death broke it up altogether. Some of the remaining 10 towns were held by Macedonian garrisons, some by local tyrants, a state of disunion equally gratifying to Macedonia and intolerable to Greek patriots. In 280, when several kings were dead, Macedonia in confusion, and the great Pyrrhus absent in Italy, Patrm and Dyme, the two westernmost towns, formed an alliance; Tritaa and Pharce joined them; and the new Achaian League, famous in history, which gave southern central Greece more than a century of order and good government, was begun. The cities probably drove out their garrisons or rulers, as later ones certainly did. Five years afterward .7Egium expelled its garrison and joined the League; Bura was freed and its tyrant slain by its people and their exiled brethren, and joined also; and Iseas, tyrant of Ceryneia, seeing how events were trending, voluntarily surrendered his position with a guaranty of safety, and annexed the city to the League. Seven towns were now included; and the other three were recovered and annexed not long after. But all were small and poor; fortunately for the League, as it was thought too insignificant to molest, and grew up peace fully and solidly for some 30 years. The chief
name in its early history is Markos of Ceryneia, who helped liberate Bura even before his own city was freed, and seems to have been the Washington of the League. But its first en trance into the role of a great Greek political force be with the expulsion in 249 of the tyrant of Sicyon by Aratus of that city, who induced it to join the League; it not only gained thereby the first city outside the old Achaian confederacy, and became more or less Pan Greek, but gained Aratus, its second founder, and a statesman and administrator of high or der, though his jealousy of other leaders and his military incompetency injured it deeply. A still greater accession came in 242, when Corinth expelled its Macedonian garrison and joined; and in 234 Lydiadas, tyrant of Megalopolis, the powerful city founded by Epaminondas, volun tarily resigned his place like Iseas and brought in his city, being made commander-in-chief of the League's army the next year. Before the century had begun its last quarter the League included all northern and central Peloponnesus, and many towns elsewhere.
The League was a federal union of abso lutely independent states, each having equal power in the Council, which met twice a year at first and for a long time in a grove near 7Egium, but later, at Philopcemen's motion, in the League cities in rotation. The vote of each city was given as a unit, not by elected dele gates, but by any of its citizens who were present, any one over 30 having a right to be so; attendance therefore naturally fell to the richer citizens with means and leisure, and the assembly was a rough representative body of the leading men. The union acted as a unit in foreign affairs, and there was a secretary to record the debates and resolutions. The head officer was the strategos, who was commander in-chief and civil president at once; he had under him a hipparchos (cavalry commander) and nauarchos (admiral), and a board of 10 demiourgoi as assistants in the Council.