Note 162 — Chapter VII

At all events the hitherto known presidents of the κοινὸν τῶν Ἀχαιῶν, whose home is made out, are from Argos, Messene, Corone in Messenia (Foucart–Lebas, ii. 305), and there have been hitherto found among them not merely no citizens of the freed communities, such as Athens and Sparta, but also none of those belonging to the confederation of the Boeotians and allies (p. 259). Perhaps this κοινόν was legally restricted to the territory, which the Romans called the republic of Achaia—that is, that of the Achaean league at its overthrow—and the Boeotians and allies were united with the κοινόν proper of the Achaeans into that wider league, whose existence and diets in Argos are vouched for by the inscriptions of Acraephia mentioned in the next note. We may add that alongside of this κοινόν of the Achaeans there subsisted a still narrower one of the district of Achaia in the proper sense, whose representatives met in Aegium (Pausanias, vii. 24, 4), just as the κοινὸν τῶν Ἀρκάδων (Arch. Zeit. 1879, p. 139, n. 274), and numerous others. If, according to Pausanias, v. 12, 6, οἱ πάντες Ἕλληνες set up statues in Olympia to Trajan, and αἱ ἐς τὸ Ἀχαικὸν τελοῦσαι πόλεις to Hadrian, and no misunderstanding has here crept in, the latter dedication must have taken place at the diet of Aegium.