Note 152 — Chapter VII

Whether the κοινὸν τῶν Ἀχαιῶν, which naturally does not occur in the republican period proper, was reconstituted already at the end of it or not till after the introduction of the imperial provincial organisation, is doubtful. Inscriptions like the Olympian one of the proquaestor Q. Ancharius Q. f. (Arch. Zeitung, 1878, p. 38, n. 114) speak rather in favour of the former supposition; yet it cannot with certainty be designated as pre–Augustan. The oldest sure evidence for the existence of this union is the inscription set up by it to Augustus in Olympia (Arch. Zeitung, 1877, p. 36, n. 33). Perhaps these were arrangements of the dictator Caesar, and in connection with the governor of “Greece,”—probably the Achaia of the imperial period—to be met with under him (Cicero, Ad fam. vi. 6, 10).—We may add that certainly also under the republic, according to the discretion of each governor for the time being, several communities might meet for a definite object by deputies and adopt resolutions; as the κοινόν of the Siceliots thus decreed a statue to Verres (Cicero, Verr. i. 2, 46, 114), similar things must have occurred in Greece also under the republic. But the regular provincial diets with their fixed officers and priests were an institution of the imperial period.