Patras > Pátrai Akhaia Greece

The twelve Achaean cities of the northern Peloponnese had organized a league by the fourth century BCE to protect themselves against piratical raids from across the Corinthian Gulf, but this league had fallen apart after the death of Alexander the Great.

The ten surviving cities—Dyme, Patrae, Tritaea, and Pherae; joined by Aegium, Bura, and Cerynea—renew their alliance in 280 BCE.

This second, more powerful Achaean league, headed now by a single general instead of two, comprises the cities of Achaea and most of the rest of the Peloponnesus except for Corinth, which remains a Macedonian possession, and Sparta, which remains independent.

Annual voting for leadership is by cities, with representation proportionate to population.

Patras (Greek: Patrai), an important commercial center located on the northern shore of the Peloponnesus, about one hundred miles (one hundred and eighty kilometers) west of Athens, is the primary city among the league’s Peloponnesian participants.

The Achaean League, with Aratus of Sicyon as the leading spirit, gains strength by the inclusion of his city, and later other non-Achaean cities, on equal terms.

The league's activity initially centers on the expulsion of the Macedonians and the restoration of Greek rule in the Peloponnese.

The general is the annually elected head of the league's army, and a particular general cannot be immediately reelected.

The general, a post normally held by Aratus each alternate year after 245, heads the league's administrative board, whose ten members in turn preside over the various city-states' representative councils and assemblies.

These bodies of citizenry can vote on matters submitted to them by the general.

The minimum voting age in the assemblies is thirty years of age.

Under the Achaean League's federal constitution, its city-state members have almost complete autonomy within the framework of the league's central administration; only matters of foreign policy, war, and federal taxes are referred to the general and the board for decision making.

The Achaean League, on commencing hostilities with Sparta in 228, allies itself with Rome.

…and Aratus, twice defeated by the Spartans and seeing his life's work imperiled by Cleomenes' revolution, is forced to call upon his old enemy, King Antigonus Doson of Macedon, for assistance.

Aratus, on the accession of Philip V in 221 BCE, counters Aetolian aggression by obtaining the assistance of the Hellenic League.

Aratus now begins to lead the Achaean League in resisting Philip's anti-Roman policy and his interference in Messene.

The young Roman general Titus Quinctius Flaminius, a military tribune during the Second Punic War, has had a distinguished military career.

Elected quaestor in 205, he exercised the authority (imperium) of a praetor at Tarentum in southern Italy, and he twice (202, 200) has been involved in the distribution of lands to victorious troops.

These veterans help elect him consul for 198.

A philhellene, he goes to Greece with a fresh army to continue the Second Macedonian War.

After an initial victory over Philip, Flaminius devotes himself to winning over the Greek cities and leagues by diplomacy andin the case of the Achaean League, by force.

…the Achaean League.

The Roman Senate reasserts its own terms in 184 BCE for settlement of the dispute between Sparta and the Achaean League but is circumvented by Philopoemen, who reaches a separate agreement with the Spartans.

One thousand leading Achaean men suspected of Macedonian sympathies are taken as hostages to Rome. (Among them is Polybius, who will befriend the noble Scipionic family and will with the aid of privileged access to the views of the senatorial leadership write his great history of the rise of Rome.)