they too were totally powerless, and hardly anything save the halo
of Attic poetry and art distinguished these unworthy successors of
a glorious past from a number of petty towns of the same stamp.

The Aetolians

The power of the Aetolian confederacy manifested a greater vigour.
The energy of the northern Greek character was still unbroken there,
although it had degenerated into a reckless impatience of discipline
and control. It was a public law in Aetolia, that an Aetolian might
serve as a mercenary against any state, even against a state in
alliance with his own country; and, when the other Greeks urgently
besought them to redress this scandal, the Aetolian diet declared that
Aetolia might sooner be removed from its place than this principle
from their national code. The Aetolians might have been of great
service to the Greek nation, had they not inflicted still greater
injury on it by this system of organized robbery, by their thorough
hostility to the Achaean confederacy, and by their unhappy antagonism
to the great state of Macedonia.

The Achaeans

In the Peloponnesus, the Achaean league had united the best elements
of Greece proper in a confederacy based on civilization, national
spirit, and peaceful preparation for self-defence. But the vigour
and more especially the military efficiency of the league had,
notwithstanding its outward enlargement, been arrested by the selfish
diplomacy of Aratus. The unfortunate variances with Sparta, and the
still more lamentable invocation of Macedonian interference in the
Peloponnesus, had so completely subjected the Achaean league to
Macedonian supremacy, that the chief fortresses of the country
thenceforward received Macedonian garrisons, and the oath of
fidelity to Philip was annually taken there.

Sparta, Elis, Messene

The policy of the weaker states in the Peloponnesus, Messene, and
Sparta, was determined by their ancient enmity to the Achaean league
--an enmity specially fostered by disputes regarding their frontiers
--and their tendencies were Aetolian and anti-Macedonian, because
the Achaeans took part with Philip. The only one of these states
possessing any importance was the Spartan military monarchy, which
after the death of Machanidas had passed into the hands of one Nabis.
With ever-increasing hardihood Nabis leaned on the support of
vagabonds and itinerant mercenaries, to whom he assigned not only the
houses and lands, but also the wives and child