I2O Land-monopoly and reaction 



322 BC a constitution was imposed by Antipater, deliberately framed 

 for the purpose of placing power in the hands of the richer classes. 

 He left 9000 citizens in possession of the full franchise, excluding 

 12000 poor. For the latter he offered to provide allotments of land in 

 Thrace. Accounts 1 vary, but it seems that some accepted the offer 

 and emigrated. It was not a compulsory deportation, but it was exile. 

 Economically it may have been a relief to Athens by reducing the 

 number of citizens who shared civic perquisites. But it had no ten- 

 dency to bring more citizens back on to Attic land: such a move 

 would have implied displacement of present landholders, whom it was 

 Antipater's policy to conciliate. In the course of the third century 

 we get a glimpse of the agrarian situation at Sparta. It is clear that 

 the movement, already noted by Aristotle, towards land-monopoly 2 

 in the hands of a few rich, had been steadily going on. It ended by 

 provoking a communistic reaction under the reforming kings Agis IV 

 and Cleomenes III. Blood was shed, and Sparta became a disorderly 

 state, the cause of many troubles in Greece down to the time of the 

 Roman conquest. The growing Achaean League, in the side of which 

 revolutionary Sparta was a thorn, was essentially a conservative 

 federation. However democratic its individual members might be, 

 the constitution of the League worked 3 very effectively in the interest 

 of the rich. On the occasion of the capture of Megalopolis by Cleo- 

 menes Polybius is at pains to warn his readers 4 against believing 

 stories of the immense booty taken there. Though the Peloponnese 

 had enjoyed a period of prosperity, still these stories are gross ex- 

 aggerations. Megalopolis, an important member of the League, had 

 been from the first laid out on too ambitious 5 a scale. That the 'Great 

 City' was a great desert, had found proverbial expression in a verse. 

 A little later, when Philip was campaigning in Peloponnesus, we hear 

 of the great prosperity 6 of Elis, especially in agriculture. The Eleans 

 had enjoyed a great advantage in the protection afforded them by 

 religion as guardians of Olympia. We may add that they were allied 

 with the Aetolian League, whose hostility other Greek states were 

 not forward to provoke. A class of wealthy resident landlords existed 

 in Elis, and much of the country was good farming land under tillage. 



1 The best treatment of this matter known to me is in Bernays' Phokion pp 78-85. See 

 Diodorus xvm 18, Plutarch Phoc 28. 



2 According to Plut Cleomenes 18, Sparta was very helpless before that king's reforms. 

 The Aetolians in a raid carried off 50000 slaves, and an old Spartan declared that this was a 

 relief. 



3 Freeman's Federal Government chapter v. * n 62. 

 6 See Strabo Vin 8 t p 388, and cf Plut Philopoemen 13. 



6 Polyb IV 73. Theocritus had spoken of iTrw^Xaros "AXis (xxil 156). Keeping horses 

 was a mark of wealth. 



