What characterizes Greek history from the middle of the century. IV is the participation in it in an ever greater measure of Greek populations that remained further back in civilization, as they made the civil advances of other races their own. First of all, the Macedonians. However, when, after the various dynastic crises and the death of Pyrrhus, under the leadership of Antigono Gonata who again gave unity to Macedonia, they resumed their effort for dominance in Greece, they found themselves fighting with much more serious difficulties than those encountered. by Philip II. In fact, two other Greek lineages, of little importance in Philip’s time, then participated in the affairs of the nation and indeed sought to have a decisive part in it: the Epiroti and the Aetolians. The Epiroti were similar to the Macedonians in military spirit and also for having preserved, almost alone among the Greeks, their monarchical orders with the Eacid dynasty. But the country was much more disunited than Macedonia, and the monarchical systems had been preserved only or almost in one of the tribes constituting the core of the Epirotic people: the Molossians. In the other parts of Epirus proper, Chaonia and Thesprotia, and more in the surrounding regions which at various times were incorporated into it, the republican spirit had already taken root; so in Ambracia, the Corinthian colony that Pyrrhus made his capital. Therefore Epirus, in spite of the copious elements of strength and wealth, suffered, to a much greater extent than Macedonia, the effectiveness of the disintegrating tendencies, and true power outside its own borders did not have if not when these tendencies were kept in check by the ‘ energy and the valor of a brilliant king like Pyrrhus. Immediately after the death of Pyrrhus it declined to second-rate power, but it was still for a long time, under King Alexander, son and successor of Pyrrhus, compared to Macedonia, a vigorous and inconvenient neighbor, such as it had not been at the time of Filippo and d’Alessandro. The Aetolians were more dangerous than the Fpiro. This lineage, still semi-barbaric at the end of the century. V, species had become civilized starting from the middle of the century. IV. The core of his strength was the league between the three tribes of the Ophionei, Apodoti and Euritani. They did not have an important outlet on the sea until under Philip II with the occupation of Naupatto. Aetolia, except for the southernmost part around Calidon and Pleurone, was inhabited by villages (κατὰ κὼμας), therefore city centers did not hinder you, as in Boeotia or Thessaly, the formation of a regional league (κοινόν) which, while respecting local autonomies, was however a solid and compact state. A league of this kind, in which the disintegrating tendencies did not exist or only to a very limited extent, was something new in Greece. Given, we do not know when precisely, such a constitution, the Aetolians had used and exceeded the experiences made by the Greek poleis and leagues during the classical age. Their order of the century. III the Aetolians must have already substantially possessed it at the time of the Lamia war, when they participated in the Hellenic league and proved to be the most strenuous and irreducible adversaries of Macedonia. Then, meddling with various luck in the struggles between the Diadochi, and especially by victoriously resisting Demetrio Poliorcete, they widened their borders and their influence. According to Sourcemakeup, they already constituted the most powerful state in all of central and southern Greece at the time of the Gallic invasion, to which they opposed the most valid resistance. This resistance not only allowed them to acquire new land, but confirmed to them, in place of Macedonia, the dominance in the Delphic amphictyonic, which they held for almost a century. Meanwhile, shortly before or shortly after 279, the Aetolians were incorporating in their territory a good part of the minor populations of central Greece, especially those residents around Mount Eta, including the south of the Thessalian region. So that Macedonia, when it reorganized under Antigono Gonata, found them masters of Thermopylae and was obliged to do its accounts with them. Another danger against which Macedonia had to fight in this age was the renewed pressure on its borders by barbarian, Thracian and Illyrian populations, pressed themselves by that barbarian lineage which had recently established itself in the Balkan peninsula and had founded the empire of Tylis: the Celts. Furthermore, the monarchical spirit was still alive among the Macedonians; but, with the fall of the dynasty of the Argeadi and that of Antipater, the new dynasty of the Antigonids had yet to take hold in the region. Although welcomed with great favor by the Macedonians, who had hoped for their rebirth from him, Demetrio Poliorcete had not been able to earn his spirits. He had brought his customs and ambitions as an adventurer and Hellenistic prince to Macedonia, instead of taking that paternalistic monarch tone, which only suited the character and traditions of the Macedonians. Hence the lack of solidity of his dominion, which caused Macedonia to be overwhelmed again in the struggles between the dynasts. But Antigono Gonata, superior for this to his father, than he was inferior in genius, was a prince in the manner of Philip II, only more temperate and more cultured. The cornerstone of his policy was first of all his friendship with the Aetolians. Having now measured the power of this league in the full vigor of its expansive force, he believed it necessary to avoid any clash with it, and let it organize amphionia and newly acquired territories on his own behalf. Apart from this renunciation, he intended in the rest to reaffirm Macedonian primacy in Greece. But Philip and Alexander had made an effort to give that primacy an ideal content. Antigonus’s hegemony had no ideal content; it was like the Spartan after the peace of Antalcida: hegemony for hegemony. And then he exercised himself in the most hateful way for Greek sentiment, establishing tyrants in the various cities to ensure their devotion to Macedonia. The example had been given by Cassandro, but no one implemented it with such consistency and to such a large extent as Antigono Gonata. And the effect was not only to keep the republican and anti-Macedonia spirit always alive in the souls of the Greeks, but to prepare them for when and when, if the tyranny was or seemed to be becoming more oppressive, abrupt and effective awakenings. Finally, another cornerstone of Antigono Gonata’s policy was to take care of the naval power of Macedonia. He had inherited a notable war army from Demetrio Poliorcete, and he had used this to fight Ptolemy Cerauno and Antiochus. Even now, having renounced the dominance in Asia, and established that policy of friendship with the Seleucids, which was then traditional in the royal house of Macedonia, he used the army to contend with various fortunes for the dominion of the Aegean to the Ptolemies. These, on the other hand, tried to assert it to themselves, in order to influence the affairs of Greece and Anatolia by ensuring the outlets it needed for Egyptian trade. The naval policy of Antigonus, however, sharpened the contrast with the Ptolemies and made them the natural protectors of the republican tendencies of Greece, even if they, following the wise directives of Ptolemy of Lake, avoided engaging too deeply in the peninsula. The largest uprising of the Greek republicans against Antigonus was what is known by the war name of Cremonides, by the Athenian politician who had a directing part in it. With Athens, which had enjoyed twenty years of freedom starting from 287, now joined Sparta, which after having participated vigorously under King Areo I in the war against Pyrrhus and contributed to the disaster of Argos, in which the epirotic power collapsed, had regained in the Peloponnese an authority no longer reached since the time of Epaminondas. It had found allies wherever a Peloponnesian city had succeeded in overthrowing the tyranny established there by Antigonus. Now the maritime power, which had once led Athens as the most valid contribution to the Hellenic leagues for freedom, was replaced by the support it gave to those connected with the Egyptian army Ptolemy II Philadelphus, the successor of Ptolemy of Lago. But Piraeus was in the hands of the Macedonians since the time of Demetrius Poliorcete. And the Macedonians occupied Corinth with its fortress and firmly held the line of the isthmus. Neither the Egyptians were able to rescue Athens from the sea side, nor the Spartans cross the Macedonian lines on the isthmus. And in this attempt Areo was defeated and died fighting near Corinth (264). So that even this struggle for freedom ended for the Athenians like the previous ones, in a more serious way, since after the capitulation (263), which placed them entirely in the power of Antigonus, their forces and souls remained prostrate, as if not it had happened up until then; and Athens ceased from this moment, it can be said, to be the Athens of Demosthenes, the ideal center of the Greeks who loved freedom. Not long after a decisive victory by Antigonus near Kos over the Egyptian fleet, he seemed to definitively consolidate the Macedonian dominance. Especially since even the Spartan power had been weakened by another blow, the rout and death of Acrotatus, successor of Areo, near Megalopoli, in a battle against the Arcadians, allies of Macedonia.
