Aratus turned to the Macedonian king to save the league from Sparta and perhaps also to ward off popular revolution in the Peloponnese (227-224), the league succeeded in preserving civic independence from royal power.
Coins Of The Achaean League (after 280 B.C.). The idea of confederacy is emphasized by the silver coinage, which employs a common obverse type, the laureate head of Zeus, but varies the details of the reverse according to the
city of issue. Within a wreath, tied either above or below, is set the Achaean League monogram (based on the Greek letters A and CH) and different letters and symbols, a flying dove for Sicyon and a winged horse for Corinth.
Secondly, civic cults of kings. It is a striking feature of the Hellenistic (and Roman) cities that they established cults of their rulers. Some see these cults simply as political honours, which are a mark of the decline of the
traditional civic cults. I suggest on the contrary that cults of the gods were not in decline in the Hellenistic period (the special diplomatic status which Magnesia on the Maeander sought was because of her cult of Artemis), and
that the royal cults were an attempt to relate king and city by incorporating the king within the main symbolic system of the city.
The cult of Antiochus III at Teos offers a good illustration. Teos had been captured by Antiochus from the Attalids and gained certain privileges (c.204), as we have seen (above, p. 331). In return the city established a cult which
related Antiochus and his wife to Dionysus, the chief god of the city. Cult statues of the king and queen were dedicated beside the cult statue of Dionysus in his temple. There was also a cult statue of the king in the council house,
and each year an offering of the first fruits was placed before this cult statue, which was also crowned with the produce of the seasons. The king, like Dionysus, is associated with the fertility of the crops; in particular, the Teans
explained, his benefactions to the city had made agriculture more profitable. The cult of Antiochus allowed the citizens to represent the power of the king to themselves in a comprehensible and acceptable form. But Antiochus
was shortly afterwards defeated by Rome. Perhaps only a decade or two after the cult of Antiochus was established, the neighbouring island of Chios established a cult of Roma, the personification of the power of Rome. There
was a festival with a procession, a sacrifice, competitions, and a dedication probably showing the wolf suckling Romulus and Remus. With that the Greek cities entered a new period of their history.
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