Many of the tensions which led to the war were later documented by the Greek historian Polybius.
The First Illyrian War, in 228, left the Aetolian League greater in size than ever before, and worked to continue expanding in all directions. Its attempt to expand into Thessaly, where Macedon had recently collapsed, resulted in a violent reaction from Macedon, the first in almost four decades. That created an unceasing suspicion between the two for years to come.
As the only power standing in the way of complete Macedonian control of Greece, the Aetolians felt threatened by the expansion of the Symmachy. Being almost completely encircled by its members, it began taking defensive measures. In that situation, the inexperienced new king in Pella was seen as a last opportunity by the leading Aetolians. Spurned by his young nephews Scopas and Dorimachus, the strategos Ariston of Trichonion thus tried to prevent the further decay of Aetolia’s international position, and together, the three Trichonians imposed a radical change to Aetolian policy.
Aetolian Raids
In the spring of 220 BC, after Sparta had temporarily joined the Symmachy, the Aetolians were most worried about Messenia, their last ally in the Peloponnese. To prevent the Messenians from changing sides as well, Ariston sent an expeditionary force under Scopas and Dorimachus to the city of Phigaleia, in Triphylia on the Messenian border. On the way, these troops pillaged the countryside of several Achaean cities, namely Patras and Pharae, creating further hostility. From Phigaleia they entered Messenia, where they continued their looting. In reaction, the Messenians decided to abandon their former alliance with Aetolia and called on the Achaeans for help.
The Achaean strategos, Aratus, set his army in march and sent a protest note, ordering the Aetolians to retreat from Messenia. Scopas and Dorimachus at first appeared to obey but then invaded Arcadia, where they defeated the Achaean army in the Battle of Caphyae. Unable to fight the threat alone, Aratus informed the allies of the Hellenic League. Since he had received a formal request by the Messenians, he asked to favour their admission to the Symmachy. Meanwhile, the Aetolians continued their raiding activity by burning the Arcadian city of Cynaetha.
Declaration of war
Philip V of Macedon appeared reluctant at first, but after Aetolia allied with the Illyrians, he marched south to the Peloponnese, where he gathered the members of the Hellenic League in a council at Corinth. There, Aratus and other representatives of the various leagues listed complaints dealing with the Aetolians, most ranging over a period of many years. Thus, a decision was taken in the summer of 220 BC; after consulting their respective assemblies, the allies ratified their declaration of war on the Aetolian League.
Although acting as though he was responding to the complaints of the league members, Philip was very interested in war to establish himself as a victorious leader and to consolidate the power of Macedonia in Greece. That was exactly what the Aetolian policy since 222 had intended to avoid. However, although the war was decided unanimously by the members of the Hellenic League, the only party ready to engage, besides Philip and Achaea, was the Acarnanians. This lack of interest by the other members is attributed by Grainger to Aetolia's more peaceful policies in the previous decade.[2]
As one of the first acts of war, Philip sent a force to Crete to intervene in the Lyttian War and to wrest the island from the Aetolians, which was quickly successful. He also won allegiance of the Illyrians and their fleet and then returned to Macedon for the winter. Meanwhile, however, news of the death of the Lacedaemonian king Cleomenes III in Egypt, triggered a political change in Sparta, which allowed the Aetolian envoy Machatas to win the newly-elected king Lycurgus over for an alliance with Aetolia.
Campaigns of 219 BC
In the summer of 219 BC Sparta attacked Achaea from the south, Elis attacked from the west, and the Aetolians attacked from the north. Following a victory over the Achaean hypostrategos Miccus of Dyme, the Aetolian general Euripidas raided Western Arcadia. By the end of the summer, after a mutiny of their mercenaries, the Achaeans were near collapse. The Achaean cities of Dyme, Pharae and Tritaia even refused to pay the due taxes to the League and used the already collected sum to hire a mercenary force of their own.
In the meantime the Aetolian strategos Scopas marched through Thessaly to raid the sanctuary of Apollo at Dion in Pieria, on the Macedonian border, and his cousin Dorimachus did the same with the oracle of Zeus and Dione at Dodona in Epirus.
Philip V at first lost precious time with a siege on the Gulf of Ambracia, but then he engaged in a quick march down the coast through Western Aetolia. Starting from Epirus he conquered several cities, including Elaeus and Oeniadae, leading him to Calydon, where he received news of a pending invasion of Macedon by the Dardanians.[3] He returned to his homeland, but the invasion never took place. Crossing the Gulf of Ambracia on his way back home, he received the Illyrian leader Demetrius of Pharos who had been driven from his kingdom by the Romans.
Campaigns of 218 BC
At the turn of 219/18 BC Philip secretly took his army to Corinth and from there started a winter campaign in the Peloponnese. After chasing Euripidas from the pass of Apelaurus near Stymphalos, he marched through Arcadia and Elis to Triphylia, winning victory after victory. At first he stormed the city of Psophis and handed it over to his Achaean ally Aratus the Younger. The same procedure was used at Lasion, while the village of Stration was given to the citizens of Thelpusa.
From Olympia in Pisatis the king moved against Elis, where he captured the fortress of Thalamas and the Elean leader Amphidamus. Next he fought the Aetolians in Triphylia, took the city of Phigaleia from the hands of their inhabitants and conquered the entire province in a week. Finally he came to terms with the fortress of Samicum, where a combined force of 2,700 Aetolians, Eleans and Spartans including even some Illyrian pirates was only able to negotiate their release on parole.
In the summer of 218 BC, Philip and his allies took a fleet to the island of Cephalonia, but when the siege of Pale failed, the king decided on an attack against the Aetolian heartland. So he moved his army by ship to the Gulf of Ambracia and from there marched past the city of Stratos and the Trichonis-Lake to Thermon, devastating the temples and statues in the Pan-Aetolian sanctuary.
After a quick retreat westward, through the territory he had conquered the previous summer, the young king embarked again at Amphilochia.
From the Gulf of Ambracia Philip sailed back to Corinth and then quickly marched to Sparta, where he made many successful raids against the unfortified villages south of the city as far as the port of Gythium. When the Spartan king Lycurgus tried to block his path north, Philip and Demetrius of Pharos dislodged the Lacedaemonians from the Menelaion above the city, while Aratus led the main force to cross the Eurotas River.
On his return to Corinth, however, Philip had to deal with soldiers dissatisfied with the low yields of plunder. He then put down a conspiracy led by his tutor Apelles, the chancellor Megaleas and several officers. After a failed attempt at a peace conference, Philip returned home for the winter of 218/17 BC.
Campaign of 217 BC
Following a disastrous year under the strategos Eperatus of Pharae, in 217 BC Aratus of Sicyon returned to the helm in the Achaean League. Due to his experience he managed to reorganize the defenses in order to fence off the Aetolian raids. While Aratus was away in Megalopolis, Euripidas, still the Aetolian general in Elis, tried to repeat his raids of the previous year. He advanced far into Achaean territory, pillaging even near the capital Aigion, but on the way back he was blocked near Leontion by the hypostrategos Lycus of Pharae. In the ensuing Battle of Leontion the Achaeans killed 400 raiders and took 200 prisoners, among them the former Olympic victor Evanoridas of Elis.
After this success Lycus called the Achaean hipparch Demodocus with the cavalry and together they entered the territory of Elis, where they killed 200 more and took 80 prisoners. At the same time Philip V took the city of Thebes in Phthiotic Achaea, rounding out his possessions in Thessaly. However, he was forced to leave in order to deal with dissatisfied Illyrians who wanted more spoils of war.
Peace of Naupactus
About this time, the king received news that the Romans had been defeated by Hannibal at the Battle of Lake Trasimene. Advised by Demetrius of Pharos, who hoped to regain possession of his former kingdom, the Macedonian king decided to end the war with Aetolia in order to focus his attentions on Rome. With a last bluff, Philip lured the exhausted Aetolians into peace talks, granting the principle that every side should maintain what it currently possessed. The conference was held in the city of Naupactus, from which the peace treaty took its name.[4]
Outcome
After the victory over Cleomenes of Sparta, the Social War was already the second success for the Hellenic League created by Antigonus Doson and Aratus of Sicyon.
The poor performance of the Achaean forces and the limited engagement of the minor allies, however, led to a significant shift in the internal balance of powers towards the Macedonian hegemon. Moreover the character of the young king changed for the worse during the conflict and the good relationship between Aratus and Philip was damaged beyond repair.
As a result of Philip's ability the Kingdom of Macedon became the major military power in Greece, but at the same time his growing ambition threatened to damage the cohesion of the Symmachy as intended by his stepfather and his former tutor.
Year 220 BC was a year of the pre-Julian Roman calendar. At the time it was known as the Year of the Consulship of Laevinus/Catulus and Scaevola/Philo. The denomination 220 BC for this year has been used since the early medieval period, when the Anno Domini calendar era became the prevalent method in Europe for naming years.
Philip V was king (Basileus) of Macedonia from 221 to 179 BC. Philip's reign was principally marked by an unsuccessful struggle with the emerging power of the Roman Republic. He would lead Macedon against Rome in the First and Second Macedonian Wars, losing the latter but allying with Rome in the Roman-Seleucid War towards the end of his reign.
Aetolia is a mountainous region of Greece on the north coast of the Gulf of Corinth, forming the eastern part of the modern regional unit of Aetolia-Acarnania.
The First Macedonian War was fought by Rome, allied with the Aetolian League and Attalus I of Pergamon, against Philip V of Macedon, contemporaneously with the Second Punic War against Carthage. There were no decisive engagements, and the war ended in a stalemate.
The Achaean League was a Hellenistic-era confederation of Greek city states on the northern and central Peloponnese. The league was named after the region of Achaea in the northwestern Peloponnese, which formed its original core. The first league was formed in the fifth century BC. The second Achaean League was established in 280 BC. As a rival of Antigonid Macedon and an ally of Rome, the league played a major role in the expansion of the Roman Republic into Greece. This process eventually led to the League's conquest and dissolution by the Romans in 146 BC.
Hellenistic Greece is the historical period of the country following Classical Greece, between the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC and the annexation of the classical Greek Achaean League heartlands by the Roman Republic. This culminated at the Battle of Corinth in 146 BC, a crushing Roman victory in the Peloponnese that led to the destruction of Corinth and ushered in the period of Roman Greece. Hellenistic Greece's definitive end was with the Battle of Actium in 31 BC, when the future emperor Augustus defeated Greek Ptolemaic queen Cleopatra VII and Mark Antony, the next year taking over Alexandria, the last great center of Hellenistic Greece.
Philopoemen was a skilled Greek general and statesman, who was Achaean strategos on eight occasions.
Aratus of Sicyon was a politician and military commander of Hellenistic Greece. He was elected strategos of the Achaean League 17 times, leading the League through numerous military campaigns including the Cleomenean War and the Social War.
The First Battle of Lamia was fought in 209 BC between the forces of Philip V of Macedon and the Aetolians led by Pyrrhias. The Aetolians were aided by a small Roman force and a force from the kingdom of Pergamon. The Macedonians were victorious. Another battle was fought at Lamia within the year.
The Second Battle of Lamia was fought in 209 BC between the forces of Philip V of Macedon and Pyrrhias, a general of the Aetolian League. Pyrrhias was once again aided by Pergamene forces and Roman advisors but again he was defeated. His side suffered heavy casualties.
The Aetolian War was fought between the Romans and their Achaean and Macedonian allies, and the Aetolian League and their allies the kingdom of Athamania. The Aetolians had invited Antiochus III the Great to Greece, who came, but after his defeat by the Romans returned to Asia. This left the Aetolians and the Athamanians without any allies. With Antiochus out of Europe the Romans and their allies attacked the Aetolians. After a year of fighting the Aetolians were defeated and forced to pay 1,000 talents of silver to the Romans.
The Cleomenean War was fought between Sparta and the Achaean League for the control of the Peloponnese. Under the leadership of king Cleomenes III, Sparta initially had the upper hand, which forced the Achaean League to call for help the Macedonian king Antigonos Doson, who decisively defeated Cleomenes in the battle of Sellasia in 222.
Scopas was an Aetolian general, who served both his native Aetolian League in the Social War and Ptolemaic Egypt against the Seleucids, with mixed success. He was executed in 196 BC at Alexandria for conspiring to seize the power of the realm for himself.
Pyrrhias was an Aetolian general, who was sent by his countrymen during the Social War, to take the command in Elis. Here he took advantage of the absence of Philip V of Macedon, and the incapacity of Eperatus the Achaean strategos, to make frequent incursions into the Achaean territories. Having established a fortified post on Mount Panachaikon, he laid waste the whole country as far as Rhion and Aigion. The next year he concerted a plan with Lycurgus, king of Sparta, for the invasion of Messenia. However, he failed in the execution of his part of the scheme, being repulsed by the Cyparissians before he could effect a junction with Lycurgus. In consequence he returned to Elis, but as the Eleans were dissatisfied with his conduct, he was shortly after recalled by the Aetolians and replaced by Euripidas. At a later period he obtained the office of strategos of the Aetolians, in the same year that this office was bestowed as an honorary title upon Attalus I, king of Pergamon. In the spring of that year he advanced with an army to Lamia to oppose the passage of Philip V of Macedon towards the Peloponnese. Though supported with an auxiliary force both by Attalus and by the Roman praetor Publius Sulpicius Galba Maximus, he was defeated by Philip in two successive battles and forced to retire within the walls of Lamia. It is not improbable that Sipyrrhicas, who appears in Livy (XXXI.46) as chief of the Aetolian deputation which met Attalus at Heracleia, is only a false reading for Pyrrhias.
Messenia or Messinia was an ancient district of the southwestern Peloponnese, more or less overlapping the modern Messenia region of Greece. To the north it had a border with Elis along the Neda river. From there the border with Arcadia ran along the tops of Mount Elaeum and Mount Nomia and then through foothills of Taygetus. The eastern border with Laconia went along the Taygetus ridge up to the Koskaraka river, and then along that river to the sea, near the city of Abia.
The Battle of Mount Lycaeum was a battle fought between Sparta led by Cleomenes III and the Achaean League commanded by Aratus. It was the first major battle of the Cleomenean War. The battle occurred at Mount Lycaeum on the border of Elis and Arcadia and ended in a Spartan victory.
The Battle of Leontion in 217 BC was the last battle of the Social War fought between the Achaean League and the Aetolian League. The battle is mentioned by the historian Polybius and by the Achaean poet Damagetus, who calls it the "Battle at the Achaean Trench".
The Lyttian War was an internal conflict fought from around 220 BC to about 216 BC between two coalitions of Cretan city-states, led by Cnossus and Polyrrhenia respectively. The events of the war are recorded by the historian Polybius. It is considered "the greatest war in Cretan history" during Antiquity.
Lycurgus was a king of Sparta, who reigned from 219 BC until his death shortly before 211 BC. Of obscure background and possibly of non-royal descent, Lycurgus led Sparta in the Social War against Macedon with varying success, and underwent multiple exiles during his checkered reign. He also effectively abolished the traditional Spartan diarchy by dethroning his fellow king Agesipolis III and ruling Sparta as its sole monarch.
References
Austin, M.M. The Hellenistic world from Alexander to the Roman conquest (Pages 152-156) ISBN0-521-53561-1
Eckstein, Arthur M. Mediterranean Anarchy, Interstate War, and the Rise of Rome. Berkeley, CA: Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006.
Fine, John V.A. “The Background of the Social War of 220-217 B.C.” The American Journal of Philology 61 (1940): 129-165.
Grainger, John D. The League of the Aitolians. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 1999. 244-296.
Gruen, Erich S. The Hellenistic World and the Coming of Rome. Berkeley, CA: Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984.
Kleu, Michael. Die Seepolitik Philipps V. von Makedonien." Bochum, Verlag Dr. Dieter Winkler, 2015.
Larsen, J.A.O. “Phocis in the Social War of 220-217 B.C.” Phoenix 19 (1965): 116-128.
Scholten, Joseph B. The Politics of Plunder: Aitolians and Their Koinon in the Early Hellenistic Era. University of California Press, Berkeley, Los Angeles, London, 2000.
Walbank, F.W. Philip V of Macedon. Hamden, CT: Archan Books, 1967.
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