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Greek coin of Aitolian League in Aitolia
Bronze 15mm (3.30 grams) Struck circa 323-290 B.C.
Reference: HGC 4, 963 (Rare R2); SNG Copenhagen 25; BMC 36
Head of Atalanta right, wearing petasos right.
AITΩ/ΛΩN, spear-head.
The warlike people of this district produced no coinage until the 3rd Century B.C., when the Gallic invasion of Greece occasioned the inauguration of a Federal currency.
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The Calydonian Boar is one of the monsters of Greek mythology that had to be overcome by heroes of the Olympian age. Sent by Artemis to ravage the region of Calydon in Aetolia because its king failed to honor her in his rites to the gods, it was killed in the Calydonian Hunt, in which many male heroes took part, but also a powerful woman, Atalanta, who won its hide by first wounding it with an arrow. This outraged some of the men, with tragic results. Strabo was under the impression that the Calydonian Boar was an offspring of the Crommyonian Sow vanquished by Theseus.
The Calydonian Hunt shown on a Roman frieze (Ashmolean Museum, Oxford)
Importance in Greek mythology and art
The Calydonian Boar is one of the chthonic monsters in Greek mythology, each set in a specific locale. Sent by Artemis to ravage the region of Calydon in Aetolia, it met its end in the Calydonian Hunt, in which all the heroes of the new age pressed to take part, with the exception of Heracles, who vanquished his own Goddess-sent Erymanthian Boar separately. Since the mythic event drew together numerous heroes-among whom were many who were venerated as progenitors of their local ruling houses among tribal groups of Hellenes into Classical times-the Calydonian Boar hunt offered a natural subject in classical art, for it was redolent with the web of myth that gathered around its protagonists on other occasions, around their half-divine descent and their offspring. Like the quest for the Golden Fleece (Argonautica) or the Trojan War that took place the following generation, the Calydonian Hunt is one of the nodes in which much Greek myth comes together.
Tondo of a Laconian black-figure cup by the Naucratis Painter, ca. 555 BCE (Louvre)
Both Homer and Hesiod and their listeners were aware of the details of this myth, but no surviving complete account exists: some papyrus fragments found at Oxyrhynchus are all that survive of Stesichorus’ telling; the myth repertory called Bibliotheke (“The Library”) contains the gist of the tale, and before that was compiled the Roman poet Ovid told the story in some colorful detail in his Metamorphoses.
Hunt
King Oeneus (“wine man”) of Calydon, an ancient city of west-central Greece north of the Gulf of Patras, held annual harvest sacrifices to the gods on the sacred hill. One year the king forgot to include Great “Artemis of the Golden Throne” in his offerings Insulted, Artemis, the “Lady of the Bow”, loosed the biggest, most ferocious boar imaginable on the countryside of Calydon. It rampaged throughout the countryside, destroying vineyards and crops, forcing people to take refuge inside the city walls (Ovid), where they began to starve.
Oeneus sent messengers out to look for the best hunters in Greece, offering them the boar’s pelt and tusks as a prize.
Roman marble sarcophagus from Vicovaro, carved with the Calydonian Hunt (Palazzo dei Conservatori, Rome)
Meleager et Atalanta, after Giulio Romano.
Among those who responded were some of the Argonauts, Oeneus’ own son Meleager, and, remarkably for the Hunt’s eventual success, one woman- the huntress Atalanta, the “indomitable”, who had been suckled by Artemis as a she-bear and raised as a huntress, a proxy for Artemis herself (Kerenyi; Ruck and Staples). Artemis appears to have been divided in her motives, for it was also said that she had sent the young huntress because she knew her presence would be a source of division, and so it was: many of the men, led by Kepheus and Ankaios, refused to hunt alongside a woman. It was the smitten Meleager who convinced them. Nonetheless it was Atalanta who first succeeded in wounding the boar with an arrow, although Meleager finished it off, and offered the prize to Atalanta, who had drawn first blood. But the sons of Thestios, who considered it disgraceful that a woman should get the trophy where men were involved, took the skin from her, saying that it was properly theirs by right of birth, if Meleagros chose not to accept it. Outraged by this, Meleagros slew the sons of Thestios and again gave the skin to Atalanta (Bibliotheke). Meleager’s mother, sister of Meleager’s slain uncles, took the fatal brand from the chest where she had kept it (see Meleager) and threw it once more on the fire; as it was consumed, Meleager died on the spot, as the Fates had foretold. Thus Artemis achieved her revenge against King Oeneus.
Woodcut illustration for Raphael Regius’s edition of Metamorphoses, Venice, ca. 1518
During the hunt, Peleus accidentally killed his host Eurytion. In the course of the hunt and its aftermath, many of the hunters turned upon one another, contesting the spoils, and so the Goddess continued to be revenged (Kerenyi, 114): “But the goddess again made a great stir of anger and crying battle, over the head of the boar and the bristling boar’s hide, between Kouretes and the high-hearted Aitolians” (Homer, Iliad, ix.543).
The boar’s hide that was preserved in the Temple of Athena Alae at Tegea in Laconia was reputedly that of the Calydonian Boar, “rotted by age and by now altogether without bristles” by the time Pausanias saw it in the second century CE. He noted that the tusks had been taken to Rome as booty from the defeated allies of Mark Anthony by Augustus; “one of the tusks of the Calydonian boar has been broken”, Pausanias reports, “but the remaining one, having a circumference of about half a fathom, was dedicated in the Emperor’s gardens, in a shrine of Dionysos”. The Calydonian Hunt was the theme of the temple’s main pediment.
Aetolus was, in Greek mythology, a son of Endymion, grandson of Deucalion, and a Naiad nymph, or Iphianassa. According to Pausanias, his mother was called Asterodia, Chromia, or Hyperippe. He was married to Pronoe, by whom he had two sons, Pleuron and Calydon. His brothers were Paeon, Epeius, and others His father compelled him and his two brothers Paeon and Epeius to decide by a contest at Olympia as to which of them was to succeed him in his kingdom of Elis. Epeius gained the victory, and occupied the throne after his father, and on his demise he was succeeded by Aetolus. During the funeral games which were celebrated in honor of Azan, he ran with his chariot over Apis, the son of Jason or Salmoneus, and killed him, whereupon he was expelled by the sons of Apis. The kingdom then passed to Eleius, son of his sister Eurycyda. After leaving Peloponnesus, he went to the country of the Curetes, between the Achelous and the Corinthian gulf, where he slew Dorus, Laodocus, and Polypoetes, the sons of Apollo and Phthia, and gave to the country the name of Aetolia. This story is only a mythical account of the colonization of Aetolia.
The Aetolian League (also transliterated as Aitolian League) was a confederation of tribal communities and cities in ancient Greece centered on Aetolia in central Greece. It was established, probably during the early Hellenistic era, in opposition to Macedon and the Achaean League. Two annual meetings were held in Thermika and Panaetolika. It occupied Delphi from 290 BC and gained territory steadily until, by the end of the 3rd century BC, it controlled the whole of central Greece outside Attica. At its height, the league’s territory included Locris, Malis, Dolopes, part of Thessaly, Phocis, and Acarnania. In the latter part of its power, certain Mediterranean city-states joined the Aitolian League such as Kydonia on Crete.
The Aetolians were not highly regarded by other Greeks, who considered them to be semi-barbaric and reckless. However, their league had a complex political and administrative structure, and their armies were easily a match for the other Greek powers. According to Scholten, the Aetolian League consisted of elites at the top, but was fundamentally a society of farmers and herders. The league had a federal structure consisting of a federal council in which the level of representation was proportional to the size of a community’s contribution to the league’s army, a popular assembly of all citizens which met twice a year, and an inner council equivalent to a federal government. It could raise armies and conduct foreign policy on a common basis. It also implemented economic standardization, levying taxes, using a common currency and adopting a uniform system of weights and measures.
Origins of the League
It is uncertain when the League was founded. It has been suggested that it may have been founded by Epaminondas. Grainger believes it was founded much later – around the time of the rise of Philip II of Macedon. After Philip’s victory of Chaeronea Aetolia was granted Naupaktos which the Aetolians garrisoned – a level of organization that suggests some formal government rather than the loose alliance of earlier times.
Alliance with Rome
The league was the first Greek ally of the Roman Republic, siding with the Romans during the First Macedonian War, and helping to defeat Philip V of Macedon at the Battle of Cynoscephalae in 197 BC, during the Second Macedonian War. However, it grew increasingly hostile to Roman involvement in Greek affairs and only a few years later sided with Antiochus III, the anti-Roman king of the Seleucid Empire, during the Roman-Syrian War. The defeat of Antiochus in 189 BC robbed the league of its principal foreign ally and made it impossible to stand alone in continued opposition to Rome. The league was forced to sign a peace treaty with Rome that made it a subject ally of the republic. Although it continued to exist in name, the power of the league was broken by the treaty and it never again constituted a significant political or military force.
A Pirate State?
The Aetolian League acquired a reputation for piracy and brigandage. Though there is some recognition that Polybius was to an extent following an Achaean bias in his portrayal of the League thus, many modern historians have accepted this portrayal as in the main justified. For example, Walbank is explicit in seeing the Aetolians as systematically using piracy to supplement their income because of the meager resources of their region while Will simply assumes the truth of the charge. Grainger devotes a whole chapter to examining Aetolian involvement in piracy along with the charges that the Aetolians were temple robbers. He finds it hard to credit that Aetolia was involved in piracy given that Aetolia lacked a fleet of even the basic sort. Further by contrast with more general historians, those that have made specific studies of piracy and brigandage barely mention Aetolia. He lists the times that the Aetolians were accused of temple robbery and argues that the weight of these accusations should take into account that these are usually made by political opponents of the League and refer to occasions that were already some way in the past when the accusations were made.
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