reached its most flourishing period of development. It included the whole of northern and middle Peloponnesus and many cities in other parts of Greece.
The government of the league affords perhaps the best example in antiquity of the federal system. In foreign affairs the union acted as a whole, but in internal affairs each city was a unit, and had equal rights with every other city. Also, each state still preserved its entire independence. There was a public council which met regularly twice every year, in spring and in autumn, and was attended, not by deputies, but in person by all male citizens of thirty years of age or over. The meeting-place of the council was at first a grove near Ægium, but later Philopœmen instituted a change, whereby meetings were designed to be held in rotation at the various cities belonging to the league. In this council the affairs of the league were brought up to be discussed and passed upon, and a record was kept of the proceedings. The chief officer of the league was the strategos, who had as subordinates a hipparchos and a nanarchos. There was also a secretary. The strategos was commander-in-chief of the army and general executive officer. He was assisted in the duty of calling together the assembly and presiding thereat by a board of ten demiurgi. For some years the league maintained its independence against all enemies. Something of the old power of Greece seemed to return, and there was a promise of permanent union; but it soon appeared that the league was bent on its own destruction. Instead of presenting a firm front against the common foes of Greece, its members were divided by continual discords. The Ætolian League was a formidable rival, and the Spartans, led by King Cleomenes III., pressed the confederacy so hard that Aratus was finally compelled to seek the alliance of the Macedonian king, Antigonus Doson.
This act was nothing less than the beginning of the dependency of the Achæan League on the Macedonian power. Another dangerous enemy was Rome. Led by the wise and energetic policy of Philopœmen, of Megalopolis, the Achæans held out against enemies at home and abroad for a number of years, but in 198 B.C. they were induced to ally themselves with the Romans. In 192 B.C. Philopœmen appeared at Sparta and compelled that city to join the league, and by the following year the whole of Peloponnesus had come over to the union. This power, however, lasted but a short time. The hostilities of Sparta, the intrigues of the Romans, and internal dissensions combined to bring about the fall of the confederacy. In 167 B.C. a wholesale deportation of leading Achæans to Rome as hostages took place. In 146 B.C. the Achæans were defeated at Corinth by the Roman general Mummius. This defeat not only dissolved the league, but destroyed the political independence of Greece. Southern and central Greece, under the name of Achæa, became a Roman province. Polybius, who was one of the Achæans taken to Rome as hostages in 167 B.C., has given an extended account of the league in his history of the period between 220 B.C. and 146 B.C. Consult: Schorn, Geschichte Griechenlands von der Entstehung aetolischen und achäischen Bundes (Bonn, 1833); Drumann, Ideen zur Geschichte des Verfalls der griechischen Staaten (Berlin, 1811); Hertzberg, Geschichte Griechenlands unter den Römern (Halle, 1875); and Freeman, History of Federal Government (second edition, London, 1893).
(3.) Under the Romans, the province containing all Greece except Thessaly and Macedonia.
ACHÆEANS, n-ke'(/nz (Gk. Ἀχαιοί, Achaioi). One of the races of ancient Greece. In Homer the name sometimes includes all the Greeks. The Achæans inhabited the southeastern part of Thessaly and much of the Peloponnesus. By the Dorian invasion they were crowded into the northwestern corner of the Peloponnesus, where they later formed the Achæan League. (See Achæa.) In mythology, their ancestor was Achæus, son of Xuthus and grandson of Hellen (q.v.).
ACHÆMENES, A-kem'enez (Gk. 'Axaiptf >/<:.
Achaimenēs). ACH'ÆMEN'IDÆ. The names
of the progenitor and of the dynasty of ancient
Persian kings, Cyrus, Cambyses, Darius, Xerxes,
Artaxerxes, and their successors. The rule of the
Achæmenidæ over Iran lasted 558-330 B.C. In
the old Persian inscriptions Darius proudly
traces his lineage back to Haxāmanisiya (in
(Greek. ' Axaifiifric), as the founder of the royal
line, and states that from him the family re-
ceived the name Achæmenians.
ACHAIA. See Achæa
ACHAMOTH, ak'a-moth. In the theological system of Valentinus (q.v.) the Gnostic, a personification of a form of wisdom inferior to the pure sophia. She is the mother of the world-maker, Demiurgus. See Demiurge.
ACHAQUA,:Vch;i'kwa.
An Indian tribe of Arawakan stock, which formerly inhabited the forests of the upper Orinoco region in northeastern Colombia. They were prominently mentioned in the last century, but were entirely uncivilized, practicing tattooing, polyandry, and the destruction of female infants. About 500 were still known to exist on the Rio Muco about the year 1850.
ACHARD, •io'iiit.
Franz Karl (1753-1821). A German physicist and chemist, born in Berlin. He is remembered chiefly as the founder of the beet-sugar industry. He devoted several years to investigating the best methods of raising sugar-beets and of producing sugar on an industrial scale. Finally, at the instance of the King of Prussia, experiments were successfully carried out in Berlin about 1800, and as a result Achard was enabled to establish in 1801 the first sugar manufactory. He wrote Die europäische Zuckerfabrikation aus Runkelrüben in Verbindung mit der Bereitnung des Branntweins (1812). Achard was for a time director of the class of physics in the Berlin Academy of Sciences, and published four volumes of Vorlesungen über Experimentalphysik. (1790-92).
ACHARD, A'shiir',
Louis Amédée Eugène (1814-75). A French novelist. He was born in Marseilles, and was at first a merchant. He entered newspaper work in his native place; continued it in Paris, and went as a reporter to Spain with the Duc de Montpensier in 1846, and followed the French armies in 1870. But he is chiefly known as a novelist, his romances being numerous. Among them are La belle rose (1847); Les misères d'un millionaire (1861); and Histoire d'un homme (1863). He also wrote several plays, among them Histoire de mes amis (1874).
