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POLITICAL SCIENCE.
by right be present, to speak and vote.    There was no census
limiting the right of partaking in the assemblies, and in its
first form, when the league embraced Achaia only, there was
no fear of a democratic element; for the distance to the place
of meeting, from the more remote parts, or from the moun-
tainous region, must have kept many of the lower class of
citizens away.    Dyme, for instance, the most western town,
must have been more than fifty miles by the road from the
sacred grove of Zeus Hamagyrius, near JEgium, where the
stated meetings were held twice a year, just after the vernal
equinox, and in autumn.    Besides these meetings, extraor-
dinary ones also were called, at first to the same place, but
afterwards, when the confederation spread over other parts of
the Peloponnesus, to other places outside of Achaia proper,
as to Sicyon and Argos.    A meeting held at Corinth, in May,
B. C. 146, shows how unfit was a primary assembly in a pop-
ulous town to take part in the affairs of a large community.
The Roman ambassadors were received here with derision
and tumult, " for there was gathered a crowd of operatives
and artificers, such as never had been present before/' (Polyb,,
xxxviii'., 4.)   In fact, the measures taken at this assembly led
to a war with Rome, to the destruction of Corinth, and the
final dissolution of the league soon afterwards,    The Romans
then altered the constitutions of the cities from the democratic
to the aristocratic (or timocratic) form, and forbade the citi-
zens of one town to own lands within the limits of another.
It was a project of Philopoemen (about 189 B. C,) to give up
the plan of meeting constantly at the same place, and to re-
quire all the cities of the league to take their turns in receiving
it.    The assembly was held at Argos, and as an ordinary
meeting was again held at Megalopolis afterwards, it is likely
that this change was effected. *   It is probable that the gath-
ering at a small city like ^Egium, out of the way for many of
*Sch6mann, ii., 109, doubts this, but Mr. Freeman proves it from
.Folyb., xxiv., 12, "for as if on purpose it happened that the Achse-
ans were then again collecting together at Megalopolis ck rip Stvrfyw