Political Science Of The State

l88 POLITICAL SCIENCE.
c Of the powers of the senate, of the power to raise soldiers
and money of the laws relating to commercial intercourse,
very little is known. We have already seen that there was a
senate but how it was constituted is uncertain, and it is only
certain that like others in Greece it had the preparatory con-
sultations in its hands for the meetings of the assemblies, and
that decrees, declarations of war, and the like, were submitted
to them or originated among them, before being proposed
to'the assemblies. Thus it is said (Polyb., ii., 46) that the
heads of the Achaean government resolved, after collecting
the Achseans (that is, all the confederates, whether Achaeans
by name, Arcadians, or others), in conjunction with the senate,
to enter into open hostilities with the Lacedaemonians. The
power of raising money must in some way have belonged to
the league, since it kept large armies in the field ; but this
seems to have been done by means of requisitions voted by
the council in its meetings, according to a scheme of distribu-
tion agreed upon among the states. Polybius tells us that
Aratus was unable to keep the mercenaries together because
wages fell short in the war against Cleomenes. The western
states of Achaia, therefore, despairing of help from the league,
agreed together not to pay over the contributions due from
them to the Achaeans, but to hire troops for themselves, and
in this way to defend their territory. They acted well for
themselves, but ill for the confederacy, continues the historian ;
they should have made extraordinary exertions for their own
defence, and paid their contributions over as usual (Polyb.,
iv., 60). Here we seem to learn that the system of enlistment
for pay, which was common elsewhere in the later age of
Greece, as among the Arcadians for instance, furnished them
with their supplies in part, although native soldiers of the
league, especially horsemen, are mentioned,
6. The subject of federal courts still remains, and we cannot
doubt that there were such, if the analogy of
Federal courts. , _ . , » . * f
other Greek leagues and even the practice of un-
confederated Greek states is to be any guide for our opinion,
But little is known of such courts, and whether a necessity