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PREFACE

This book trades in a currency that is not widely accepted beyond the relatively small scholarly circle of classicists, ancient historians, and Greek epigraphers. Yet in the course of writing it I have learned a great deal from work done in fields well beyond theirs, including geography, economics, political science, anthropology, and sociology. I have therefore attempted to write in such a way as to keep my account accessible to the interested nonspecialist, in the hope that the intellectual exchange may be reciprocal. At the same time, the full scholarly apparatus of ancient historical research, especially that based in ancient documents, has been retained in the notes and above all in the appended epigraphic dossier, which collects, translates, and comments upon sixty-one Greek inscriptions of particular relevance to the argument that is sustained over the course of this book. I hope that, in offering this book for exchange with specialists and nonspecialists alike, I have not unwittingly debased my currency with both.

It is with a view to accessibility beyond classical circles that all Greek is transliterated (except in the epigraphic dossier), according to what I readily admit is a somewhat arbitrary system. I have preferred the Greek to the Latin system of transliteration, except where the result is an offense to normal English usage. So, for example, Achaia, Aitolia, Boiotia, Orchomenos, and Polybios are as close as possible to the Greek spelling, but Athens, Attica, Carthage, Cassander, Corinth, Crete, Macedonia, Thebes, and Thucydides are preferred over Athenai, Attike, Karchedon, Kassandros, Korinthos, Krete, Makedonia, Thebai, and Thoukydides, against which my spirit simply rebels.

The abbreviations of ancient authors and texts are in general those given in The Oxford Classical Dictionary, third edition (OCD³), occasionally with familiar variations; and references to secondary scholarship generally take the form of author-date citations, but abbreviated references have often been more convenient. For full details, see the headnote to the list of abbreviations used in this book.

This book has been more than a decade in the making, during the course of which time I have incurred significant debts. It is a great pleasure now to acknowledge them. Josiah Ober, who supervised the 2003 Princeton PhD dissertation to which this book is distantly related, has been an invaluable interlocutor, reader, critic, and friend. Nicholas Purcell, my first teacher of ancient history in Oxford, was also a member of the Princeton dissertation committee, and though he has not read a draft of this book and will, I am sure, not agree with everything I say here, the lessons I have learned from him, in tutorials, conversations, and print, have left their imprint on every page. Simon Hornblower, my tutor in Greek history in Oxford, first awakened my interest in the subject of Greek federal states by posing a question that I found impossible to answer in a tutorial essay.

The University of California, Berkeley, has been my academic home during the entire period of writing this book. Here I have been blessed with wonderful colleagues who have been cheerful discussants, critical readers, and friends: Susanna Elm, Erich Gruen, Leslie Kurke, Maureen Miller, Carlos Noreña, Michael Nylan, Nikolaos Papazarkadas, Andrew Stewart, and Ronald Stroud. Mary Elizabeth Berry has offered support and guidance of a different and invaluable kind. Three Berkeley graduate students—Eric Driscoll, John Lanier, and Michael Laughy—offered research assistance and saved me countless hours and the commission of innumerable mistakes. I have learned much from the comments and questions of Ryan Boehm, Lisa Eberle, Noah Kaye, and Joel Rygorsky, Berkeley graduate students with whom I have had the privilege to work closely. Their challenges and observations have significantly improved some of the ideas and arguments I have presented.

Many friends and colleagues beyond Berkeley have read and commented on one or more chapters of the book: Lisa Kallet, Barbara Kowalzig, Jack Kroll, Josh Ober, Gary Reger, Peter van Alfen, and Barry Weingast. Athanasios Rizakis has been a stimulating interlocutor on all things Achaian and has generously shared his unpublished work with me. The curatorial staff at the American Numismatic Society, above all Peter van Alfen and Ute Wartenberg Kagan, have welcomed me on repeated visits and generously made their holdings available to me for study. I am grateful to them also for permission to reproduce on the cover a photograph of an Achaian coin in their collection.

Some of the ideas and arguments of this book were presented in papers delivered at the American School of Classical Studies in Athens, Princeton University, the University of California, Berkeley, Stanford University, the University of Toronto, the University of Oxford, and the Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster, as well as at two annual meetings of the Association of Ancient Historians. I am grateful to the hosts who invited me and the audiences who, on all these occasions, offered comments and criticism. I express my profound and humble thanks to all, and absolve everyone but myself of responsibility for the errors and missteps that inevitably remain.

Thanks for financial support in the form of research leaves are due to the Department of History, the Townsend Center for the Humanities, and the Committee on Research, all of the University of California, Berkeley. A grant from the Loeb Classical Library Foundation contributed to an uninterrupted one-year sabbatical during which major portions of the book were written. Research travel was funded by a summer stipend from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Aleshire Center for the Study of Greek Epigraphy at Berkeley. An early stage of my work in Greece was generously supported by the Fulbright Foundation and a Whiting Honorific Fellowship in the Humanities from Princeton University.

Erich Gruen first encouraged me to submit my book for consideration as part of the series Hellenistic Culture and Society published by the University of California Press. I owe him thanks not only because it is a privilege to see it become a part of this estimable series but also because everyone involved with the process at the Press has been so tremendously helpful. Alain Bresson and Jeremy McInerney took on the task of reviewing a massive manuscript for the University of California Press, and for their thoughtful and detailed comments and criticisms I am deeply grateful. Their suggestions have made this a much better book. My editor at U.C. Press, Eric Schmidt, has been unfailingly helpful and patient with an overly ambitious first-time author. His good advice and tireless advocacy at every stage are deeply appreciated. The work of Paul Psoinos, a meticulous and indefatigable copyeditor, has saved me from innumerable blunders. Cindy Fulton ushered the book through production carefully and thoughtfully. I am most grateful to Roberta Engleman for preparing the index and to Eric Driscoll for assistance with the proofreading. Subventions to meet the high cost of publishing a book of this size and complexity were generously granted by the Abigail Reynolds Hodgen Publication Fund and the Committee on Research, both of the University of California, Berkeley, and by the Loeb Classical Library Foundation.

My family never stopped offering encouragement, although they may have begun to believe that the project would never reach its completion, and whether they realized it or not, the regular queries about progress helped to keep me on track. My daughter, Lydia, has been an incomparably enlivening and enlightening companion since the day of her arrival. My husband, Max Christoff, has lived with this project virtually since its inception, listening patiently as I tried to work out innumerable problems and bearing the inevitable ups and downs with alacrity and good humor. It is in gratitude for all this and much more that I dedicate the book to him.