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Characteristic of the Bœotian league and of Philip's Hellenic league is the synod. It was in each a strictly representative body. Its members were apportioned to the area constituting the league in such a way that the larger states had several representatives and the smaller states had one representative between them; while in the Hellenic league neighboring states and federated states were treated as a unit and given proportional representation. That this made all but the largest state—Macedon—the largest state's inferiors and subordinated many city-states to the federal districts to which they belonged, is obvious. And in this case loss of local liberty was compensated for very imperfectly by the consideration that what the constituent states surrendered the Hellenic synod, which met at Corinth, gained. The national appeal was far weaker than the ethnic appeal had been in Bœotia. The liberty lost had indeed been a bane and not a blessing. After 338 B.C. the cities could no longer enjoy the excitement of waging private wars and fomenting revolutions. No longer were they free to be enemies of Philip. Henceforth they must contribute the quota of horsemen, hoplites, light-armed troops, and sailors for which their representation in the synod obligated them, or pay a heavy fine for every day their contingents were absent from the national levy. The synod completed its organization by choosing Philip its hegemon by land and sea, and selected as its executive board a Committee of Public Safety which seemingly had its sessions at Pydna. The committee the confederates probably welcomed as a possible champion of their interests. The unwelcome organ of the league, and the one for which there was no parallel in Bœotia, was the hegemon. Subordination to a synod was offensive enough to city-states which regarded complete independence as alone ideal. It was intolerable to them to submit to a synod which its hegemon, Philip of Macedon, controlled,—one which could never have any one but the contemporary king of Macedon as its hegemon. The hegemony of Macedon was sugar-coated, but it was none the less an hegemony, and, as such, illegal and unacceptable.ssss1

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