When, however, in due time, they found statesmen capable of enforcing them, their power at once became manifest, and the League achieved the splendid result of uniting all the Peloponnesian states.
Aratus of Sicyon should be regarded as the initiator and conceiver of the project; it was Philopoemen of <a class="linkToPlace" target="_blank" href="/place?placename=Megalopolis&groupId=745&placeId=1360">Megalopolis</a> who promoted and finally realized it, while Lycortas<note place="end" resp="tr" id="note8"><emph rend="bold">Lycortas:</emph>The father of Polybius.</note>and his party were those who assured the permanency, for a time at least, of this union.
I will attempt to indicate how and at what date each of the three contributed to the result, without transgressing the limits I have set to this part of my work.
Aratus' government, however, will be dealt with here and in future quite summarily, as he published a truthful and clearly written memoir of his own career;
but the achievements of the two others will be narrated in greater detail and at more length. I think it will be easiest for myself to set forth the narrative and for my readers to follow it if I begin from the period when, after the dissolution of the Achaean League by the kings of <a class="linkToPlace" target="_blank" href="/place?placename=Macedonia&groupId=723&placeId=428">Macedonia</a>, the cities began again to approach each other with a view to its renewal.
Henceforward the League continued to grow until it reached in my own time the state of completion I have just been describing.
Walbank Commentary