This they could do, up to a certain point, the more easily because each ethnos had lacked a city-state of outstanding political and economic power. Equality of city-states did not conflict flagrantly with realities in either Achæa or Ætolia. Hence the principle that each city-state, irrespective of strength in the Aristotelian sense, should have a single vote in the federal assembly, and an equal voice in the choosing of the federal cabinet (_demiurgi_; _apocleti_), and the federal executive (_strategus_, hipparch, secretary of state, treasurer or treasurers) appeared equitable. In Boeotia and Hellas in the earlier time the league had been created by the superior strength of Thebes and Macedon respectively; and these capital states had taken care that the initial leadership should be preserved by the institutions of the leagues. The Achæan and the Ætolian leagues, on the other hand, were partly, no doubt, the result of a compromise between the constituent units, but mainly the consequence of foreign pressure. The federal movement was not based primarily upon the activity of any one city, but upon a need generally felt. Hence the capital of the Achæan league was Ægium, and the capital of the Ætolian league Thermon--neutral meeting-places, like Washington, Ottawa, and Canberra. That was something new in the annals of the Greek leagues. The creative force of foreign policy is manifest in still other characteristics of these Hellenistic leagues. It was almost inevitable that in those days of executive efficiency states should be monarchically organized. Hence, whereas there had been eleven Boeotarchs in the Boeotian league and seven generals in early third-century Acarnania, a single general stood at the head of the Ætolians from the founding of their league and at the head of the Achæans after 255 B.C. That gave a unity of action otherwise impossible, the lack of which, though negligible perhaps in domestic affairs, had been found disadvantageous in foreign affairs. It was a necessary concession to a monarchical age, one which, however, had been made reluctantly and with an important reservation which took from the serum its malignancy: the generalship could be held by the same individual only every alternate year. He might be the uncrowned king of the league one year; the next he must be a private citizen.