Using all available evidence - literary epigraphic numismatic and archaeological - this study offers a new analysis of the early Hellenistic Peloponnese. The conventional picture of the Macedonian kings as oppressors and of the Peloponnese as ruined by warfare and tyranny must be revised. The kings did not suppress freedom or exploit the peninsula economically but generally presented themselves as patrons of Greek identity. Most of the regimes characterised as ''tyrannies'' were probably in real