Page:Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography Volume I Part 1.djvu/26

10	ACARNANIA.

B.C., the Corinthians founded Leucas, Anactorium, Sollirum, and other towns on the coast. (Strab. p. 452.) The original inhabitants of the country were driven more into the interior; they never made much progress in the arts of civilised life; and even at the time of the Peloponnesian war, they were a rude and barbarous people, engaged in continual wars with their neighbours, and living by robbery and piracy. (Thuc. i. 5.) The Acarnananians, however, were Greeks, and as such were allowed to contend in the great Pan-Hellenic games, although they were closely connected with their neighbours, the Agraeans and Amphilochians on the gulf of Ambracia, who were barbarian or non-Hellenic nations. Like other rude mountaineers, the Acarnanians are praised for their fidelity and courage. They formed good light-armed troops, and were excellent slingers. They lived, for the most part dispersed in villages, retiring, when attacked, to the mountains. They were united, however, in a political League, of which Aristotle wrote an account in a work now lost. (Άκαρνάνων Πολίτεια, Strab. p. 331.) Thucydides mentions a hill, named Olpae, near the Amphilochian Argos, which the Acarnanians had fortified as a place of judicial meeting for the settlement of disputes. (Thuc. iii. 105.) The meetings of the League were usually held at Stratus, which was the chief town in Acarnania (Xen. Hell. iv. G. § 4; comp. Thuc. ii. 80); but, in the time of the Romans, the meetings took place either at Thyrium, or at Leucas, the latter of which places became, at that time, the chief city in Arcarnania. (Liv. xxxiii. 16, 17; Polyb. xxvii. 5.) At an early period, when part of Amphilochia belonged to the Acarnanians, they used to hold a public judical congress at Olpae, a fortified hill about 3 miles from Argos Amphilochicum. Of the constitution of their League we have scarcely any particulars. We learn from an inscription found at Punta, the site of ancient Actium, that there was a Council and a general assembly of the people, by which decrees were passed. (Έδοξε τά βουλά καί τώ κοινώ τών Άκαρνάνων). At the head of the League there was a Stratogys (Στρατπγός) or General; and the Council had a Secretary (γραμματεύς), who appears to have been a person of importance, as in the Achaean and Aetolian Leagues. The chief priest (ίεραπόλος) of the temple of Apollo at Actium seems to have been a person of high rank; and either his name or that of the Strategus was employed for official dates, like that of the first Archou at Athens. (Böckh, Corpus Insript. No. 1793.)

The history of the Acarnanians begins in the time of the Peloponnesian war. Their hatred against the Corinthian settlers, who had deprived them of all their best ports, naturally led them to side with the Athenians; but the immediate cause of their alliance with the latter arose from the expulsion of the Amphilochians from the town of Argos Amphilochicum by the Corinthian settlers from Ambracia, about B.C. 432. The Acarnanians espoused the cause of the expelled Amphilochians, and in order to obtain the restoration of the latter, they applied for assistance to Athens. The Athenians accordingly sent an expedition under Phormio, who took Argos, expelled the Ambriaciots, and restored the town to the Amphilochians and Acarnanians. An alliance was now formally concluded between the Acarnanians and Athenians. The only towns of Acarnania which did not join it were Oeniadae and Astacus.

ACARNANIA.

The Acarnanians were of great service in maintaining the supremacy of Athens in the western part of Greece, and they distinguished themselves particularly in B.C. 426, when they gained a signal victory under the command of Demosthenes over the Peloponnesians and Ambraciots at Olpae. (Thuc. iii. 105, seq.) At the conclusion of this campaign they concluded a peace with the Ambraciots, although they still continued allies of Athens (Thuc. iii. 114.) In B.C. 391 we find the Acarnanians engaged in war with the Achaeans, who had taken possession of Calydon in Aetolia; and as the latter were hard pressed by the Acarnanians, they applied for aid to the Lacedaemonians who sent an army into Acarnania, commanded by Agesilaus. The latter ravaged the country, but his expedition was not attended with any lasting consequence (Xen. Hell. iv. 6) After the time of Alexander the Great the Aetolians conquered most of the towns in the west of Acarnania; and the Acarnanians in consequence united themselves closely to the Macedonian kings, to whom they remained faithful on their various vicissitudes of fortune. They refused to desert the cause of Philip in his war with the Romans, and it was not till after the capture of Leucas, their principal town and the defeat of Philip at Cynoecephalae that they submitted to the Romans. (Liv. xxxiii. 16—17.) When Antiochus III. king of Syria, invaded Greece B.C. 191, the Acarnanians were persuaded by their countryman Mnasilochus to espouse his cause; but on the expulsion of Antiochus from Greece, they came under the supremacy of Rome. (Liv. xxxvi. 11—12.) In the settlement of the affairs of Greece by Aemilius Paulus and the Roman commissioners after the defeat of Perseus (B.C. 168), Leucas was separated from Acarnania, but no other change was made in the country. (Liv. xiv. 31.) When Greece was reduced to the form of a Roman province, it is doubtful whether Acarnania was annexed to the province of Achaia or of Epeirus, but it is mentioned at a later time as part of Epeirus, [Achaia, No. 3.] The inhabitants of several its towns were removed by Augustus to Nicopolis which he founded after the battle of Actium [Nicopolis]; and in the time of this emperor the country is described by Strabo as utterly worn out and exhausted (Strab. p. 460.)

The following is a list of the towns of Acarnania. On the Ambracian gulf, from E. to W.; Limnaea, Echinus (Έχίνος, Steph. B. s. v.; Plin. iv. 2; Ai Vasili), Heracleia (Plin. iv. 2; Vonitza), Anactorium, Actium. On or near the west of the Ionian sea, from N. to S.: Thyrium, Palaerus, Alyzia, Sollium, Astacus, Oeniadae. In the interior from S. to N.: Old Oenia [Oeniadae], Coronta, Metropolis, Stratus, Rhyinchus (Ρύγχος), near Stratus, of uncertain site. (Pol. ap. Ath, iii. p. 95, d.); Phytia or Phoeteiae, Medeon. The Roman Itineraries mention

COIN OF ACARNANIA.