Page:History of Greece Vol II.djvu/307

 AKARN ASIANS. 291 are little named in history ; while, on the contrary, Therinus, the chief town of the historical -ZEtolians, and the place where the aggregate meeting and festival of the ^Etolian name, for tho choice of a Pan-JEtolic general, was convoked, is not noticed by any one earlier than Ephorus. 1 It was partly legendary renown, partly ethnical kindred (publicly acknowledged on both sides) with the Eleians in Peloponnesus, which authenticated the title of the jEtolians to rank as Hellens. But the great mass of the Apodoti, Eurytanes, and Ophioneis in the inland mountains, were so rude in their manners, and so unintelligible 2 in their speech, (which, however, was not barbaric, but very bad Hellenic,) that this title might well seem disputable, in point of fact it was disputed, in later times, when the JEtolian power and depredations had become obnoxious nearly to all Greece. And it is, probably, to this difference of manners between the -ZEtolians on the sea-coast and those in the interior, that we are to trace a geographical division mentioned by Strabo, into ancient .^Etolia, and ^tolia Epiktetus, or acquired. When or by whom this division was introduced, we do not know. It cannot be founded upon any conquest, for the inland -ZEtolians were the most unconquerable of mankind : and the affirmation which Ephorus applied to the whole jJEtolian race, that it had never been reduced to sub- jection by any one, is, most of all, beyond dispute concerning the inland portion of it. 3 Adjoining the JEtolians were the Akarnanians, the western- most of extra-Peloponnesian Greeks. They extended to the Ionian sea, and seem, in the time of Thucydides, to have occupied 1 Ephorus, Fragm. 29, Marx. ap. Strabo, p. 463. The situation of Ther- mus, " the acropolis as it were of all ^Etolia," and placed on a spot almost unapproachable by^ an army, is to a certain extent, though not wholly, capa- ble of being determined by the description which Polybius gives of the rapid march of Philip and the Macedonian army to surprise it. The maps, both of Krnse and Kiepert, place it too much on the north of the lake Trichonis : the map of Fiedler notes it, more correctly, to the east of that lake (Polyb ". 7-8; compare Brandstater, Geschichte des ^Etol. Landes, p. 133). y ovrai. It seems that Thucydides had not himself seen or conversed with them, but he does not call them (3ap,8apoi. 3 Ephoius, Fragment. 29, ed. Marx. ; Skymn. Chius, v. 471 ; Strabo, x f> 450.
 * Thucyd. iii. 102. uyvuGToraroi 6e yTiuaaav eiai, icai ufu'vpayoi uf^,e