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 292 HISTORY OF GREECE. both banks of the river Achelous, in the lower part of its cou rae, though the left bank appears afterwards as belonging to the JEtolians, so that the river came to constitute the boundary, often disputed and decided by arms, between them. The principal Akarnanian towns, Stratus and (Eniadce, were both on the right bank ; the latter on the marshy and ovefiflowed land near its mouth. Near the Akarnanians, towards the gulf of Ambrakia, were found barbarian, or non-Hellenic nations, the Agrseans and the Amphilochians : in the midst of the latter, on the shores of the Ambrakian gulf, the Greek colony, called Argos Amphi- lochicum, was established. Of the five Hellenic subdivisions now enumerated, Lo- krians, Phokians, Dorians (of Doris), JEtolians, and Akarnanians (of whom Lokrians, Phokians, and JEtolians are comprised in the Homeric catalogue), we have to say the same as of those north of Thermopylae : there is no information respecting them from the commencement of the historical period down to the Persian war. Even that important event brings into action only the Lokrians of the Euboean sea, the Phokians, and the Dorians : we have to wait until near the Peloponnesian war, before we require information respecting the Ozolian Lokrians, the JEto- lians, and the Akarnanians. These last three were unquestionably the most backward members of the Hellenic aggregate. Though not absolutely without a central town, they lived dispersed in villages, retiring, when attacked, to inaccessible heights, perpetu- ally armed and in readiness for aggression and plunder wherever they found an opportunity. 1 Very different was the condition of the Lokrians opposite Eubcea, the Phokians, and the Dorians. These were all orderly town communities, small, indeed, and poor, but not less well administered than the average of Grecian townships, and perhaps exempt from those individual violences which so frequently troubled the Boeotian Thebes or the great cities of Thessaly. Timaeus affirmed (contrary, as it seems, to the supposition of Aristotle) that, in early times, there were no 1 Thncyu. I. 6 ; iii. 94. Aristotle, however, included, in his large collection of TlofaTeiat, an 'AKapvavuv Hofareia as well as an AlruAtiv Tlo^.i-elo (' Aristotelis Rcrum Publicarum Reliquiae, ed. Neumann, p. 102; Strabo, vii r S2i).