Page:History of Greece Vol III.djvu/428

 412 HISTORY OF GRKECK. selves, and a hill near the Amphilochian Argos, on the shores oi the Ambrakian gulf, had heen fortified to serve as a judgment- seat, or place of meeting, for the settlement of disputes. And it seems that Stratus and GEniadaj had both become fortified in some measure towards the commencement of the Peloponnesian war. The former, the most considerable township in Akarnania, was situated on the Achelous, rather high up its course, the latter was at the mouth of the river, and was rendered difficult of approach by its inundations. 1 Astakus, Solium, Palosrus, and Alyzia, lay on or near the coast of the Ionian sea, between CEniadoe and Leukas : Phytia, Koronta, Medeon, Limncea, and Thyrium, were between the southern shore of the Ambrakian gulf and the river Achelous. The Akarnanians appear to have produced many prophets. They traced up their mythical ancestry, as well as that of their neighbors the Amphilochians, to the most renowned prophetic family among^ the Grecian heroes, Amphiaraus, with his sons Alkmseon and Amphilochus : Akarnan, the eponymous hero of the nation, and other eponymous heroes of the separate towns, were supposed to be the sons of Alkmaxm. 2 They are spoken of, together with the ^Etolians, as mere rude shepherds, by the lyric poet Alkman, and so they seem to have continued with little alteration until the beginning of the Peloponnesian war, when we hear of them, for the first time, as allies of Athens and as bitter enemies of the Corinthian colonies on their coast. The contact of those colonies, however, and the large spread of Akar- nanian accessible coast, could not fail to produce some effect in socializing and improving the people. And it is probable that this effect would have been more sensibly felt, had not the Akar- nanians been kept back by the fatal neighborhood of the -ZEtolians, with whom they were in perpetual feud, a people the most unprincipled and unimprovable of all who bore the Hellenic 1 Thucyd. ii. 102; iii, 103 2 Thucyd. ii, C8-102; StepJ'an. Byz. v, toiriai. See the discussion in Strabo (x, p. 4C2), whether the Akarnanians did, or did not, take part in tha expedition against Troy ; Ephenis maintaining the negative, and stringing together a plausible narrative to explain why they did not. The time came when the Akarnanians gained credit with Rome for this supposed absence of their ancestors.