Page:History of Greece Vol III.djvu/429

 KPIROTS. 413 name, and whose habitual faithlessness stood in marked contrast with the rectitude and steadfastness of the Akarnanian character. 1 It was in order to strengthen the Akarnanians against these ra- pacious neighbors, that the Macedonian Ivassander urged them to consolidate their numerous small townships into a few con- siderable cities. Partially, at least, the recommendation was carried into effect, so as to aggrandize Stratus and one or two other towns ; but in the succeeding century, the town of Leukas seems to lose its original position as a separate Corinthian colo- ny, and to pass into that of chief city of Akarnania, 2 which is lost only by the sentence of the Roman conquerors. Passing over the borders of Akarnania, we find small nations or tribes not considered as Greeks, but known, from the fourth century B. c. downwards, under the common name of Epirots. This word signifies properly, inhabitants of a continent, as op- posed to those of an island or a peninsula, and came only gradually to be applied by the Greeks as their comprehensive denomination to designate all those diverse tribes, between the Ambrakian gulf on the south and west, Pindus on the east, and the Illyrians and Macedonians to the north and north-east. Of these Epirots, the principal were, the Chaonians, Thesprotians, Kassopians, and Molossians, 3 who occupied the country inland as well as maritime along the Ionian sea, from the Akrokeraunian moun- tains to the borders of Ambrakia in the interior of the Ambra- kian gulf. The Agrrcans and Amphilochians dwelt eastward of the last-mentioned gulf, bordering upon Akarnania : the Atha- numes, the Tympha-ans, and the Talares, lived along the western skirts and high range of Pindus. Among these various tribes it is difficult to discriminate the semi-Hellenic from the non-Hellen- ic ; for Herodotus considers both Molossians and Thesprotians as Hellenic, and the oracle of Dod6na,as well as the Nekyoman- teion, or holy cavern for evoking the dead, of Acheron, were both in the territory of the Thesprotians, and both, in the time of the historian, Hellenic. Thucydides, on the other hand, treats both Molossians and Thesprotians as barbaric, and Strabo sa>'s 1 Polyb. iv, 30: compare also ix. 40. 2 Diodor. xix, G7; Livy, xxxiii. 16-17 ; xlv, 31. 1 Skvlax. c. 28-32.