Page:History of Greece Vol IX.djvu/376

 854 HISTORY OF GREECE. the Athenians to recall Iphikrates with a large portion of his pal. tasts, and to send Chabrias to Corinth in his place. 1 It was either in the ensuing summer, or perhaps immediately afterwards during the same summer, 390 B. c., that Agesilaus un- dertook an expedition into Akarnania ; at the instance of the Achae- ans,who threatened, if this were not done, to forsake the Lacedsemo- nian alliance. They had acquired possession of the JEtolian dis- trict of Kalydon, had brought the neighboring villagers into a city residence, and garrisoned it as a dependence of the Achaean confederacy. But the Akarnanians, allies of Athens as well as Thebes, and aided by an Athenian squadron at GEniadse, attacked them there, probably at the invitation of a portion of the inhabitants, and pressed them so hard, that they employed the most urgent instances to obtain aid from Sparta. Agesilaus crossed the Gulf at Rhium with a considerable force of Spartans and al- lies, and the full muster of the Achseans. On his arrival the Akar- nanians all took refuge in their cities, sending their cattle up into the interior highlands, to the borders of a remote lake. Agesilaus, having sent to Stratus to require them not merely to forbear hos- tilities against the Achaeans, but to relinquish their alliance with Athens and Thebes, and to become allies of Sparta, found his demands resisted, and began to lay waste the country. Two or three days of operations designedly slack, were employed to lull the Akarnanians into security; after which, by a rapid forced march, Agesilaus suddenly surprised the remote spot in which their cattle and slaves had been deposited for safety. He spent a day here to sell this booty ; merchants, probably, accompanying his army. But he had considerable difficulty in his return march, from the narrow paths and high mountains through which he had to thread his way. By a series of brave and well-combined hill- movements, which, probably, reminded Xenophon of his own operations against the Karduchians in the retreat of the Ten- Thousand, he defeated and dispersed the Akarnanians, though not without suffering considerably from the excellence of their light troops. Yet he was not successful in his attack upon any 1 Diodor. xiv, 92 ; Xen. Hellcn. iv, 8, 34. Aristeides (Panathen.p. 168) boasts that the Athenians were masters of the Acro-Corinthus, and might have kept the city as their ow, hut that they generously refused to do so.