Page:History of Greece Vol VI.djvu/323

 EUEYLOCHUS ATTACKS NAUPAKTUS. g,}J against Naupaktus : and about the month of Septemoer, a body of three thousand Peloponnesian hoplites, including five hundred from the newly-founded colony of Herakleia, was assembled at Delphi, under the command of Eurylochus, Makarius, and Mene dcmus. Their road of march to Naupaktus lay through the ter ritory of the Ozolian Lokrians, whom they proposed either to gain over or to subdue. With Amphissa, the largest Lokrian township, and in the immediate neighborhood of Delphi, they had little difficulty, for the Amphissians were in a state of feud with their neighbors on the other side of Parnassus, and were afraid that the new armament might become the instrument of Phocian antipathy against them. On the very first application they joined the Spartan alliance, and gave hostages for their fidelity to it : moreover, they persuaded many other Lokrian petty villages among others the Myoneis, who were masters of the most difficult pass on the road to do the same. Eury- lochus received from these various townships reinforcements for his army, as well as hostages for their fidelity, whom he deposited at Kytinium in Doris : and he was thus enabled to march through all the territory of the Ozolian Lokrians without resistance ; ex- cept from CEneon and Eupalion, both which places he took by force. Having arrived in the territory of Naupaktus, he was there joined by the full force of the .^Etolians ; and their joint efforts, after laying waste all the neighborhood, captured the Cor- inthian colony of Molykreion, which had become subject to the Athenian empire. 1 Naupaktus, with a large circuit of wall and thinly defended, was in the greatest danger, and would certainly have been taken, had it not been saved by the efforts of the Athenian Demosthenes, who had remained there ever since the unfortunate ^Etolian ex- pedition. Apprized of the coming march of Eurylochus, he went personally to the Akarnanians, and persuaded them to send a force to aid in the defence of Naupaktus : for a long time they turned a deaf ear to his solicitations, in consequence of the i efusal to blockade Leukas, but they were at length induced to consent. At the head of one thousand Akarnanian hoplites, Demosthenes threw himself into Naupaktus; ATX! Eurylochus, 1 Thucyd. iii "H, 102