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From thence they reached and crossed Mount Thymaus, which belongs to the Agraeans, and descended into the Argive territory after nightfall, and passing between the city of Argos and the Acarnanian posts at Crenae, joined the Ambraciots at Olpae. Uniting here at daybreak, they sat down at the place called Metropolis, and encamped.
II. The woods and mountains of Greece were not then cleared of the first rude aboriginals of nature wild beasts lurked within its caverns; wolves abounded everywhere herds of wild bulls, the large horns of which Herodotus names with admiration, were common; and even the lion himself, so late as the invasion of Xerxes, was found in wide districts from the Thracian Abdera to the Acarnanian Achelous.
Scopas, on hearing that the king had gone into Thrace, and was engaged in a war there, armed all the Aetolian youths, and prepared to invade Acarnania. The Acarnanian nation, unequal to their enemy in point of strength, and seeing that they had lost Aeniadae and Nasus, and moreover that the Roman arms were threatening them, prepare the war rather with rage than prudence.
In command of the force were Euphamidas, son of Aristonymus, Timoxenus, son of Timocrates, and Eumachus, son of Chrysis, who sailed over and restored him and, after failing in an attempt on some places on the Acarnanian coast which they were desirous of gaining, began their voyage home.
But he who took upon him the actual place and style of his "pedagogue," was Lysimachus the Acarnanian.
Passing through the territory of Amphilochian Argos, and sacking the open village of Limnaea, they advanced to Stratus the Acarnanian capital; this once taken, the rest of the country, they felt convinced, would speedily follow.
The next day Menedaius, who on the death of Eurylochus and Macarius had succeeded to the sole command, being at a loss after so signal a defeat how to stay and sustain a siege, cut off as he was by land and by the Athenian fleet by sea, and equally so how to retreat in safety, opened a parley with Demosthenes and the Acarnanian generals for a truce and permission to retreat, and at the same time for the recovery of the dead.
"Then Queen Althea, filled with grief for her brothers' untimely fate, forgot her love for her son, and prayed that her Acarnanian kinsmen might prevail against him. Upon the hard earth she knelt: she beat the ground with her hands, and heaped the dust about her; and, weeping bitter tears, she called upon Hades to avenge her of Meleager.
But the springs of the Acarnanian slings had broken from use, and many were throwing stones with the hand like shepherds; the rest hurled leaden bullets with the handle of a whip. Zarxas, his shoulders covered with his long black hair, went about everywhere, and led on the Barbarians.
If freedom was not actually preferable to servitude, yet the hope of bettering their circumstances by a change, was more flattering to every one than any present situation." There was, in the council, an Acarnanian named Alexander, who had formerly been a friend of Philip, but had lately left him, to follow the more opulent court of Antiochus.
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