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The fable which makes Dorus, Aeolus, and Xuthus, the sons of Helen, declares that while Dorus was sent forth to conquer other lands, Aeolus succeeded to the domain of Phthiotis, and records no conquests of his own; but attributes to his sons the origin of most of the principal families of Greece.

Upon this errand, there were twenty men, of such as were above fifty years of age, sent by commission; five to summon the Ionians and Dorians in Asia, and the islanders as far as Lesbos and Rhodes; five to visit all the places in the Hellespont and Thrace, up to Byzantium; and other five besides these to go to Boeotia and Phocis and Peloponnesus, and from hence to pass through the Locrians over to the neighboring continent, as far as Acarnania and Ambracia; and the rest to take their course through Euboea to the Oetaeans and the Malian Gulf, and to the Achaeans of Phthiotis and the Thessalians; all of them to treat with the people as they passed, and to persuade them to come and take their part in the debates for settling the peace and jointly regulating the affairs of Greece.

A trumpet sounded to command silence; and the crier, stepping forth amidst the spectators, made proclamation, that the Roman senate, and Titus Quintius, the proconsular general, having vanquished king Philip and the Macedonians, restored the Corinthians, Locrians, Phocians, Euboeans, Achaeans of Phthiotis, Magnetians, Thessalians, and Perrhaebians to their own lands, laws, and liberties; remitting all impositions upon them, and withdrawing all garrisons from their cities.

His envoys now returned, and brought him favorable replies from at least one-third of the continental Greeks from the Perrhaebians, Thessalians, Dolopians, Magnetians, Achaeans of Phthiotis, Enianians, Malians, Locrians, and from most of the Boeotians.

And they, finding Alexander weak and without forces, compelled him to restore the cities he had taken, to withdraw his garrisons from the Magnesians and Achaeans of Phthiotis, and swear to assist the Thebans against whatsoever enemies they should require.

He embarked in haste for Ephesus; Europe was lost to him all but his possessions in Thrace, and even the fortresses could be no longer defended Chalcis surrendered to the Romans, and Demetrias to Philip, who received permission as a compensation for the conquest of the town of Lamia in Achaia Phthiotis, which he was on the point of accomplishing and had then abandoned by orders of the consul to make himself master of all the communities that had gone over to Antiochus in Thessaly proper, and even of the territories bordering on Aetolia, the districts of Dolopia and Aperantia.

Finding that he was weakened and shorn of much of his power, they compelled him to restore to the Thessalians their cities, which he held, to liberate the Achæans in Magnesia and Phthiotis, to withdraw his garrisons from those countries, and to swear to the Thebans, that he would attack, and assist them to attack, any enemy they might choose.

Of the anti-Macedonian party the Spartans, Eleans, Athenians, and Aetolians Philip might perhaps have gained the latter, for the peace of 548 had made a deep, and far from healed, breach in their friendly Alliance with Rome; but apart from the old differences which subsisted between Aetolia and Macedonia regarding the Thessalian towns withdrawn by Macedonia from the Aetolian confederacy Echinus, Larissa Cremaste, Pharsalus, and Thebes in Phthiotis the expulsion of the Aetolian garrisons from Lysimachia and Cius had produced fresh exasperation against Philip in the minds of the Aetolians.

Meanwhile the Macedonian garrison stood under the wall of the citadel, formed into a compact body, neither confusedly attempting a retreat, nor obstinately engaging in a contest. These men Plator, after obtaining permission from Sulpicius, put on board ships and landed them at Demetrias in Phthiotis; he himself withdrew to Attalus.

The revolution was treated as a war of words, the defence of Missolonghi as a trifle, and the naval warfare as a farce. The Greeks have since, on the mountains of Maina, and on the plain of Phthiotis, shown themselves so far superior to the Bavarians when engaged in the field, that we shall say nothing on that subject.