CHAPTER XXIV - Akarnanians.—Epirots

Summary

Some notice must be taken of those barbarous or non-Hellenic nations who formed the immediate neighbours of Hellas, west of the range of Pindus, and north of that range which connects Pindus with Olympus—as well as of those other tribes, who, though lying more remote from Hellas proper, were yet brought into relations of traffic or hostility with the Hellenic colonies.

Between the Greeks and these foreign neighbours, the Akarnanians, of whom I have already spoken briefly in my preceding volume, form the proper link of transition. They occupied the territory between the river Achelôus, the Ionian Sea, and the Ambrakian Gulf: they were Greeks, and admitted as such to contend at the Pan-Hellenic games, yet they were also closely connected with the Amphilochi and Agræi, who were not Greeks: in manners, sentiments, and intelligence, they were half-Hellenic and half-Epirotic—like the Ætolians and the Ozolian Lokrians. Even down to the time of Thucydidês, these nations were subdivided into numerous petty communities, lived in unfortified villages, were frequently in the habit of plundering each other, and never permitted themselves to be unarmed: in case of attack, they withdrew their families and their scanty stock, chiefly cattle, to the shelter of difficult mountains or marshes. They were for the most part light-armed, few among them being trained to the panoply of the Grecian hoplite; but they were both brave and skilful in their own mode of warfare, and the sling in the hands of the Akarnanian was a weapon of formidable efficiency

Notwithstanding this state of disunion and insecurity, however, the Akarnanians maintained a loose political league among themselves, and a hill near the Amphilochian Argos, on the shores of the Ambrakian Gulf, had been fortified to serve as a judgmentseat, or place of meeting for the settlement of disputes.