Strabo, Geography

Ephorus,¹ after saying that the Aetolians were a race which had never become subject to any other people, but throughout all time of which there is any record had remained undevastated, both because of the ruggedness of their country and because of their training in warfare, says at the outset that the Curetes held possession of the whole country, but when Aetolus,² the son of Endymion, arrived from Elis and overpowered them in war, the Curetes withdrew to what is now called Acarnania, whereas the Aetolians came back with Epeians and founded the earliest of the cities of Aetolia, and in the tenth generation after that Elis was settled by Oxylus³ the son of Haemon, who had crossed over from Aetolia. And he cites as evidence of all this two inscriptions, the one at Therma in Aetolia (where it is their ancestral custom to hold their elections of magistrates), engraved on the base of the statue of Aetolus:“Founder of the country, once reared beside the eddies of the Alpheius, neighbor of the race-courses of Olympia, son of Endymion, this Aetolus has been set up by the Aetolians as a memorial of his valor to behold;
” and the other inscription in the marketplace of the Eleians on the statue of Oxylus:“Aetolus once left this autochthonous people, and through many a toil with the spear took possession of the land of Curetis; but the tenth scion of the same stock, Oxylus, the son of Haemon, founded this city in early times.
”