Strabo, Geography

Now through these inscriptions Ephorus correctly signifies the kinship of the Eleians and Aetolians with one another, since both inscriptions agree, not merely as to the kinship of the two peoples, but also that each people was the founder of the other, through which he successfully convicts of falsehood those who assert that, while the Eleians were indeed colonists of the Aetolians, the Aetolians were not colonists of the Eleians. But here, too, Ephorus manifestly displays the same inconsistency in his writing and his pronouncements as in the case of the oracle at Delphi, which I have already set forth;¹ for, after saying that Aetolia has been undevastated throughout all times of which there is any record, and after saying also that in the beginning the Curetes held possession of this country, he should have added as a corollary to what he had already said that the Curetes continued to hold possession of the Aetolian land down to his own time, for only thus could it have been rightly said that the land had been undevastated and that it had never come under the power of others; and yet, utterly forgetting his promise,² he does not add this, but the contrary, that when Aetolus arrived from Elis and overpowered the Curetes in war, they withdrew into Acarnania. What else, pray, is specifically characteristic of a devastation than being overpowered in war and abandoning the country? And this is evidenced also by the inscription among the Eleians, for Aetolus, it says,“through many a toil with the spear took possession of the land of Curetis.
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