previous next

Philip Invades Aetolia

Meanwhile Lycurgus had invaded Messenia; and Dorimachus had started for Thessaly with half the
Ambassadors from Acarnania urge Philip to invade Aetolia; others from Messenia beg him to come there.
Aetolian army,—both with the idea that they would thus draw off Philip from the siege of Palus. Presently ambassadors arrived at the court to make representations on these subjects from Acarnania and Messenia: the former urging Philip to prevent Dorimachus's invasion of Macedonia by himself invading Aetolia, and traversing and plundering the whole country while there was no one to resist him; the latter begged him to come to their assistance, representing that in the existing state of the Etesian winds the passage from Cephallenia to Messenia could be effected in a single day, whereby, so Gorgus of Messenia and his colleagues argued, a sudden and effective attack would be made upon Lycurgus. In pursuance of his policy Leontius eagerly supported Gorgus, seeing that by this means Philip would absolutely waste the summer. For it was easy enough to sail to Messenia; but to sail back again, while the Etesian winds prevailed, was impossible. It was plain therefore that Philip would get shut up in Messenia with his army, and remain inactive for what remained of the summer; while the Aetolians would traverse Thessaly and Epirus and plunder them at their pleasure. Such was the insidious nature of the advice given by Gorgus and Leontius. But Aratus, who was present, advocated an exactly opposite policy, urging the king to sail to Aetolia and devote himself to that part of the campaign: for as the Aetolians had gone on an expedition across the frontier under Dorimachus, it was a most excellent opportunity for invading and plundering Aetolia.
Philip decides on the invasion of Aetolia.
The king had begun to entertain distrust of Leontius since his exhibition of cowardice in the siege; and had detected his dishonesty in the course of the discussions held about Palus: he therefore decided to act in the present instance in accordance with the opinion of Aratus. Accordingly he wrote to the Achaean Strategus Eperatus, bidding him take the Achaean levies, and go to the aid of the Messenians; while he himself put to sea from Cephallenia, and arrived at night after a two days' voyage at Leucas: and having managed by proper contrivances to get his ships through the channel or Dioryctus,1 he sailed up the Ambracian Gulf, which, as I have already stated,2 stretches from the Sicilian Sea a long distance into the interior of Aetolia. Having made the whole length of this gulf, and anchored a short time before daybreak at Limnaea, he ordered his men to get their breakfast, and leaving the greater part of their baggage behind them, to make themselves ready in light equipment for a march; while he himself collected the guides, and made careful inquiries of them about the country and neighbouring towns.

1 The narrow channel between Leucas and the mainland, which had been artificially enlarged. Dionys. Halic. 1, 50.

2 4, 63.

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.

An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.

load focus Greek (Theodorus Büttner-Wobst after L. Dindorf, 1893)
hide Places (automatically extracted)

View a map of the most frequently mentioned places in this document.

Sort places alphabetically, as they appear on the page, by frequency
Click on a place to search for it in this document.
Messenia (Greece) (7)
Aetolia (Greece) (6)
Gorgus (Cyprus) (3)
Thessaly (Greece) (2)
Leucas (Greece) (2)
Acarnania (Greece) (2)
Macedonia (Macedonia) (1)
Halic (Slovakia) (1)
Epirus (Greece) (1)

Download Pleiades ancient places geospacial dataset for this text.

hide References (5 total)
  • Commentary references to this page (1):
    • Titus Livius (Livy), Ab urbe condita libri, erklärt von M. Weissenborn, books 33-34, commentary, 33.17
  • Cross-references to this page (4):
    • A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities (1890), NE´MEA
    • Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography (1854), DURA
    • Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography (1854), LEUCAS
    • Smith's Bio, Epe'ratus
hide Display Preferences
Greek Display:
Arabic Display:
View by Default:
Browse Bar: