Book 10
2.22
Apollodorus says that in the interior of Acarnania there is a people called Erysichaeans, who are mentioned by Alcman: nor yet an Erysichaean nor shepherd, but from the heights of Sardeis.Alcman Fr. 24 (Bergk) But Olenus, which Homer mentions in the Aetolian catalogue, was in Aetolia, though only traces of it are left, near Pleuron at the foot of Aracynthus. Near it, also, was Lysimachia; this, too, has disappeared; it was situated by the lake now called Lysimachia, in earlier times Hydra, between Pleuron and the city Arsinoe. In earlier times Arsinoe was only a village, and was called Conopa, but it was first founded as a city by Arsinoe, who was both wife and sister of Ptolemy the Second;She married him in 279 B.C. it was rather happily situated at the ford across the Acheloüs. PyleneCf. 10. 2. 6. has also suffered a fate similar to that of Olenus. When the poet calls Calydon both “steep”Hom. Il. 13.217 and “rocky,”Hom. Il. 2.640. one should interpret him as referring to the country; for, as I have said,10. 2. 3. they divided the country into two parts and assigned the mountainous part, or Epictetus,i.e., Aetolia the “Acquired” (10. 2. 3). to Calydon and the level country to Pleuron.
2.23
At the present time both the Acarnanians and the Aetolians, like many of the other tribes, have been exhausted and reduced to impotence by their continual wars. However, for a very long time the Aetolians, together with the Acarnanians, stood firm, not only against the Macedonians and the other Greeks, but also finally against the Romans, when fighting for autonomy. But since they are often mentioned by Homer, as also both by the other poets and by historians, sometimes in words that are easy to interpret and about which there is no disagreement, and sometimes in words that are less intelligible (this has been shown in what I have already said about them), I should also add some of those older accounts which afford us a basis of fact to begin with, or are matters of doubt.
