Book 4
5
By these, and similar arguments to the same effect, he roused such a strong feeling in the minds of Scopas and his friends, that, without waiting for a meeting of the Aetolian federal assembly, and without communicating with the Apocleti, or taking any of the proper constitutional steps, of their own mere impulse and opinion they committed acts of hostility simultaneously against Messenia, Epirus, Achaia, Acarnania, and Macedonia.
6
By sea they immediately sent out privateers, who, falling in with a royal vessel of Macedonia near Cythera, brought it with all its crew to Aetolia, and sold ship-owners, sailors, and marines, and finally the ship itself. Then they began sacking the seaboard of Epirus, employing the aid of some Cephallenian ships for carrying out this act of violence. They tried also to capture Thyrium in Acarnania. At the same time they secretly-sent some men to seize a strong place called Clarium, in the centre of the territory of Megalopolis; which they used thenceforth as a place of sale for their spoils, and a starting-place for their marauding expeditions. However Timoxenus, the Achaean Strategus, with the assistance of Taurion, who had been left by Antigonus in charge of the Macedonian interests in the Peloponnese, took the place after a siege of a very few days. For Antigonus retained Corinth, in accordance with his convention with the Achaeans, made at the time of the Cleomenic war;See 2, 53. and had never restored Orchomenus to the Achaeans after he had taken it by force, but claimed and retained it in his own hands; with the view, as I suppose, not only of commanding the entrance of the Peloponnese, but of guarding also its interior by means of his garrison and warlike apparatus in Orchomenus.
