In the western parts of Greece, the arms of Athens and her allies were more successful. The repulse of the Ambrakiots from the Amphilochian Argos, during the preceding year, had only exasperated them and induced them to conceive still larger plans of aggression against both the Akarnanians and Athenians. In concert with their mother-city Corinth, where they obtained warm support, they prevailed upon the Lacedæmonians to take part in a simultaneous attack of Akarnania, by land as well as by sea, which would prevent the Akarnanians from concentrating their forces in any one point, and put each of their townships upon an isolated self-defence; so that all of them might be overpowered in succession, and detached, together with Kephallênia and Zakynthus, from the Athenian alliance. The fleet of Phormio at Naupaktus, consisting only of twenty triremes, was accounted incompetent to cope with a Peloponnesian fleet such as might be fitted out at Corinth. There was even some hope that the important station at Naupaktus might itself be taken, so as to expel the Athenians completely from those parts. The scheme of operations now projected was far more comprehensive than anything which the war had yet afforded. The land-force of the Ambrakiots, together with their neighbors and fellow-colonists the Leukadians and Anaktorians, assembled near their own city, while their maritime force was collected at Leukas, on the Akarnanian coast. The force at Ambrakia was joined, not only by Knêmus, the Lacedæmonian admiral, with one thousand Peloponnesian hoplites, who found means to cross over from Peloponnesus, eluding the vigilance of Phormio,—but also by a numerous body of Epirotic and Macedonian auxiliaries, collected even from the distant and northernmost tribes. A thousand Chaonians were present, under the command of Photyus and Nikanor, two annual chiefs chosen from the regal gens. Neither this tribe, nor the Thesprotians who came along with them, acknowledged any hereditary king. The Molossians and Atintânes, who also joined the force, were under Sabylinthus, regent on behalf of the young prince Tharypas. There came, besides, the Paranæi, from the banks of the river Aôus under their king Orœdus, together with one thousand Orestæ, a tribe rather Macedonian than Epirot, sent by their king Antiochus. Even king Perdikkas, though then nominally in alliance with Athens, sent one thousand of his Macedonian subjects, who, however, arrived too late to be of any use.[335] This large and diverse body of Epirotic invaders, a new phenomenon in Grecian history, and got together doubtless by the hopes of plunder, proves the extensive relations of the tribes of the interior with the city of Ambrakia,—a city destined to become in later days the capital of the Epirotic king Pyrrhus. [335] Thucyd. ii, 80.