According to Polybius, the Aetolians were joined by nations which Thucydides still distinguishes from them; some of them are pure Epirot tribes, such as the Amphilochians and Agraeans. I shall speak of them afterwards when I come to Epirus, to which they belong, both ethnographically and geographically. They were probably the first that joined the Aetolians, although in the time of Pyrrhus they still belonged to Epirus, to which they had been ceded by Macedonia. ACARNANIA. Acarnania is the country on the western bank of the Achelous. The earliest notices of the Acarnanians in Thucydides down to those of the latest times, exhibit them in constant collision with the more powerful Aetolians, who endeavoured to unite them with themselves, and, as they resisted, tried to destroy them. They are not mentioned in the Homeric Catalogue; they regarded themselves as the youngest among the Greek peoples, and set it forth as a merit of their own, that they had taken no part in the expedition against the Trojans, the ancestors of the Romans. But we must not infer too much from this: it is certain that at the time when the Catalogue was composed, the interior, or principal part, of the country was inhabited by Epirots, that is, Pelasgians, while the coast was, in my opinion, occupied by Greeks. The people over whom Odysseus ruled were certainly not confined to the little island of Ithaca; they extended far and wide, and their common name was Cephallenians, which also embraced those who lived on the ἤπειρος, that is, in Acarnania, on the coast near the Echinades, in Leucas, and in the Echinades themselves. In the ante-historic times they are mentioned under the name of the Taphians, who afterwards disappear, but seem to have equalled the Minyans in greatness and power. Whether, on the destruction of the empire of Odysseus, the Cephallenians and Arcananians separated, whether they gained strength to extend their dominion towards the interior, or whether a Hellenic immigration peopled the country, are questions on which we cannot decide. The last, however, is the most probable, and is supported by the mythus about Alcmaeon, who is said to have gone to the Echinades; but, however this may be, in the earliest times they are not mentioned under the name Acarnanians. Herodotus speaks of Acarnanians (Ἀκαρνὴν ἀνήρ) even before the time of the Persian wars, in which they took no more part than the Aetolians: their distance seems to have separated them from the rest of the Greeks, so as to prevent their having any share in their doings. Afterwards, in the Peloponnesian war, they sided with the Ionians against the Dorians, being the allies of the Athenians from hatred of the Corinthians, who had established themselves on the coast of Acarnania, had there founded the colonies of Leucas, Anactorion, Alyzia, and the powerful town of Ambracia on the opposite coast, and were severely oppressive to the Acarnanians. This induced the latter to seek