The country forms no contrasts, and has no deep valleys with lakes like Aetolia; it has no high mountains, but is a fertile hilly country, with alluvial soil, though not to any great extent, on the coast and the Achelous: the soil is throughout light and good. As regards the political constitution of the Acarnanians, even Polybius speaks of the κοινὸν τῶν Ἀκαρνάνων, so that they must have formed a regularly organised state, no doubt with a common strategus. As far as their manners are concerned, the same historian classes them among the less civilised tribes, for they went about in arms. They did not, like the Aetolians, consist of tribes that were essentially foreign to each other, but of kindred settlers in towns. Nations which, like the Aetolians, are destined by nature to lead a pastoral life, cannot have any important settlements in towns any more than the little cantons of Switzerland; but Acarnania is a thoroughly agricultural country, producing corn and olives, and towns accordingly arose from the nature of circumstances; pastoral life prevailed only in the mountains. These towns had no separate existence independently of the common government of the state; each of them had no doubt its own municipal freedom, but in their relation to foreign countries, they were dependent. This is implied in the term τὸ κοινόν, Latin, _commune_. In the Peloponnesian war, STRATOS was the capital of the country, but it was taken by the Aetolians, to whom it belonged in the time of Polybius. Its walls are still preserved, and they not only show that, as Thucydides says, it was the largest town of Acarnania, but absolutely a large town of an astonishing circumference. But these countries are so different from those of the intellectual Greeks, that no ruins are found attesting the existence of splendid buildings. Stratos is the only one among the genuine Acarnanian towns, that deserves to be noticed. OENIADAE, at the mouth of the Achelous, is often mentioned as an Achaean town, and its true character is therefore a real puzzle. Xenophon calls it Achaean, and Scylax of Caryanda applies the name Ἀχαιοί and Ἀχαία to the whole coast from Cape Rhion as far as the Achelous, so that not only Oeniadae, but the other coast-towns, as for example, the little Chalcis, were connected with the Achaeans. Afterwards Oeniadae was taken by the Aetolians; it recovered indeed its independence, but was then conquered by the Acarnanians, and finally taken from them by the Romans. Whether on this last occasion the Achaeans again established their claims, cannot be ascertained. It is not impossible that it may have been an Achaean colony, as we find another in Zacynthos. The Corinthian colonies, the most remarkable of which were LEUCAS, ANACTORION, ALYZIA, and ACTION, were separated from Acarnania proper at an early period.