“Agrius, Melas, and the hero Œneus, These dwelt at Pleuron, and the lofty Calydon,”[687] both of which are Ætolian cities, and are mentioned in the Ætolian Catalogue; wherefore since those who inhabited Pleuron appear to be, according to Homer, Curetes, they might be Ætolians. The opponents of this conclusion are misled by the mode of expression in these verses, “Curetes and Ætolians, firm in battle, were righting for the city Calydon,”[688] for neither would he have used appropriate terms if he had said, “Bœotians and Thebans were contending against each other,” nor “Argives and Peloponnesians.” But we have shown in a former part of this work, that this mode of expression is usual with Homer, and even trite among other poets. This objection then is easily answered. But let the objectors explain, how, if these people were not Ætolians, [CAS. 463] the poet came to reckon the Pleuronii among the Ætolians. 2. Ephorus, after having asserted that the nation of the Ætolians were never in subjection to any other people, but, from all times of which any memorial remains, their country continued exempt from the ravages of war, both on account of its local obstacles and their own experience in warfare, says, that from the beginning Curetes were in possession of the whole country, but on the arrival of Ætōlus, the son of Endymion, from Elis, who defeated them in various battles, the Curetes retreated to the present Acarnania, and the Ætolians returned with a body of Epeii, and founded ten of the most ancient cities in Ætolia; and in the tenth generation afterwards Elis was founded, in conjunction with that people, by Oxylus, the son of Hæmon, who had passed over from Ætolia. They produce, as proofs of these facts, inscriptions, one sculptured on the base of the statue of Ætolus at Therma in Ætolia, where, according to the custom of the country, they assemble to elect their magistrates; “this statue of Ætolus, son of Endymion, brought up near the streams of the Alpheius, and in the neighbourhood of the stadia of Olympia, Ætolians dedicated as a public monument of his merits.” And the other inscription on the statue of Oxylus is in the market-place of Elis; “Ætolus, having formerly abandoned the original inhabitants of this country, won by the toils of war the land of the Curetes. But Oxylus, the son of Hæmon, the tenth scion of that race, founded this ancient city.”