With regard to the former our information is exceedingly scanty. They were said to have been an emigration from Elis originally;[104] but they were little known to the rest of Greece. Strange stories were told of them, of their savage mode of life, their scarcely intelligible language, their feeding on raw flesh, and their fierceness as soldiers. They were said to live in open villages, widely removed from each other, and without effective means of combination for mutual protection. Their piracies, which were chiefly directed to the coasts of Messenia, caused the Messenians to seize the opportunity of Demosthenes being in their neighbourhood in B.C. 426, with a considerable Athenian army, to persuade him to invade the Aetolians, who were always on the look-out to attack Naupactus, a town which the Athenians had held since B.C. 455,[105] and which was naturally an object of envy to them as commanding the entrance to the Corinthian gulf. But when Demosthenes attempted the invasion, he found to his cost that the Aetolians knew how to combine, and he had to retire beaten with severe loss.[106] The separate tribes in Aetolia seem soon afterwards to have had, if they had not already, some form of central government; for we find them negotiating with Agesilaus in B.C. 390, with the same object of obtaining Naupactus,[107] when the Athenians had lost it, and it had fallen into the hands of the Locrians.[108] The Aetolians appear to have gradually increased in importance: for we find Philip making terms with them and giving them the coveted Naupactus in B.C. 341, which had at some time previous come into the possession of the Achaeans.[109] But their most conspicuous achievement, which caused them to take a position of importance in Greece, was their brilliant defeat of the invading Gauls at Delphi in B.C. 279.[110] By this time their federal constitution must in some shape have been formed. The people elected a Strategus in a general meeting, usually held at Thermus, at the autumn equinox, to which apparently all Aetolians were at liberty to come, and at which questions of peace and war and external politics generally were brought forward; though meanwhile the Strategus appears to have had the right of declaring and carrying on war as he chose. There was also a hipparch and a secretary (21, 32); and a senate called Apocleti (20, 1); and a body called _Synedri_ (_C. I. G._ 2350), which seem to have been judicial, and another called _Nomographi_ (13, 1, _C. I. G._ 3046), who were apparently an occasional board for legislation. They produced some writers, but their works are lost. Accordingly, as Professor Mahaffy observes, “we know them entirely from their enemies.” Still the acknowledged principle on which they acted, ἄγειν λάφυρον ἀπὸ λαφύρου[111]—that is, that where spoils were going, whether from friend or foe, they were justified in taking a part, speaks for itself, and is enough to stamp them as at least dangerous and unpleasant neighbours.