friendship for Athens did not, as he anticipated, at once decide
them to do so. Arrived in Phocis he was already upon the frontier of
Boeotia. He accordingly weighed from Leucas, against the wish of the
Acarnanians, and with his whole armament sailed along the coast to
Sollium, where he communicated to them his intention; and upon their
refusing to agree to it on account of the non-investment of Leucas,
himself with the rest of the forces, the Cephallenians, the
Messenians, and Zacynthians, and three hundred Athenian marines from
his own ships (the fifteen Corcyraean vessels having departed),
started on his expedition against the Aetolians. His base he
established at Oeneon in Locris, as the Ozolian Locrians were allies
of Athens and were to meet him with all their forces in the
interior. Being neighbours of the Aetolians and armed in the same way,
it was thought that they would be of great service upon the
expedition, from their acquaintance with the localities and the
warfare of the inhabitants.
After bivouacking with the army in the precinct of Nemean Zeus, in
which the poet Hesiod is said to have been killed by the people of the
country, according to an oracle which had foretold that he should
die in Nemea, Demosthenes set out at daybreak to invade Aetolia. The
first day he took Potidania, the next Krokyle, and the third
Tichium, where he halted and sent back the booty to Eupalium in
Locris, having determined to pursue his conquests as far as the
Ophionians, and, in the event of their refusing to submit, to return
to Naupactus and make them the objects of a second expedition.
Meanwhile the Aetolians had been aware of his design from the moment
of its formation, and as soon as the army invaded their country came
up in great force with all their tribes; even the most remote
Ophionians, the Bomiensians, and Calliensians, who extend towards
the Malian Gulf, being among the number.
The Messenians, however, adhered to their original advice.
Assuring Demosthenes that the Aetolians were an easy conquest, they
urged him to push on as rapidly as possible, and to try to take the
villages as fast as he came up to them, without waiting until the
whole nation should be in arms against him. Led on by his advisers and
trusting in his fortune, as he had met with no opposition, without
waiting for his Locrian reinforcements, who were to have supplied
him with the light-armed darters in which he was most deficient, he
advanced and stormed Aegitium, the inhabitants flying before him and
posting themselves upon the hills above the town, which stood on
high ground about nine miles from the sea. Meanwhile the Aetolians had
gathered to the rescue, and now attacked the Athenians and their
allies, running down from the hills on every side and darting their
javelins, falling back when the Athenian army advanced, and coming
on as it retired; and for a long while the battle was of this
character, alternate advance and retreat, in both which operations the
Athenians had the worst.
Still as long as their archers had arrows left and were able to
use them, they held out, the light-armed Aetolians retiring before the
arrows; but after the captain of the archers had been killed and his
men scattered, the soldiers, wearied out with the constant
repetition of the same exertions and hard pressed by the Aetolians
with their javelins, at last turned and fled, and falling into
pathless gullies and places that they were unacquainted with, thus
perished, the Messenian Chromon, their guide, having also
unfortunately been killed. A great many were overtaken in the
pursuit by the swift-footed and light-armed Aetolians, and fell
beneath their javelins; the greater number however missed their road
and rushed into the wood, which had no ways out, and which was soon
fired and burnt round them by the enemy. Indeed the Athenian army fell
victims to death in every form, and suffered all the vicissitudes of
flight; the survivors escaped with difficulty to the sea and Oeneon in
Locris, whence they had set out. Many of the allies were killed, and
about one hundred and twenty Athenian heavy infantry, not a man