Kitap 26
25
When Scopas heard that the king had gone into Thessaly, and was engaged in hostilities there, he called up all the fighting men of Aetolia and prepared to invade Acarnania. The Acarnanians were inferior to their enemy in strength; they were also aware that Oeniadae and Nasos were lost, and above all, that the arms of Rome were turned against them. Under these circumstances they entered upon the struggle more in a spirit of rage and despair than with prudence and method. Their wives and children and all men over sixty years of age were sent into the adjoining country of Epirus. All who were between fifteen and sixty bound themselves by oath not to return home unless they were victorious, and if any one left the field, defeated, no man should receive him into any city or house or admit him to his table or his hearth. They drew up a form of words, invoking a terrible curse upon any of their countrymen who should prove recreants, and a most solemn appeal to their hosts, the Epirotes, to respect their oath. They also begged them to bury those of their countrymen who fell in battle in one common grave and place over it this inscription: "Here lie the Acarnanians who met their death whilst fighting for their country against the violence and injustice of the Aetolians." In this determined and desperate mood, they fixed their camp on the extreme limit of their borders and awaited the enemy. Messengers were despatched to Philip to announce their critical situation, and in spite of his recapture of Iamphoryna and other successes in Thrace he was compelled to abandon his northern campaign and go to their assistance. Rumours of the oath which the Acarnanians had taken arrested the advance of the Aetolians; the news of Philip's approach compelled them to withdraw into the interior of their country. Philip had made a forced march to prevent the Acarnanians from being crushed, but he did not advance beyond Dium, and on learning that the Aetolians had retired he returned to Pella.
