Page:History of Greece Vol III.djvu/427

AK AIINANIANS. - EPIROTS. 411 CHAPTER XXIV. AKAKNANIANS. - EPIKOTS. notice must be taken of those barbarous or non-Hel lenic nations who formed the immediate neighbors of Hellas, west of the range of Pindus, and north of that range which connects Pindus with Olympus, as well as of those other tribes, who, though lying more remote from Hellas proper, were yet brought into relations of traffic or hostility with the Hellenic colonies. Between the Greeks and these foreign neighbors, the Akarna- nians, of whom I have already spoken briefly in my preceding volume, form the proper link of transition. They occupied the territory between the river AchelOus, the Ionian sea, and the Am- brakian gulf: they were Greeks, and admitted as such to contend at the Pan-Hellenic games, 1 yet they were also closely connected with the Amphilochi and Agnti, who were not Greeks. In man- ners, sentiments, and intelligence, they were half-Hellenic and half-Epirotic, like the JEtolians and the Ozolian Lokrians. Even down to the time of Thucydides, these nations were subdi- vided into numerous petty communities, lived in unfortified vil- lages, w r ere frequently in the habit of plundering each other, and never permitted themselves to be unarmed : in case of attack, they withdrew their families and their scanty stock, chiefly cattle, to the shelter of difficult mountains or marshes. They were for the most part light-armed, few among them being trained to the panoply of the Grecian hoplite ; but they were both brave and skilful in their own mode of warfare, and the sling, in the hands of the Akarnanian, was a weapon of formidable efficiency. 2 Notwithstanding this state of disunion and insecurity, however, the Akarnanians maintained a loose political league among them- 1 See Aristot. Fragm. irepi Ho).iTEttiv, ed. Neumann: Frngin. 2, Kapva- uv TToT^tTela. 8 Pollux, i, ISO ; Thucvd. ii. 81.