Page:The geography of Strabo (1854) Volume 2.djvu/182

174 STRABO. CASATJB. 461. We have shown by the Catalogue of the Ships in Homer, that the Acarnanians were enumerated among the people who took part in the war of Troy ; and among these are reckoned the inhabitants of the Acte, and besides these, " they who occupied Epirus, and cultivated the land opposite." But Epirus was never called Acarnania, nor Acte, Leucas. 25. Ephorus does not say that they took part in the expe- dition against Troy ; but he says that Alcmseon, the son of Amphiaraus, who was the companion of Diornede, and the other Epigoni in their expedition, having brought the war against the Thebans to a successful issue, went with Diomede to assist in punishing the enemies of (Eneus, and having de- livered up -ZEtolia to Diomede, he himself passed over into Acarnania, which country also he subdued. In the mean time Agamemnon attacked the Argives, and easily overcame them, the greatest part having attached themselves to the fol- lowers of Diomede. But a short time afterwards, when the expedition took place against Troy, he was afraid, lest, in his absence with the army, Diomede and his troops should return home, (for there was a rumour that he had collected a large force,) and should regain possession of a territory to which they had the best right, one being the heir of Adrastus, the other of his father. Reflecting then on these circumstances, he invited them to unite in the recovery of Argos, and to take part in the war. Diomede consented to take part in the expedition, but Alcma3on was indignant and refused ; whence the Acarnanians were the only people who did not partici- pate in the expedition with the Greeks. The Acarnanians, probably by following this account, are said to have imposed upon the Romans, and to have obtained from them the privi- lege of an independent state, because they alone had not taken part in the expedition against the ancestors of the Ro- mans, for their names are neither in the JEtolian Catalogue, nor are they mentioned by themselves, nor is their name mentioned anywhere in the poem. 26. Ephorus then having represented Acarnania as subject to Alcmason before the Trojan war, "ascribes to him the found- ation of Amphilochian Argos, and says that Acarnania had its name from his son Acarnan, and the Amphilochians from his brother Amphilochus ; thus he turns aside to reports con- trary to the history in Homer. But Thucydides and other