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 turne