Greek Texts & Translations

This was a most unexpected relief to the Medionians. They met in public assembly and deliberated on the whole business, and especially as to the inscribing the arms reserved for dedication. They decided, in mockery of the Aetolian decree, that the inscription should contain the name of the Aetolian commander on the day of battle, and of the candidates for succession to his office. And indeed Fortune seems, in what happened to them, to have designed a display of her power to the rest of mankind. The very thing which these men were in momentary expectation of undergoing at the hands of their

enemies, she put it in their power to inflict upon those enemies, and all within a very brief interval. The unexpected disaster of the Aetolians, too, may teach all the world not to calculate on the future as though it were the actually existent, and not to reckon securely on what may still turn out quite otherwise, but to allow a certain margin to the unexpected. And as this is true everywhere and to every man, so is it especially true in war.

When his galleys returned, and he heard from his officers ^note the events of the expedition, King Agron was so beside himself with joy at the idea of having conquered the Aetolians, whose confidence in their own prowess had been extreme, that, giving himself over to excessive drinking and other similar indulgences, he was attacked by a pleurisy of which in a few days he died. His wife Teuta succeeded him on the throne; and managed the various details of administration by means of friends whom she could trust. But her woman's head had been turned by the success just related, and she fixed her gaze upon that, and had no eyes for anything going on outside the country. Her first measure was to grant letters of marque to privateers, authorising them to plunder all whom they fell in with; and she next collected a fleet and military force as large as the former one, and despatched them with general instructions to the leaders to regard every land as belonging to an enemy.