Philip Returns To the Peloponnese
And so the first year of this Olympiad was drawing
note
to a close. In Aetolia, the time of the elections
having come round, Dorimachus was elected
Strategus. He was no sooner invested with his
office, than, summoning the Aetolian forces,
he made an armed foray upon the highlands of Epirus, and began wasting the country with an
even stronger passion for destruction than usual; for his
object in everything he did was not so much
to secure booty for himself, as to damage the note
Epirotes. And having come to Dodona note he burnt the colonnades, destroyed the sacred offerings, and even demolished
the sacred building; so that we may say that the Aetolians
-- 339 --
had no regard for the laws of peace or war, but in the one as
well as in the other, acted in defiance of the customs and
principles of mankind. After those, and other similar achievements, Dorimachus returned home.
But the winter being now considerably advanced, and all note
idea of the king coming being given up owing
to the time of the year, Philip suddenly started
from Larisa with an army of three thousand hoplites armed
with brass shields, two thousand light-armed, three hundred
Cretans, and four hundred horse of the royal guard; and
having transported them into Euboea and thence to Cynos he
came through Boeotia and the Megarid to
Corinth, about the time of the winter solstice;
having conducted his arrival with such promptitude and
secrecy, that not a single Peloponnesian suspected it. note He at
once closed the gates of Corinth and secured the roads by
guards; and on the very next day sent for Aratus the elder
to come to him from Sicyon, and issued despatches to the
Strategus of the Achaean league and the cities, in which he
named a time and place for them all to meet him in arms.
Having made these arrangements, he again started, and pitched
his camp near the temple of the Dioscuri in Phliasia.
