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lians, the poet came to reckon the Pleuronii among the Aeto lians. 2
Ephorus, after having asserted that the nation of the
Aetolians were never in subjection to any other people, but,
from all times of which any memorial remains, their country
continued exempt from the ravages of war, both on account of
its local obstacles and their own experience in warfare, says,
that from the beginning Curetes were in possession of the
whole country, but on the arrival of AetÅlus, the son of Endy-
nion, from Elis, who defeated them in various battles, the
Curetes retreated to the present Acarnania, and the Aetolians
returned with a body of Epeii, and founded ten of the most
ancient cities in Aetolia; and in the tenth generation afterwards Elis was founded, in conjunction with that people, by
Oxylus, the son of Haemon, who had passed over from Aetolia.
They produce, as proofs of these facts, inscriptions, one
sculptured on the base of the statue of Aetolus at Therma in
Aetolia, where, according to the custom of the country, they
assemble to elect their magistrates;
this statue of Aetolus, son of Endymion, brought up near the streams of
the Alpheius, and in the neighbourhood of the stadia of Olympia, Aetolians
dedicated as a public monument of his merits.
And the other inscription on the statue of Oxylus is in the
market-place of Elis;
aetolus, having formerly abandoned the original inhabitants of this
country, won by the toils of war the land of the Curetes. But Oxylus,
the son of Haemon, the tenth scion of that race, founded this ancient
city.
3
He rightly alleges, as a proof of the affinity subsisting reciprocally between the Eleii and the $Etolians, these inscriptions, both of which recognise not the affinity alone, but also that their founders had established settlers in each other's country. Whence he clearly convicts those of falsehood who assert, that the Eleii were a colony of Aetolians, and that the Aetolians were not a colony of Eleii. But he seems to exhibit the same inconsistency in his positions here, that we proved with regard to the oracle at Delphi. For after asserting that Aetolia had never been ravaged by war from all time of which there was any memorial, and saying, that from the first the Curetes were in possession of this country, he note
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Strabo, Geography (English) (XML Header) [genre: prose] [word count] [lemma count] [Str.].