History of the Peloponnesian War

There is a story that when Alemaeon son of Amphiaraus was a wanderer after the murder of his mother,[*](Eriphyle.) Apollo directed him by oracle to inhabit this land, intimating that he would have no release from his fears until he should find and settle in a country which at the time he killed his mother had not yet been seen by the sun, and was not even land then, for all the rest of the earth had been polluted by him.

And he, in his perplexity, at last, as the story goes, observed this sand-bar formed by the Achelous, and he surmised that during the long time he had been wandering since he had slain his mother enough land would have been silted up to support life in. So he settled there in the region of Oeniadae, founded a principality, and left to the country its name Acarnania, after that of his son Acarnan. Such is the tradition which we have received concerning Alcmaeon.

The Athenians and Phormio set out from Acarnania and arrived at Naupactus, and later, at the beginning of spring, sailed back to Athens, bringing with them the captured ships and also the prisoners of free birth whom they had taken in the sea-fights. These were exchanged man for man.

And this winter ended, concluding the third year of this war of which Thucydides wrote the history.

During the following summer, when the grain[*](428 B.C.) was ripening, the Peloponnesians and their allies made an expedition into Attica under the leadership of Archidamus son of Zeuxidamus, king of the Lacedaemonians, and settling in camp proceeded to ravage