Akarnanian League in 218 B.C.

Akarnanian League — Spring 218 BC · The Social War.

The federal koinon of the Akarnanians — a rustic, hardy people of the far west of Greece, between the Achelous river and the Ionian Sea. One of the oldest of the leagues, and one of the most loyal: in 218 it stands with Philip V and the Hellenic Symmachy against its ancient enemy, the Aetolian League, which had seized its border country and once tried, with Achaea, to carve it up entirely.

A generation ago the Aetolians and Achaeans agreed to partition Akarnania between them; only the intervention of Demetrius II of Macedon saved the league from dismemberment, binding it ever after to the Antigonid house. Now, in the Social War, the Akarnanians are among Philip V’s staunchest allies, raiding Aetolia from the west while he strikes from the north — repaying an old debt against the neighbours who had stripped them of Oeniadai and the mouths of the Achelous.