History of the Peloponnesian War

It is reported that Apollo by his oracle did assign this place for an habitation to Alcmaeon the son of Amphiareus, at such time as he wandered up and down for the killing of his mother, telling him that he should never be free from the terrors that haunted him till he had found out and seated himself in such a land as when he slew his mother, the sun had never seen nor was then land because all other lands were polluted by him. Hereupon being at a nonplus, as they say, with much ado he observed this ground congested by the river Achelöus and thought there was enough cast up to serve his turn already since the time of the slaughter of his mother, after which it was now a long time that he had been a wanderer.

Therefore, seating himself in the places about the Oeniades, he reigned there and named the country after the name of his son Acarnas. Thus goes the report, as we have heard it concerning Alcmaeon.

But Phormio and the Athenians, leaving Acarnania and returning to Naupactus, in the very beginning of the spring came back to Athens and brought with them such galleys as they had taken and the freemen they had taken prisoners in their fights at sea, who were again set at liberty by exchange of man for man.

So ended that winter, and the third year of the war written by Thucydides.

The summer following, the Peloponnesians and their confederates, at the time when corn was at the highest, entered with their army into Attica under the conduct of Archidamus, the son of Zeuxidamus, king of the Lacedaemonians, and there set them down and wasted the territory about.