36.11
The
king left Demetrias for Chalcis. Here he fell in love with a daughter of
Cleoptolemus, a Chalcidian magnate, and after numerous communications to
her father followed by personal interviews (for he was reluctant to be
entangled in an alliance so far above his own rank) Antiochus married the
girl. The wedding was celebrated as though it were a time of peace, and
forgetting the two vast enterprises in which he had embarked -war with
Rome and the liberation of Greece -he dismissed all his cares and spent the
rest of the winter in banquets and the pleasures attendant on wine, sleeping
off his debauches, wearied rather than satisfied. All the king's officers who
were in command of the different winter stations, especially those in
Boeotia, fell into the same dissolute mode of life; even the common soldiers
were completely sunk in it, not a man amongst them ever put on his armour
or went on duty as guard or sentry, or discharged any military duty
whatever. When, therefore, at the commencement of spring Antiochus
passed through Phocis on his way to Chaeronea, where he had given orders
for the whole of his army to muster, it was easy for him to see that the men
had passed the winter under no stricter discipline than their leader. From
Chaeronea he ordered Alexander the Acarnanian and the Macedonian
Menippus to take the troops to Stratus in Aetolia. He himself, after
sacrificing to Apollo at Delphi, went to Naupactus. Here he had an interview
with the Aetolian leaders, and then taking the road which runs past Calydon
and Lysimachia he arrived at Stratum, where he met his army who were
coming by the Maliac Gulf. Mnasilochus, one of the leading men in
Acarnania, who had received many presents from Antiochus, was trying to
persuade his people to take the king's side. He had succeeded in bringing
Clytus, in whom the supreme power was vested at the time, over to his
views, but he saw that there would be difficulty in inducing Leucas, the
capital, to revolt from Rome, owing to their fear of the Roman fleet under
Atilius, a portion of which was cruising off Cephalania. He therefore decided
to adopt a ruse. At a meeting of the council he told them that the ports of
Acarnania ought to be protected and that all who could bear arms ought to
go to Medione and Tyrrheum to prevent their being seized by Antiochus and
the Aetolians. Some of those present protested against this indiscriminate
calling out of their fighting strength as quite unnecessary and said that a
force of 500 men would be adequate for this purpose. When he had got this
force he placed 300 men in Medione and 200 in Tyrrheum, his intention
being that they should fall into the king's hands and be practically hostages.
