Geography

​The Achaeans indeed continued for twenty years having a common secretary and two generals annually, and their common council assembled in one place (it was called Hamarion), in which both they and, formerly, the Ionians transacted public business; afterwards, it was decided to elect one general. And Aratus, having served as general, took Acrocorinthus away from Antigonus, and added the city to the Achaeans, just as he had done with his own homeland; he also won over the Megarians; and by abolishing the tyrannies in each of the states, he made the liberated peoples Achaeans; and he freed the Peloponnesus from tyrannies, so that Argos, Hermione, Phlius, and Megalopolis, the largest of the cities in Arcadia, were added to the Achaeans, at which time indeed they increased to their greatest extent. This was the period when the Romans, having expelled the Carthaginians from Sicily, made a campaign against the Galatians about the Padus. The Achaeans, remaining well-united until the generalship of Philopoemen, were gradually dissolved, since the Romans now held the whole of Greece and did not treat all in the same manner, but wished to maintain some together and to dissolve others. ​The order of the places, which they inhabited after being divided into twelve parts, is somewhat as follows: after Sicyon lies Pellene; then Aegeira is second; third is Aegae, which has a temple of Poseidon; fourth is Bura; after it is Helice, into which the Ionians had fled for refuge when they were conquered in battle by the Achaeans, and from which they were finally expelled; and after Helice, Aegium, Rhypes, Patrae, and Pharae; then Olenus, near which is the Peirus, a large river; then Dyme and Tritaeis. The Ionians, then, lived in villages, but the Achaeans founded cities, into some of which they afterwards brought as joint settlers some of the other parts, just as they merged Aegae into Aegeira (the inhabitants were called Aegaeans) and Olenus into Dyme. And traces of the ancient settlement of the Olenians are pointed out between Patrae and Dyme; and there is also the famous temple of Asclepius, which is forty stadia distant from Dyme and eighty from Patrae. And of the same name as this Aegae are the Aegae in Euboea, and of the same name as Olenus is the settlement in Aetolia, which itself also preserves only traces. But the poet does not mention the Olenus in Achaea, just as he does not mention several others of those who lived about the Aegialus, but speaks more generally: “And along the whole Aegialus and about spacious Helice.” But he mentions the Aetolian Olenus when he says: “They who inhabited Pleuron and Olenus.” And he mentions both places named Aegae, the Achaean one: “They bring gifts to you to Helice and Aegae.” And when he says: “ To Aegae, where is his famous palace in the depths of the lake;” “There Poseidon stayed his horses,” it is better to understand the Aegae in Euboea, from which it is probable that the Aegean Sea was also named; and there too is where the activity of Poseidon concerning the Trojan War is represented as taking place. And near the Achaean Aegae flows the River Crathis, increased by two rivers, having its name from being mixed; from which also the Crathis in Italy is named.