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97.
The Messenians gave the same advice to Demosthenes that they had done before and, alleging that the conquest of the Aetolians would be but easy, willed him to march with all speed against them, village after village, and not to stay till they were all united and in order of battle against him but to attempt always the place which was next to hand.
[2]
He, persuaded by them and confident of his fortune because nothing had crossed him hitherto, without tarrying for the Locrians that should have come in with their aids (for his greatest want was of darters light-armed), marched to Aegitium, which approaching he won by force, the men having fled secretly out and encamped themselves on the hills above it;
for it stood in a mountainous place and about eighty furlongs from the sea.
[3]
But the Aetolians (for by this time they were come with their forces to Aegitium) charged the Athenians and their confederates and, running down upon them, some one way and some another, from the hills, plied them with their darts.
And when the army of the Athenians assaulted them, they retired;
and when it retired, they assaulted.
So that the fight for a good while was nothing but alternate chase and retreat, and the Athenians had the worst in both.
The English works of Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury. Thucydides. Thomas Hobbes. translator. London. Bohn. 1843.
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