HKB
[Sidenote: The plundering of Thermus.]
+8.+ At the end of this distance he arrived at the village of Pamphia; and having, as in the case of Panapa, secured it by a guard, he continued his advance towards Thermus: the road now being not only steep and exceedingly rough, but with deep precipices also on either side, so as to make the path in places very dangerous and narrow; and the whole ascent being nearly thirty stades. But having accomplished this also in a short time, thanks to the energy with which the Macedonians conducted the march, he arrived late in the day at Thermus. There he pitched a camp, and allowed his men to go off plundering the neighbouring villages and scouring the plain of Thermus, as well as to sack the dwelling-houses in Thermus itself, which were full, not only of corn and such like provisions, but of all the most valuable property which the Aetolians possessed. For as the annual fair and most famous games, as well as the elections, were held there, everybody kept their most costly possessions in store at Thermus, to enable them to entertain their friends, and to celebrate the festivals with proper magnificence. But besides this occasion for the employment of their property, they expected to find the most complete security for it there, because no enemy had ever yet ventured to penetrate to that place; while its natural strength was so great as to serve as an acropolis to the whole of Aetolia. The place therefore having been in the enjoyment of peace from time immemorial, not only were the buildings immediately round the temple filled with a great variety of property, but the homesteads on the outskirts also. For that night the army bivouacked on the spot laden with booty of every description; but the next morning they selected the most valuable and portable part of it, and making the rest into a heap in front of their tents, set fire to it. So also in regard to the dedicated arms which were hanging up in the porticoes,—those of them which were valuable they took down and carried off, some they exchanged for their own, while the rest they collected together and burnt. The number of these was more than fifteen thousand.
[Sidenote: Sacrilege committed at Thermus. Was it justifiable?]
+9.+ Up to this point everything was right and fair by the laws of war; but I do not know how to characterise their next proceedings. For remembering what the Aetolians had done at Dium[250] and Dodona,[251] they burnt the colonnades, and destroyed what were left of the dedicated offerings, some of which were of costly material, and had been elaborated with great skill and expense. And they were not content with destroying the roofs of these buildings with fire, they levelled them to their foundations; and threw down all the statues, which numbered no less than two thousand; and many of them they broke to pieces, sparing only those that were inscribed with the names or figures of gods. Such they did abstain from injuring. On the walls also they wrote the celebrated line composed by Samus, the son of Chrysogonus, a foster-brother of the king, whose genius was then beginning to manifest itself. The line was this—
“Seest thou the path the bolt divine has sped?”
And in fact the king and his staff were fully convinced that, in thus acting, they were obeying the dictates of right and justice, by retaliating upon the Aetolians with the same impious outrages as they had themselves committed at Dium.[252] But I am clearly of an opposite opinion. And the readiest argument, to prove the correctness of my view, may be drawn from the history of this same royal family of Macedonia.