ACCRA. 



ACHAEA. 



50 





others, were occupied by Corinthian colonies ; whilst the Acarnanians, 

 engaged in continual wars with their neighbours, are characterised by 

 Thucydides as pirates and robbers at a time when Athens (which was 

 not 150 miles from the mouth of the Acheloua), had seen the dramas 

 of ^Eschylus and Sophocles, and was adorned with the works of Phidias. 

 The chief wealth of the inhabitants, in ancient as in modern times, 



<'d in their flocks and herds. Pliny mentions iron mines, and 

 also a pearl fishery off Actium. Modern travellers include among the 

 mineral treasures of Acarnania copper, and abundance of coal and 

 . ulphur. 



The Acarnanians are never mentioned by Homer, though their neigh- 

 bours the .-Etolians are. The name of Acarnania was most probably 

 unknown in his time, for he includes this part of Greece under the 

 general term Epeirus, or main-land. The inhabitants are supposed to 

 have been descended chiefly from the Leleges, a widely diffused race, 

 who mingled with the Curetes on their expulsion from JEtol'm, and 

 with the Taphii or Telabo:e, who inhabited the islands off the western 



and were noted pirates. There is a tradition that Acarnan, son 

 i if Alcmaeon the Argive, settled at the mouth of the Achelous, and 

 gave name to the country. In the 7th century B.C. the Corinthians 

 founded several colonies along the coast, and the original inhabitants 

 were driven more into the interior. 



'I'h it the Acarnanians were Greeks is proved by their being allowed 

 to contend at the Pan-Hellenic games. They were remarkable for 

 their courage and fidelity, made good light-armed troops, ami were 

 famous slingen. They lived dispersed in villages, but were united in 

 a political league which Aristotle thought worth describing, but his 

 work is lost. The league wag presided over by a strategus or general, 

 :'iid there was a council and general assembly of the people, by which 

 decrees were passed. The league met at Stratus, the most ancient 

 capital of Acamania, and in Koman times at Thyrium and Leucas. 

 Judicial meetings for the pettlemeut of disputes were held in early 



on the fortified hill of Olpae, near the Amphilochiau Argos. 



Hatred of the Corinthians, who held all their best ports, and the 



^i/.mv i if A mphilochian Argos by the Corinthian colonista of Ambracia, 



induced the Acarnanians to seek aid from Athens. An expedition 



.ut by the Athenians, under Phormio, expelled the Ambraciote, 



^tored the town to the Amphilochians and Acarnanians. From 

 this time there was a close alliance between Acarnania and Athens, 

 i tended greatly to support the supremacy of the latter in western 

 Greece. Commanded by Demosthenes, the Acarnanians defeated a 

 I'eloponuesian army at Olpse, in B.C. 426. In a war with the Achaeans, 

 :!5 years later, Acarnania was ravaged by a Spartan army, under 

 AgeailauB, whose aid had been invoked by the Achaeans. After the time 

 nf Alexander the Great the /Etolians conquered many of the Acarna- 

 aiau towns ; and the Acarnanians allied themselves, in consequence, 

 with the Macedonian kings, to whom they remained faithful till the 

 capture of their chief town, Leucas, and the defeat of Philip at Cyno- 

 cephalae, when they submitted to the Romans. The Acarnanians sided 

 with Antiochus, King of Syria, in his invasion of Greece, B.C. 191, but 

 soon after fell again under the sway of Rome. 



Bordering on Acarnania, on the north-cant, was the territory of 



i h, with it capital, Argog, was sometimes reckoned 



a part of Acarnania, owing to the political connexion between the two 



. It lay on the south-east and eastern coast of the Ambraciot 

 * i ul f ; :i nd its eastern boundary may have been the Achelous, or rather 

 the mountain-chain which here forms the western margin of the basin 



i river. Tradition named Amjiliilnohus, the son of Amphiaraus, 



the state of Amphilochia, and of its capital, Argos, 



after his return from the war of Troy. [ARGOS.] Amphilochia, 



!:IT with Acarnania, became part of the Roman province of 



ACCRA, one of the forts in the English colony of Gold Coast, Western 

 Africa ; in "> :v>' X. Ut., 12' W. long. A jail has been lately built 

 within tlie fort.. \C\\-\, COAST C n COAST.] 



AcriMNGToX, Lancashire, a manufacturing town of recent 



growth, in the parish of Whalley and higher division of Blackburn 



hundred, is. situated in a deep valley surrounded by hills on the banks 



of the Hindburn, or Accrington brook, in 53 45' N. lat.. 2' 22' W. 



X. from Manchester, 207 miles N.W. by N. 



road, and 210 miles by the North Western and 



Kast Lanca iys. The population of the town in 1851 was 



The livings are perpetual curacies in the archdeaconry and 



diocese of Manchester. 



Accrington possesses two churches of the Establishment ; one, the 

 . U a plain building ; the other, Christ Chuivh, is a 

 erected in 1838, at an expense of about SOOOl, 

 Mts, Independents, Baptists. Roman Catholics, 

 i ms have places of worship. There are National 

 !H, schooli attached to some of the Dissenting chapels, a sub- 

 on library, two news-rooms, and a savings bank. The town is 

 m, and well supplied with water. The general 

 vn in good, and the inhabitants claim for it the dis- 

 the cleanest town in Lancashire. It requires, bow- 

 many sanit '.i:il!v iii t.lie smaller streets 

 lies. The drainage is ... Accrington is considered 

 to be the centre of th cotton-printing i I'liere are two Urge 

 '.vorkx, employing upwards of 1000 hand*, 10 cotton factories, 

 1 or., i. 



employing about 1500 persons, and extensive bleaching works. The 

 neighbouring coal-mines employ many of the inhabitants. 



ACHAEA, a province of the Peloponnesus, extending along the 

 south shore of the Corinthian Gulf, from the river Larissus near 

 Cape Araxus, which separated it from Elis, to the Sythas, by which 

 it was divided from Sicyonia. On the south it was bounded by 

 Arcadia. The greatest length between the western and eastern boun- 

 daries is about 65 miles; the breadth varies from about 12 to 20 

 miles. The area ia about 650 square miles. Being for the most part 

 only a narrow slip between the Arcadian mountains and the sea, the 

 courses of the numerous streams that flow into the Corinthian Gulf 

 are short ; and many of them are quite dry in summer. The province 

 contains many defiles and mountain-passes formed by the great Arca- 

 dian ridge, branches of which, in some parts, run down to the gulf, 

 inclosing valleys of great fertility. The coast is generally low, and 

 has few good ports. Colonel Leake in his ' Peloponuesiaca ' remarks, 

 that the level land along the coast " appears to have been formed in 

 the course of ages by the soil deposited by the torrents which descend 

 from the lofty mountains immediately at the back of the plains. 

 Wherever the rivers are largest the plains are most extensive, and 

 each river has its corresponding promontory, proportioned in like 

 manner to its volume. These promontories .ire in general nearly 

 opposite to the openings at which the rivers emerge from the 

 mountains." 



The Mons Panachaicus, near Patrae, was the highest mountain in 

 Acluca, being 6322 feet high. Drepanum, the most northern point of 

 the Peloponnesus, Rhium, which with Antirrhium on the northern 

 shore formed the entrance to the Corinthian Gulf, and Araxus, west 

 of Dyme and formerly on the boundary between Achaea and Elis, 

 were the chief promontories. 



Before this country was occupied by the Achaei, it was called 

 ^gialos (coast), afterwards Ionia, and sometimes ^Egialeian Ionia, 

 which probably means no more than ' Ionia' on the sea-coast : ' it 

 then contained 12 cities or states. The same number of political 

 divisions subsisted under the Achjei in the time of Herodotus, and 

 retained their names under Roman dominion ; at present PcUne, now 

 Patras, situated on the coast, about 6 miles from the entrance of the 

 Gulf of Corinth, is the only one of the Achaean towns that maintains 

 any importance. The very sites of some of them are doubtful or 

 unknown. Vostitza is probably the ancient Jigium, where the states 

 of Achaea used to meet. Helicc, on the coast, was destroyed by an 

 earthquake, accompanied by an irruption of the sea, B.C. 373. (Pausanias, 

 b. 7, chap. 24.) Burn, at the same time, was so violently shaken, that 

 the old statues in the temples were destroyed, and only those persons 

 escaped who happened to be absent from the town. Their descend- 

 ants were the people who formed one of the members of the subsequent 

 Achaean confederation. 



After the Roman conquest of Greece, the term Achsca received an 

 extension in its signification, principally due to the importance which 

 the Achaean league had obtained. The Roman province of Achooa 

 comprehended all Peloponnesus with northern Greece south of 

 Thessaly, perhaps not including Aearnauia. But it is exceedingly 

 difficult to fix the precise limits of the Roman provinces of Macedonia 

 and Achaea. Nicopolis, a town which Augustus built near the 

 northern entrance of the Ambraciot Gulf, to commemorate his victory 

 at Actium, is included in the province of Achva, in a passage of 

 Tacitus (' Annals,' ii. 53). Ptolemy (iii. 2) assigns Acarnania *o 

 Epirus. The towns generally preserved their own internal adminis- 

 tration, except that the municipal power was put into the hands of 

 the richer citizens. Achaea now forms with Elis a nomot or department 

 of the kingdom of Greece, the population of which in 1851 was 116,699. 



Acluea was also an early name of the south-eastern portion of 

 Thessaly. It was the original abode of the Achicans, and contained 

 the districts of Phthia and Hellas ; the inhabitants of the former 

 were distinguished as Phthiotan Achieans from the Achoeans of 

 Pelopon neeus. 



The Achaei are first mentioned by Homer as the ruling people of the 

 eastern and south-eastern part of the Peloponnesus. Among the 

 chief places in their dominions were Argos, Sparta, Myceute (the 

 capital of Agamemnon), Corinth, Sicyon, and the island of vEgina. 

 Among the followers of Achilles to the war of Troy, Achaei are men- 

 tioned as well as Hellenes ; the latter name, in course of time, pre- 

 vailed so far as to become the characteristic name of all that people 

 whom we call Greek. From comparing Homer with Strabo and 

 Pausaniaa, we infer that the Achaei came from Thessaly, and that at 

 the time of the war of Troy, according to Homer's notion, they were 

 the ruling nation in a large part of the Peloponnesus, and the chief 

 people in the war against Troy. Homer calls the Greeks in general 

 Arliirans, and sometimes Panachaeaus ('II.' ii. 404; vii. 73): and 

 Peloponnesus and- sometimes the whole of Greece is designated by 

 him as the Achaean land. The dominions of Agamemnon comprised 

 the whole country afterwards called Achaea. 



The old tradition, as mentioned by Pausanias (vii. 1), is that 

 Archander and Architeles, the sons of Achacus, came to Argos from 

 Phthia (otherwise called Phthiotis) in Thessaly, and married two 

 daughters of Danaus, King of Argog. From this time the name of 

 Achaei prevailed in the IVlojionnesus as a general name, though 

 Homer also speaks of Argeii and Dunai ; the last name clearly having 



