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 油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 arrived at Stratum, where he met his army who were coming 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, m whom the supreme Dower was vested at the time. 1二.声 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护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 5oo men would be adequate for this purpose. When he had got this force he placed 300 men in Medione and zoo in Tyrrheum, his intention being that they should fall into the king's hands and be practically hostages.