<head>Career of Charops in Epirus</head>The condition of Aetolia at once improved when their civil broils were extinguished after the death of Lyciscus,
and the state of affairs became much better also in Boeotia, when Mnasippus of <a class="linkToPlace" target="_blank" href="/place?placename=Coronea&groupId=496&placeId=932">Coronea</a> had departed this life, and in <a class="linkToPlace" target="_blank" href="/place?placename=Acarnania&groupId=270&placeId=527">Acarnania</a> again the same took place when Chremas was removed.
We may almost say, in fact, that Greece underwent a sort of purgation by the deaths of these men who had been her curse.
For it happened that Charops of Epirus also ended his days at <a class="linkToPlace" target="_blank" href="/place?placename=Brundisium&groupId=411&placeId=762">Brundisium</a> during this year.
Epirus, however, remained still as in the preceding years in a very unsettled and disturbed state, all due to the cruelty and lawless violence exercised by Charops ever since the end of the war with Perseus.
For after the decision of Lucius Anicius and Lucius Aemilius to put some of the notables to death and transport to <a class="linkToPlace" target="_blank" href="/place?placename=Rome&groupId=935&placeId=1669">Rome</a> all those who had incurred the least suspicion,
Charops, being now at liberty to do what he wished,
committed every kind of crime either personally or through his friends, being himself very young, and all the worst and most unprincipled characters having gathered about him in the hope of stealing other people's property.
A sort of support and colour for the belief that he did all he did for valid reason, and with the approval of <a class="linkToPlace" target="_blank" href="/place?placename=Rome&groupId=935&placeId=1669">Rome</a>, lay in his previous close relations with the Romans and in his association with Myrton, an elderly man and his son Nicanor, both of them men of good character and supposed to be friends of the Romans.
They had been previously very far from being guilty of any wrong, but for some reason or other they now devoted themselves to the support of Charops and participation in his crimes.
After Charops had murdered some citizens openly in the market-place and others in their own houses, after he had sent emissaries to assassinate others at their country-seats and on the roads, and had confiscated the property of all who perished, he introduced a new device, which was to proscribe and sentence to exile all those who were well off, not only the men, but their wives.
Under the terror of this menace he went on extorting money himself from the men and from the women through his mother Philotis:
for she too was a great expert at this, and as regards the application of force more capable of helping him than one would expect from a woman.
Walbank Commentary