so that, after keeping together for only quite a short time in the neighbourhood of the market-place, their passion for plunder caused them disperse, and, breaking into the houses, they began to plunder the property, it being now daylight.
The people of Aegeira had been entirely taken by surprise, and now those whose houses had been attacked by the enemy were all in the utmost state of terror and consternation, and fled out of the town in which they supposed the enemy to be already securely established.
Those, however, who came to assist on hearing the shouting and whose houses were still intact, all ran to the citadel.
Here they gradually increased in numbers and gained courage, while the collected force of the Aetolians on the contrary became ever smaller and more disordered for the reasons above-mentioned.
But Dorimachus, seeing now the danger that menaced them, got his men together and attacked the occupants of the citadel, thinking that by this bold and vigorous effort he would intimidate and put to flight those who had gathered to defend the city.
But the Aegiratans, cheering each other on, resisted and met the Aetolian attack most gallantly.
The citadel was unwalled, and the combat was a hand-to-hand one between man and man, so that at first there was a struggle as desperate as one would expect when the one side is fighting for their country and children and the other for their lives, but at the end the Aetolian invaders were put to flight.
The pursuit of the enemy by the Aegiratans, who took advantage of their higher position, was so vigorous and formidable, that most of the Aetolians owing to the state of panic they were in trampled each other to death in the gate.
Alexander fell fighting in the actual engagement and Archidamus perished in the suffocating crush at the gate.
The rest of the Aetolians were either trampled to death there or were dashed to pieces in their attempt to escape down the cliffs where there was no path.
The survivors who reached the ships after throwing away their shields managed, beyond hope and with the stigma of this disgrace, to sail away.
Thus did the Aegiratans lose their city by their negligence, and recover it again beyond hope by their courage and valour.
Walbank Commentary