Philip received the news from <a class="linkToPlace" target="_blank" href="/place?placename=Macedonia&groupId=723&placeId=428">Macedonia</a>, and having thus at once reaped the fruits of the folly and selfishness of the Epirots, began to besiege Ambracus.
Pushing on his earthworks and other operations energetically he soon intimidated the defenders and in forty days captured the place.
Letting the garrison, consisting of five hundred Aetolians, depart on terms, he satisfied the desire of the Epirots by handing over Ambracus to them,
and himself advanced with his army by way of Charadra, with the object of crossing the gulf of Ambracia at its narrowest point by the Acarnanian temple called <a class="linkToPlace" target="_blank" href="/place?placename=Actium&groupId=280&placeId=552">Actium</a>.
For this gulf is an inlet of the Sicilian sea between Epirus and <a class="linkToPlace" target="_blank" href="/place?placename=Acarnania&groupId=270&placeId=527">Acarnania</a>, entered by a quite narrow mouth,
less than five stades across, but as it advances into the interior it expands to a width of a hundred stades from the sea. It divides Epirus from <a class="linkToPlace" target="_blank" href="/place?placename=Acarnania&groupId=270&placeId=527">Acarnania</a>, Epirus lying north of it and <a class="linkToPlace" target="_blank" href="/place?placename=Acarnania&groupId=270&placeId=527">Acarnania</a> south.
After taking his army across at its mouth and passing through <a class="linkToPlace" target="_blank" href="/place?placename=Acarnania&groupId=270&placeId=527">Acarnania</a> Philip reached the Aetolian city called Phoetiae, having been reinforced by two thousand Acarnanian foot and two hundred horse.
He encamped before this city and delivered for two days a series of assaults so vigorous and formidable that the Aetolian garrison surrendered upon conditions and were dismissed unhurt.
During the following night a force of five hundred Aetolians arrived to help under the impression that the city still held out. The king got word of their approach and, placing an ambuscade in a favourable spot, killed the greater number of them and took all the rest prisoners, except a very few.
After this, having distributed enough of the captured corn to his troops to last thirty days — a large quantity having been found stored at Phoetiae — he advanced, marching on the territory of Stratus.
Stopping at a distance of ten stades from the town he encamped by the river Achelous, and making forays from there, laid waste the country unopposed, none of the enemy venturing to come out to attack him.
Walbank Commentary