Aetolian League - A Pirate State?

A Pirate State?

The Aetolian League acquired a reputation for piracy and brigandage. Though there is some recognition that Polybius was to an extent following an Achaean bias in his portrayal of the League thus, many modern historians have accepted this portrayal as in the main justified. For example, Walbank is explicit in seeing the Aetolians as systematically using piracy to supplement their income because of the meager resources of their region while Will simply assumes the truth of the charge. Grainger devotes a whole chapter to examining Aetolian involvement in piracy along with the charges that the Aetolians were temple robbers. He finds it hard to credit that Aetolia was involved in piracy given that Aetolia lacked a fleet of even the basic sort. Further by contrast with more general historians, those that have made specific studies of piracy and brigandage barely mention Aetolia. He lists the times that the Aetolians were accused of temple robbery and argues that the weight of these accusations should take into account that these are usually made by political opponents of the League and refer to occasions that were already some way in the past when the accusations were made.