The Mamertines, the band of Campanian mercenaries…

Gonatus also supports the pro-Macedonian faction in various cities in the Peloponnese and the rise to power of tyrants in Sicyon, …

…Argos, …

…Elis, and …

…Megalopolis.

The Aetolian League is one of the most important Greek confederations.

The federal constitution of Aetolia, probably a model for that of the Achaean League, provides for two main ruling bodies.

The primary assembly, composed of all adult male citizens and presided over by the annually elected general (strategos), meets at Thermum to elect officials and at various cities to transact other business.

In the council (boule or synedrion), which supervises administration, cities are represented in proportion to their populations.

Apokletoi, a small group of at least thirty who are assigned essential duties in wartime, assist the strategos, who has complete control in the field.

Leadership within the league is always kept in Aetolian hands, since the more distant states, which are linked to the confederacy by isopolity (potential citizenship), have full civil, but no political, rights.

The Aetolian League in about 270 gains an alliance with Antigonus.

…as king of Syracuse; he rules as Hiero II.

The Romans, in 268 BCE, establish the colony of Ariminum, probably from the name of a nearby river, Ariminus (today, Marecchia) at the mouth of the Ariminus river, in an area of north central Italy that had previously been inhabited by the Etruscans, the Umbrians, the Greeks and the Gauls.

Previously the area had been Gaulish, from the sixth century BCE, to that group's final defeat in 283 BCE by the Umbri, in whose possession it has remained until now.

Throughout the Roman period of rule, Rimini is to be a key communications link between the north and south of the peninsula.

Modern Rimini, a medium-sized city in the Emilia-Romagna region of Italy, and capital city of the Province of Rimini, is one of the most famous seaside resorts in Europe, thanks to its fifteen-kilometer-long sandy beach, over a thousand hotels and thousands of bars, restaurants and discos.

Macedon, its vigor restored, needs only to gain mastery over the Aegean Sea in order to keep Greece in a state of complete dependency by controlling the straits and the supply of grain from the southern Russian region.

To avert this danger to Hellas, …

…King Areus of Sparta and …

…the city of Athens—urged on by Ptolemy II of Hellenistic Egypt and receiving some support from Epirus—declare a war against Macedon for the liberation of Greece: the so-called Chremonidean War (266-262), named for Athens' leader, the handsome Chremonides.

In Athens itself, the Lyceum had declined considerably in importance by the time of Strabo’s death in 269.