a group of islands off the coast of Arcania, at the mouth of the river Achelous. They are mentioned by Homer as having sent a detachment of troops to Troy under Meges. The chief island seems to have been Dulichium, which some of the ancients considered as only another name for Cephallenia; but Strabo strenuously maintained that it was the Dolicha of his period, at the mouth of the Achelous. It is curious that Herodotus (xi. 10), tells us that more than half of these islands had been joined in his time to the mainland by the depositions of the river, and Thucydides (xi. 102), enters into a learned disquisition to prove that they must all ere long be united to the shore. This observation of Thucydides had attracted the attention of the inquisitive Pausanias; and as he found that the prediction had not been verified, he was only able to account for it by supposing that the lands had ceased to be cultivated on its banks, and that thus it was no longer supplied with the same quantity of sediment as before. Strabo states that they were rugged and barren.

"At present the Echinades belong to the inhabitants of Ithaca, and produce corn, oil, and a scanty pasture for sheep and goats. The name of the group is Curzolari." Dodwell's Classical Tour, v. p. 109. Gell states that several of these islands, now hills in the plain, appear to have ruins. Itiner. of Greece, p. 298.