Stratos sat on the right bank of the Achelous River in what is now central Aetolia-Acarnania, 9 km northwest of modern Agrinio. The river made the city: navigable up to Stratos from the coast, the Achelous gave the city access to the maritime trade routes to Italy. That same navigability made Stratos a strategic prize worth fighting over, and the city responded by becoming the most heavily fortified place in Acarnania.

By the time of Thucydides in the 5th century BC, Stratos was already the capital of Acarnania. Federal assemblies were held there; judicial proceedings common to all Acarnanians took place within its walls. The city prospered greatly in the 5th century. Its position at the edge of the fertile Achelous plain, with mountains to the north and flat land to the south, gave it agricultural security to complement its military strength.

The city walls at Stratos were remarkable by any measure. Their total length was 7.5 kilometers, enclosing not just the city center but four long hills and three valleys — a perimeter that made Stratos one of the largest fortified cities in western Greece. The walls were built of massive stone blocks and studded with towers at intervals; their height and thickness were enough that they still stand in significant sections today.

Those walls were tested repeatedly. In 429 BC, during the Peloponnesian War, the Peloponnesians under the Spartan commander Knemos attacked Stratos and were, in Thucydides' account, defeated "with great slaughter." The city shifted alliances over the centuries — Spartan allies until 375 BC, then part of the Second Athenian League, then supporters of the Boeotians against Sparta, then aligned with Athens against Philip II of Macedon at Chaeronea. In 314 BC, Cassander of Macedon seized Stratos as a military base against the Aetolians. After 252 BC, the Aetolians themselves took the city.

The Temple of Zeus stands on a fortified hilltop at the northwest corner of the ancient city. It is classified as one of the most important Early Hellenistic buildings in mainland Greece — not despite its unfinished state but partly because of it. The combination of architectural orders is unusual: the exterior columns were Doric, while the interior cella used Corinthian columns. That mixing of orders, along with other structural innovations in the building's design, makes it an important document of architectural experimentation in the early Hellenistic period.

Construction began in 321 BC and was never completed. The most likely cause was the Aetolian wars that disrupted the region in the following decades. The interrupted work left details visible that a finished building would have hidden — the rough column drums, the lifting bosses, the partially formed joints. For archaeologists and architectural historians, the incompleteness is a resource. The exquisite detail of the surviving sculpture and the excellent preservation of the base blocks speak to the ambitions of the builders, even if the political circumstances denied them completion.

Stratos invited the Romans into Greece in 169 BC as allies against Perseus of Macedon — a choice that reflected the complex politics of a city that had spent centuries navigating between more powerful neighbors. It may have been the right call strategically, but it set the city on a path toward obsolescence. When Augustus founded Nicopolis in 29 BC to commemorate his victory at the Battle of Actium, he obliged much of Stratos's population to relocate to the new city. Stratos fell into decline and never recovered its former prominence.

The modern village of Stratos sits about 500 meters south of the ancient site. Before 1928 it was called Sorovigli, an Aromanian name that persisted through the medieval period. Today it is a small Aromanian-speaking community and a municipal unit of Agrinio. The main excavations at the ancient site have uncovered the Agora and Stoa, the Temple of Zeus, the theatre, and sections of the massive walls. Finds from the site are held in the Archaeological Museum of Agrinion. The ruins are quiet, set against the Achelous plain, with the rough column drums of the unfinished temple still bearing their ancient bosses, waiting for work that will not resume.