Page:Greece from the Coming of the Hellenes to AD. 14.djvu/171

Rh between Sparta and Athens: the former supporting the claims of the inhabitants of Delphi to the exclusive care of the temple, the latter supporting the Phocians, who had forcibly asserted their right to a share in it. The importance of such a controversy is to be measured by the influence of the Oracle on Greek politics. Both sides professed a care for the impartiality of the Oracle; but in fact both wished to secure its support for themselves; and the special influence which Sparta had long had over the Delphians the Athenians tried to minimise by causing the management of the Oracle to be shared by the other Phocians.

This did not lead to any actual encounter between Athenian and Spartan troops; but in the next year (B.C. 447) an attempt of the Athenians to interfere in the political troubles of a Boeotian town, Chaeroneia, brought upon them so serious a defeat on their way home at Coroneia, that in order to recover their prisoners they surrendered all authority in the other towns of Boeotia. In these towns the aristocratic party immediately regained power, and renounced not only the authority but even the alliance of Athens. This was the first break in the continental supremacy acquired by Pericles. It was followed in the next year by a similar revolt of Megara (so important as commanding the road into the Peloponnese) and of Euboea, which, though an island, was practically a part of Attica. The disadvantage of having again incurred the enmity of Sparta was now shown by the support at once given to Megara. A Spartan army under King Pleistoanax invaded the