Page:Greece from the Coming of the Hellenes to AD. 14.djvu/74

46 in Greece. These very criticisms illustrate the importance attached to success in the games, and help us to understand the fact of a poet like Pindar devoting his splendid genius to celebrate these victories—a fact that Macaulay regarded with wondering contempt.

A certain unity was also encouraged in Greece by the system of Amphictyonies. An Amphictyony was a league of states, generally near neighbours, for a special purpose—primarily for the maintenance of some temple as a place of common worship. Such a league might at times amount almost to a political federation, though that was not its professed purpose. There were several Amphictyonies in Greece; but the one which came nearest to being political, and exercised the greatest influence, was that of which the delegates met once a year at Delphi and once at Thermopylae Its main object was to protect the temple of Delphi and prevent the cultivation of its sacred territory, and that in itself gave it a certain importance for all Greeks alike. Its members also (called Pylagorae) did not come from closely contiguous states, but represented the great branches of the Greek race, so many being sent by Dorian, Ionian, and Æolian states respectively. It had the right to summon all states belonging to it to undertake a sacred war against any people violating the territory of the temple, or breaking any of the rules which the league laid down as to the conduct of war between members of the league—not to destroy any league city, not to cut off its water, or refuse the burial of the dead.