Page:History of Greece Vol II.djvu/267

 POWER OF THE AMPHIKl'YONIC ASSEMBLY. 251 Ject 1 as well of dispute as of express stipulation between Athena and Sparta : moreover, among the twelve constituent members of the council, we find three the Perrhaebians, the Magnates, and the Achjeans of Phthia who were not even independent, but subject to the Thessalians, so that its meetings, when they were not matters of mere form, probably expressed only the feel- ings of the three or four leading members. When one or more of these great powers had a party purpose to accomplish against others, when Philip of Macedon wished to extrude one of the members in order to procure admission for himself, it became convenient to turn this ancient form into a serious reality, and we shall see the Athenian JEschines providing a pretext for Philip to meddle in favor of the minor Boeotian cities against Thebes, by alleging that these cities were under the protection of the old Amphiktyonic oath. 2 It is thus that we have to consider the council as an element in Grecian affairs, an ancient institution, one amongst many instances of the primitive habit of religious fraternization, but wider and more comprehensive than the rest, at first, purely religious, then religious and political at once ; lastly, more the latter than the former, highly valuable in the infancy, but unsuited to the maturity of Greece, and called into real working only on rare occasions, when its efficiency happened to fall in with the views of Athens, Thebes, or the king of Macedon. In such special moments it shines with a transient light which af- fords a partial pretence for the imposing title bestowed on it by Cicero, " commune Graeciaj concilium:" 3 but we should com- 1 Thucyd. i. 112, iv. 118, v. 18. The Phokians in the Sacred War (B.C. 354) pretended that they had an ancient and prescriptive right to the admin- istration of the Delphian temple, under accountability to the general body of Greeks for the proper employment of its possessions, thus setting aside the Amphiktyons altogether (Diodor. xvi. 27). the council in regard to the Sacred War against the Phokians (u. c. 355) may be seen in Didorus, xvi. 23-28, seq. 3 Cicero, De Invention, ii. 23. The representation of Dionysius of Hali karnassus (Ant. Eom. iv. 25) overshoots the reality still more. About the common festivals and Amphiktyones of the Hellenic world generally, see Wachsmuth, Hellenische Alterthumskunde, vol. i. sect. 22, 24, 25; also, C. F. Hermann. Lehrbuch der Griech. Staatsalterthdmer, sect 11-13.
 * JEschin. de Fals. Legat. p. 280, c. 36. The party intrigues which moved