Page:History of Greece Vol IV.djvu/139

 REBUILDING OF THE DELPHIAN TEMPLE. ]<J1 dispersed Grecian cities, who acknowledged no common sov- ereign authority, and among whom the proportion reasonable to ask from each WHS so diHicult to determine with satisfaction to all parties. At length, however, the money was collected, and the Amphiktyona were in a situation to make a contract for the building of the temple. The Alkma?6nids, who had been in exile ever since the third and final acquisition of power by Peisistratus, took the contract; and in executing it, they not only performed the work in the best manner, but even went much beyond the terms stipulated ; employing Parian marble for the frontage, where the material prescribed to them was coarse stone. 1 As was before remarked in the case of Peisistratus when he was in banishment, we are surprised to find exiles whose property had been confis- cated so amply furnished with money, unless we are to suppose lhat Kleisthenes the Alkmaeonid, grandson of the Sikyonian Kleisthenes, 2. inherited through his mother wealth independent of Attica, and deposited it in the temple of the Samian Here. But the fact is unquestionable, and they gained signal reputation throughout the Hellenic world for their liberal performance of so important an enterprise. That the erection took considerable time, we cannot doubt. It seems to have been finished, as far t& The Inscriptions prove that the accounts of the temple were kept by the Amphiktyons on the JEgmxan scale of money: see Corpus Inscrip. Bocckh, No. 1688, and Boeckh, Metrologie, vii, 4. 1 Herodot. vi, 62. The words of the historian would seem to imply that they only began to think of this scheme of building the temple after tho defeat of Leipsydrion, and a year or two before the expulsion of Hippias ; a supposition quite inadmissible, since the temple must have taken some years in building. The loose and prejudiced statement in Philochorus, affirming that the Peisistratids caused the Delphian temple to be burnt, and also that they were at last deposed by the victorious arm of the Alkmseonids (Philochori Fragment. 70, ed. Didot) makes us feel the value of Herodotus and Thucy- dides as authorities. 2 Herodot. vi, 128; Cicero, Do Legg. ii, 16. The deposit here mentioned by Cicero, which may very probably have been recorded in an inscriptiou in the temple, must have been made before the time of the Persian con- quest of Samos, indeed, before the death of Polykrates in 522 B.C., after which period the island fell at once into a precarious situation, and very soon afterwards into the greatest calamities. VOL. IV. 6