Page:History of Greece Vol IV.djvu/79

 KRISSA.-KIRRHA. 61 adjoining sanctuary of Pytho itself, which the Hymn identifies wi'.h Krissa, not indicating Delphi as s separate place. The Krissaeans, doubtless, derived great profits from the number of visitors who came to visit Delphi, both by land and by sea, and Kirrha was originally only the name for their seaport. Gradu- ally, however, the port appears to have grown in importance at the expense of the town, just as Apollonia and Ptolemais came to equal Kyrene and Barka, and as Plymouth Dock has swelled into Devonport ; while at the same time, the sanctuary of Pytho with its administrators expanded into the town of Delphi, and came to claim an independent existence of its own. The original relations between Krissa, Kirrha, and Delphi, were in this man- ner at length subverted, the first declining and the two latter rising. The Krissaeans found themselves dispossessed of the management of the temple, which passed to the Dejphians, as well as of the profits arising from the visitors, whose disburse- ments went to enrich the inhabitants of Kirrha. Krissa was a primitive city of the Phocian name, and could boast of a place as such in the Homeric Catalogue, so that her loss of importance was not likely to be quietly endured. Moreover, in addition to the above facts, already sufficient in themselves as seeds of quar- rel, we arc told that the Kirrhrcans abused their position as masters of the avenue to the temple by sea, and levied exorbit- ant tolls on the visitors who landed there, a number constantly increasing from th* multiplication of the transmarine colonies, and from the prosperity of those in Italy and Sicily. Besides such offence against the general Grecian public, they had also incurred the enmity of their Phocian neighbors by outrages upon women, Phocian as well as Argeian, who were returning from the temple. 1 Thus stood the case, apparently, about 595 B.C., when the Amphiktyonic meeting interfered either prompted by the 1 Athenseus, xiii, p. 560 ; ^Escliincs cont. Ktesiphont. c. 36, p. 40fi ; Strabo, ix, p. 418. Of the Akragallidac, or Kraugallidae, whom ^Eschinfia mentions along with the Kirrhaeans as another impious race who dwelt ia the neighborhood of the god, and who were overthrown along with the Kirrhasans, - we have no farther information. O. Muller's conjecture would identify them with the Dryopes (Dorians, i, 2, 5, and his Orchome DOS, p. 496) ; Harpokration,