Page:History of Greece Vol IV.djvu/80

 62 HISTORY OF GREECE. Phocians, or perhaps on their own spontaneous impulse, out of regard to the temple to punish the Kirrhasans. After a war of ten years, the first Sacred "War in Greece, this object was completely accomplished, by a joint force of Thessalians under Eurylochus, Sikyonians under Kleisthenes, and Athenians under Alkmoeon ; the Athenian Solon being the person who originated and enforced, in the Amphiktyonic council, the proposition of interference. Kirrha appears to have made a strenuous resist ance until its supplies from the sea were intercepted by the naval force of the Sikyonian Kleisthenes ; and even after the town was taken, its inhabitants defended themselves for some time on the heights of Kirphis. 1 At length, however, they were thoroughly subdued. Their town was destroyed, or left to eubsist merely as a landing-place ; and the whole adjoining plain was consecrated to the Delphian god, whose domains thus touched the sea. Under this sentence, pronounced by the religious feeling of Greece, and sanctified by a solemn oath publicly sworn and inscribed at Delphi, the land was condemned to remain unfilled and unplanted, without any species of human care, and serving only for the pasturage of cattle. The latter circumstance was convenient to the temple, inasmuch as it furnished abundance of victims for the pilgrims who landed and came to sacrifice, for without preliminary sacrifice no man could consult the oracle ; 2 while the entire prohibition of til- lage was the only means of obviating the growth of another troublesome neighbor on the sea-board. The fate of Kirrha in this war is ascertained : that of Krissa is not so clear, nor do we know whether it was destroyed, or left subsisting in a position of inferiority with regard to Delphi. From thw time forward, however, the Delphian community appears as substantive and autonomous, exercising in their own right the management of the temple ; though we shall find, on more than one occasion, that the Phocians contest this right, and lay claim 1 Schol. ad Pindar. Pylh. Introduct. ; Schol. ad Pindar. Nom. ix, 2; jTatarch, Solon, c. 11 ; Pausan. ii, 9, 6. Pausanias (x, 37, 4) and Pvtya> iras (Strateg. iii, G) relate a stratagem of Solon, or of Em rlcchus, to poiso? the water of the Kb rhaeans with hellebore.
 * E'.irip. Io- 23C.