Page:History of Greece Vol IV.djvu/81

 SACRED VAR.-DESTRUCTION OF KIRRHA. 63 to the management of it for themselves, 1 a remnant of that early period when the oracle stood in the domain of the Pho- cian Krissa. There seems, moreover, to have been a standing antipathy between the Delphians and the Phocians. The Sacred War just mentioned, emanating from a solemn Amphiktyonic decree, carried on jointly by troops of different states whom we do not know to have ever before cooperated, and directed exclusively towards an object of common interest, is in itself a fact of high importance as manifesting a decided growth of Pan-Hellenic feeling. Sparta is not named as interfering, a circumstance which seems remarkable when we consider both her power, even as it then stood, and her intimate connection with the Delphian oracle, while the Athenians appear as the prime movers, through the greatest and best of their citizens : the credit of a large-minded patriotism rests prominently upon them. But if this Sacred "War itself is a proof that the Pan-Hellenic spirit was growing stronger, the positive result in which it ended reinforced that spirit still farther. The spoils of Kirrha were employed by the victorious allies in founding the Pythian games. The octennial festival hitherto celebrated at Delphi in honor of the god, including no other competition except in the harp and the psean, was expanded into comprehensive games on the model of the Olympic, with matches not only of music, but also of gymnastics and chariots, celebrated, not at Delphi itself, but on the maritime plain near the ruined Kirrha, and under the direct superintendence of the Amphiktyons themselves. I have already mentioned that Solon provided large rewards for such Athenians as gained victories in the Olympic and Isthmian games, thereby indicating his sense of the great value of the na- tional games as a means of promoting Hellenic intercommunion It was the same feeling which instigated the foundation of the new games on the Kirrhsean plain, in commemoration of the vindicated honor of Apollo, and in the territory newly made over to him. They were celebrated in the latter half of summer, or first half of every third Olympic year, the Amphiktyons being the ostensible agonothets, or administrators, and appointing persons to discharge TWvd. i, 112.