Page:History of Greece Vol XI.djvu/272

 ^46 HISTORY OF GREECE- Here a i.ew question was raised, respecting the right of of presidency over the most venerated sanctuary in Greece ; 9 question fraught with ruin to the peace of the Hellenic world. The claim of the Phokians was not a mere fiction, but founded on an ancient reality, and doubtless believed by themselves to be just Delphi and its inhabitants were originally a portion of the Pho- kian name. In the Homeric Catalogue, which Philomelus em- phatically cited, it stands enumerated among the Phokians com- manded by Schedrus and Epistrophus, under the name of the "rocky Pytho," a name still applied to it by Herodotus. 1 The Delphi- ans had acquired sufficient force to sever themselves from their Phokian brethren to stand out as a community by themselves - and to assume the lucrative privilege of administering the tem- ple as their own peculiar. Their severance had been first brought about, and their pretensions as administrators espoused by Sparta, 2 upon whose powerful interest they mainly depended. But the Phokians had never ceased to press their claim, and so far was the dispute from being settled against them, even in 450 B. c., that they then had in their hands the actual administration. The Spartans despatched an army for the express purpose of taking it away from them and transferring it to the Delphians ; but very shortly afterwards, when the Spartan forces had retired, the Athe- nians marched thither, and dispossessed the Delphians, 3 restoring the temple to the Phokians. This contest went by the name of the Sacred "War. At that time the Athenians were masters of most parts of Boeotia, as well as of Megara and Pegce ; and had they continued so, the Phokians would probably have been sustained in their administration of the holy place ; the rights of the Del- phians on one side, against those of the Phokians on the other, being then obviously dependent on the comparative strength of Athens and Sparta. But presently evil days came upon Athens, so that she lost all her inland possessions north of Attica, and could no longer uphold her allies in Phokis. The Phokians now in fact passed into allies of Sparta, and were forced to relinquish their falsely charged with conceiving it, the false charge would also be preferred at the time. Demosthenes would hardly invent it twelve years after the Phokian occupation. 1 Herodot. i. 54. * Strabo, ix. p. 423. 3 Thucyd. i. 12.