Page:History of Greece Vol XI.djvu/325

 LARGESSES OF PHAYLLUS. 299 ostentation their newly-acquired wealth, and either imported for the first time bought slaves, or at least greatly multiplied the pre- existing number. It had before been the practice in Phokis, we ire told, for the wealthy men to be served by the poor youthful freemen of the country f and complaints arose among the latter class, that their daily bread was thus taken away.i Notwithstanding the indignation excited by these proceedings not only throughout Greece, but even in Phokis itself, Phayllus carried his point of levying a fresh army of mercenaries, and of purchasing new alliances among the smaller cities. Both Athena and Sparta profited more or less by the distribution ; though the cost of the Athenian expedition to Thermopylae, which rescued the Phokians from destruction, seems clearly to have been paid by the Athenians themselves. 2 Phayllus carried on war for some time against both the Boeotians and Lokrians. He is represented by Diodorus to have lost several battles. But it is certain that the general result was not unfavorable to him ; that he kept pos- session of Orchomenus in Boeotia ; and that his power remained without substantial diminution. 3 The stress of war seems, for the time, to have been transferred to Peloponnesus, whither a portion both of the Phokian and The- ban troops went to cooperate. The Lacedaemonians had at length opened their campaign against Megalopolis, of which I have of Dionysius of Syracuse a story which, at all events, comes quite out of its chronological place appears to me not worthy of credit, in the man- ner in which Diodorus here gives it. The squadron of Dionysius, which Iphikrates captured on the coast of Korkyra, was coming to the aid and at the request of the Lacedaemonians, then at war with Athens (Xenoph. Hellen. vi. 2, 33). It was therefore a fair capture for an Athenian general, together with all on board. If, amidst the cargo, there happened to be pres- ents intended for Olympia and Delphi, these, as being on board of ships of war, would follow the fate of the other persons and things along with them. They would not be considered as the property of the god until they had been actually dedicated in his temple. Nor would the person sending them be entitled to invoke the privilege of a consecrated cargo unless he divested it of hostile accompaniment. The letter of complaint to the Athenians, which Diodorus gives as having been sent by Dionysius, seems to me nei iher genuine nor even plausible. 1 Timaeus, Fragm. 67, ed. Didot; ap. Athenaeum, vi. p. 264-27? 1 Diodor. xvi. 57 : compare Dcmosthen. Fals. Leg. p. 367.
 * Diodor. xvi. 37, 38