Page:History of Greece Vol XI.djvu/451

 PROFESSIONS OF PHILIP. 42i advantage in continuing to profess the same friendship and to in- tersperse similar promises ; ' which, when enlarged upon by his partisans in the assembly, contributed to please the Athenians and to lull them into repose, thus enabling him to carry on with- out opposition real measures of an insidious or hostile character. Even shortly after Philip's passage of Thermopylae, when he was in full cooperation with the Thebans and Thessalians, .^Eschines boldly justified him by the assertion, that these Thebans and Thes- salians had been too strong for him, and had constrained him against his will to act on their policy, both to the ruin of the Pho- kians and to the offence of Athens. 2 And we cannot doubt that the restoration of the prisoners taken at Olynthus, which must soon have occurred, diffused a lively satisfaction at Athens, and tended for the time to countervail the mortifying public results of her recent policy. Master as he now was of Phokis, at the head of an irresistible force of Macedonians and Thebans, Philip restored the Delphian temple to its inhabitants, and convoked anew the Amphiktyonic assembly, which had not met since the seizure of the temple by Philomelus. The Amphiktyons reassembled under feelings of vin- dictive antipathy against the Phokian?, and of unqualified devotion to Philip. Their first vote was to dispossess thePhokians of their place in the assembly as one of the twelve ancient Amphiktyonic races, and to confer upon Philip the place and two votes (each of the twelve races had two votes) thus left vacant. All the rights to which the Phokians laid claim over the Delphian temple were formally cancelled. All the towns in Phokis, twenty-two in num- ber, were dismantled and broken up into villages. Abas alone was spared ; being preserved by its ancient and oracular temple of 1 JEschines went on boasting about the excellent dispositions of Philip towards Athens, and the great benefits which Philip promised to confer upon her, for at least several months after this capture of Thermopylae JEschines, cont. Timarch. p. 24. c. 33. 3>i?innrov tie vvv pen 6iil rrjv ruv ?.(>yuv eiKprj/iiiav eTtaivtj' fiiv 6' tvr6f iv rolf irpfif vfj.a<; fp-yoif "yfvrjrai, oZoj vvv earlit Iv ral( inroa^aeaiv, uacjxi^ nai fiyfiov rbv /ca$' avrov Troifiaerai liraivov. This oration was delivered apparently about the middle of Olymp. lOSj 3 ; some months after the conquest of Thermop f ia; by Philip 36*
 * Demosth. Be Pace p. 62, Philippic ii. p. 69.