Affairs of GREECE during the first Period of the Contest for Possession of the Temple and Treasury of DELPHI, called the PHOCIAN or the SACRED WAR

SECTION I

Persevering Ambition of the leading Grecian Republics. Circumstances of the Council of Amphictyons. Summary History of Phocis. Antient Sacred Wars. Regulation of the Council of Amphictyons by Solon: Treasure deposited by Crœsus King of Lydia. Subjection of Delphi to Lacedœmon, and Depression of the Amphictyonic Authority

while the Athenians were prosecuting schemes of ambition and avarice, wherever, among the Grecian republics and beyond them, their naval strength might avail, neither the Thebans nor the Lacedæmonians had abandoned their pretensions to an imperial authority over the landforce, and a supremacy in the general councils, of all the states of the nation. Much as a superintending power, under just regulation, was wanted, and beneficial, even with very defective regulation, as it had sometimes been, yet the continued contest for it teemed with evil for almost every state, and could hardly fail, in the end, to ruin the independency of all. Hence, in the next year after that in which the Athenians made peace with their revolted allies, a new war, originating with a people hitherto of little name, quickly involved all the European continental republics, and led to consequences most momentous, not for Greece only, but for the whole civilized world.