Political Science Of The State

178 POLITICAL SCIENCE.

secured the inviolability of the sacred property at Delphi
against attempts to plunder it.
All the agency of the council that appears in history is con-
nected with the protection or the defence of the temple or of
the consecrated ground. In the time of Solon and Clisthenes
a sacred war broke out against the inhabitants of the plain
below Delphi, for their crimes committed against the temple
and the persons of some delegates to the council, which
ended in the destruction of their towns and harbors, their own
enslavement, and the setting apart of their territory as sacred
soil, under a solemn curse if it were otherwise used. The
other instances in which the council was concerned in meas-
ures of importance occurs at the beginning of Grecian decline •
and the council now became a catspaw, used especially by the
advocates of the Macedonian policy in furthering the ends of
Philip and stirring up strife between the states. About 356
B.C., at the instigation of Thebes, Phocian landowners were
put under a curse and heavily fined on charge of encroachin^
upon the domains of the god. This led to the sacred war, in
the course of which the Phocian generals took large sums
from the rich Delphic treasury to pay their mercenaries. This
long war led finally to the invasion and overthrow of Pho*
cis by king Philip, and to his getting a foothold in southern
Greece. (346 B.C.) Again we find a movement, in which
the orator ^Eschines bore a part, for action of the Amphic-
tyonic council against Thebes, one of the Boeotian Amphic-
tyonic states, in order to visit on Thebes the subversion of
Boeotian cities, which were protected by the oaths mentioned
already, (de fals. leg., p. 280.) Lastly, the same orator in-
-forms us how he inveighed against the Locrians of Amphissa,
who, in spite of the action of the council in the time of Solon'
had rebuilt the .harbor, and were collecting customs and culti-
vating the soil of the plain. The Locrian delegates to the coun*
cil were in the act of proposing a decree to the council to fine
Athens for setting up votive shields without the proper for-
malities, when ^Eschines roused the council and the people
of Delphi against them, and a movement was made for driv-