Athens from the Phocians, and thus make his conquest easier; and he succeeded by his falsehoods and intrigues. Under these circumstances, the Phocians surrendered to Philip the pass, which they ought to have defended at all hazard, and the king retired to Phocis, but still professed the greatest friendship for Athens, with whom he made peace. (M714) Master now of Phocis, with a triumphant army, he openly joined the Thebans and restored the Temple of Delphi to its inhabitants, and convoked the Amphictyonic Council, which dispossessed the Phocians of their place in the assembly, and conferred it upon Philip. The unhappy Phocians were now reduced to a state of utter ruin. Their towns were dismantled, and their villages were not allowed to contain over fifty houses each. They were stripped, and slain, and their fields laid waste. Philip was now master of the keys of Greece, and the recognized leader of the Amphictyonic Council. Athens had secured an inglorious peace with her enemy, through the corruption of her own envoys, B.C. 346, and was soon to reap the penalty of her credulity and indolence. She allowed herself to be deceived, and Philip, in co-operation with Thebes, the enemy of Athens, presently threw off the mask and disgracefully renewed the war with Athens, He had gained his object by bribery and falsehood. It is mournful that the Athenians should not have listened to the warnings of the most sagacious patriot who adorned those degenerate times, but the influence of Æschines was then paramount, and he was sold to Philip. He cried peace, when there was no peace. The great error of Athens was in not rendering timely assistance to the Phocians, who possessed the Pass of Thermopylæ, although they had brought upon themselves the indignation of Greece by the seizure of the Delphic treasures. (M715) The victories and encroachments of Philip, within the line of common Grecian defense, were profoundly lamented by Demosthenes, and he now felt that it was expedient to keep on terms of peace with so powerful and unscrupulous and cunning a man. Isocrates wished Philip to reconcile the four great cities of Greece, Sparta, Athens, Thebes, and Argos, put himself at the head of their united forces, and Greece generally, invade Persia, and liberate the Asiatic Greeks. But this was putting the Hellenic world under one man, and renouncing the independence of States and the autonomy of cities—the great principles of Grecian policy from the earliest historic times, and therefore a complete subversion of Grecian liberties, and the establishment of a centralized power under Philip, whose patrimonial kingdom was among the least civilized in Greece.