Like the still older sanctuary of Dodona (where revelations were supposed to be given through the rustling of a sacred oak), Delphi was, alternately with Thermopylæ, the seat in historic times of an Amphictyony or union of states, which existed for the worship of the deity whose shrine they were pledged to defend, as well as for mutual friendship and protection. Unfortunately the history of the oracle, although a national institution, was marked at various times by deadly strife among the different Hellenic tribes whose interests were involved. At first the management of the oracle seems to have been in the hands of the people of Crisa, who were Phocians, but after the protracted war waged by the Amphictyony against the natives of Cirrha, the adjacent sea-port, on account of the extortions they practised on the pilgrims to the shrine and the outrages they sometimes perpetrated on them, the trust was committed by the federation to the inhabitants of Delphi, who were of Dorian extraction. Cirrha was laid waste, the whole Crisæan plain was dedicated to Apollo, and the spoils of Cirrha were used to establish the Pythian games on a more ambitious footing than had been possible when they were held in the limited space available at Delphi. A second Sacred War, as it was called, broke out in 357 B.C., when the Amphictyonic Council, after imposing a fine on the Phocians at the instigation of their enemies the Thebans, which remained unpaid, proceeded to confiscate their territory. The Phocians offered a long and desperate resistance, asserting their old right to administer the affairs of the sanctuary. In the course of the war their leaders had recourse to the treasures of the temple again and again, melting and coining the precious metals, and turning the brass and iron into arms. Altogether they are said to have appropriated no less than £2,300,000, which was required to keep up their large mercenary army. The fabulous wealth of the place had often tempted the cupidity of foreign foes, but on every occasion the god had been found able to protect himself. When Xerxes sent a detachment of his huge army to despoil the shrine, his soldiers were thrown into a panic and put utterly to flight by great rocks tumbling down upon them from the cliffs of Parnassus in the midst of a terrible thunderstorm. The rocks were shown to Herodotus in the precincts of the temple of Athena,--perhaps the same as are still to be seen in the low ground to the south of the public road. A similar experience is said to have befallen the Gauls under Brennus about two hundred years afterwards. At an intermediate date (370 B.C.), when Jason of Pheræ, the powerful ruler of Thessaly, set out for Delphi with, as it was believed, a hostile intent, under colour of sacrificing to the god a thousand bulls and ten thousand sheep, goats, and swine, he was suddenly cut off in the prime of life by a treacherous band of assassins.