An actor and a physician of Athens sent a tithe of their earnings. Among individuals the Peloponnesians were the most pious, although contributions straggled in from Attica, Bœotia, Northern Greece, the islands, Africa, and Sicily. Collectors went from house to house, and by far the larger number of contributors gave no more than a drachma. Doubtless in many cases this modesty was due to poverty rather than to indifference, and the religious sentiment prompting the gifts must often have been comparable to that which reared the arches and illuminated the windows of the Cathedral of Chartres. For the sake of such contributors one could wish that after the Roman restorations the Delphic temple had not been allowed to crumble under earthquakes, corroding rains, and the tread of the unnumbered years. Of adyton and oracular chasm the excavators have found no smallest trace, and not even one column rises from the low foundations to give evidence of things unseen. But, at least, unlike the Parthenon and many another great shrine, it was never converted into a church of an alien faith. Secular buildings followed in the wake of the religious importance of Delphi. The Amphictyonic Council had a hall for its meetings to the west of the sacred precinct, on or near the site now occupied by the little chapel of St. Elias. Here, in sight of the Crisæan plain, the incendiary speech of Æschines had its full effect. Within the precinct, safe from attack in times of war, public treasuries were erected by Asiatic kings and Greek tyrants, by Greek states in Asia Minor and colonies in Italy, and by sovereign cities like Athens and Thebes. The erection of a treasury often followed upon some public success, but other monuments and statues also rose at the feet of Apollo to mark the tidal flow of national fortunes. A study of all such memorials, known to have existed at Delphi, would be equivalent to a detailed study of Greek history. The repulse of the Persians from the mainland and of the Carthaginians from Sicily, and the stemming of the later invasions of Gallic barbarians required thank-offerings to the Delphic god. The rise of Athens, the struggle of Ionian and Dorian, the victory of Sparta, the late hegemony of Thebes are here commemorated; and with these the lesser quarrels of Sparta with Argos and Arcadia and of Athens with Megara, and the petty warfare of Phocians and Thessalians.