There are also other proofs which show the high antiquity of this Amphiktyonic convocation. Æschines gives us an extract from the oath which had been taken by the sacred deputies, who attended on behalf of their respective races, ever since its first establishment, and which still apparently continued to be taken in his day. The antique simplicity of this oath, and of the conditions to which the members bind themselves, betrays the early age in which it originated, as well as the humble resources of those towns to which it was applied.[390] “We will not destroy any Amphiktyonic town,—we will not cut off any Amphiktyonic town from running water,”—such are the two prominent obligations which Æschines specifies out of the old oath. The second of the two carries us back to the simplest state of society, and to towns of the smallest size, when the maidens went out with their basins to fetch water from the spring, like the daughters of Keleos at Eleusis, or those of Athens from the fountain of Kallirrhoê.[391] We may even conceive that the special mention of this detail, in the covenant between the twelve races, is borrowed literally from agreements still earlier, among the villages or little towns in which the members of each race were distributed. At any rate, it proves satisfactorily the very ancient date to which the commencement of the Amphiktyonic convocation must be referred. The belief of Æschines (perhaps, also, the belief general in his time) was, that it commenced simultaneously with the first foundation of the Delphian temple,—an event of which we have no historical knowledge; but there seems reason to suppose that its original establishment is connected with Thermopylæ and Dêmêtêr Amphiktyonis, rather than with Delphi and Apollo. The special surname by which Dêmêtêr and her temple at Thermopylæ was known,[392]—the temple of the hero Amphiktyon which stood at its side,—the word Pylæ, which obtained footing in the language to designate the half-yearly meeting of the deputies both at Thermopylæ and at Delphi,—these indications point to Thermopylæ (the real central point for all the twelve) as the primary place of meeting, and to the Delphian half-year as something secondary and superadded. On such a matter, however, we cannot go beyond a conjecture. [390] Æschin. Fals. Legat. p. 279, c. 35: Ἅμα δ᾽ ἐξ ἀρχῆς διεξῆλθον τὴν κτίσιν τοῦ ἱεροῦ, καὶ τὴν πρώτην σύνοδον γενομένην τῶν Ἀμφικτυόνων, καὶ τοὺς ὅρκους αὐτῶν ἀνέγνων, ἐν οἷς ἔνορκον ἦν τοῖς ἀρχαίοις μηδεμίαν πόλιν τῶν Ἀμφικτυονίδων ἀνάστατον ποιήσειν μηδ᾽ ὑδάτων ναματιαίων εἴρξειν, etc. [391] Homer, Iliad, vi. 457. Homer, Hymn to Dêmêtêr, 100, 107, 170. Herodot. vi. 137. Thucyd. ii. 15. [392] Herodot. vii. 200; Livy, xxxi. 32.