The twelve constituent Amphiktyonic races remained unchanged until the Sacred War against the Phokians (B. C. 355), after which, though the number twelve was continued, the Phokians were disfranchised, and their votes transferred to Philip of Macedon. It has been already mentioned that these twelve did not exhaust the whole of Hellas. Arcadians, Eleans, Pisans, Minyæ, Dryopes, Ætolians, all genuine Hellens, are not comprehended in it; but all of them had a right to make use of the temple of Delphi, and to contend in the Pythian and Olympic games. The Pythian games, celebrated near Delphi, were under the superintendence of the Amphiktyons,[401] or of some acting magistrate chosen by and presumed to represent them: like the Olympic games, they came round every four years (the interval between one celebration and another being four complete years, which the Greeks called a Pentaetêris): the Isthmian and Nemean games recurred every two years. In its first humble form, of a competition among bards to sing a hymn in praise of Apollo, this festival was doubtless of immemorial antiquity;[402] but the first extension of it into Pan-Hellenic notoriety (as I have already remarked), the first multiplication of the subjects of competition, and the first introduction of a continuous record of the conquerors, date only from the time when it came under the presidency of the Amphiktyons, at the close of the Sacred War against Kirrha. What is called the first Pythian contest coincides with the third year of the 48th Olympiad, or 585 B. C. From that period forward, the games become crowded and celebrated: but the date just named, nearly two centuries after the first Olympiad, is a proof that the habit of periodical frequentation of festivals, by numbers and from distant parts, grew up but slowly in the Grecian world. [401] Plutarch, Sympos. vii. 5, 1.