Thus stood the case, apparently, about 595 B. C., when the
Amphiktyonic meeting interfered—either prompted by the Phocians,
or perhaps on their own spontaneous impulse, out of regard to the
temple—to punish the Kirrhæans. After a war of ten years, the first
Sacred War in Greece, this object was completely accomplished, by
a joint force of Thessalians under Eurylochus, Sikyonians under
Kleisthenês, and Athenians under Alkmæon; the Athenian Solon being
the person who originated and enforced, in the Amphiktyonic council,
the proposition of interference. Kirrha appears to have made a
strenuous resistance until its supplies from the sea were intercepted
by the naval force of the Sikyonian Kleisthenês; and even after the
town was taken, its inhabitants defended themselves for some time on
the heights of Kirphis.[117] At length, however, they were thoroughly
subdued. Their town was destroyed, or left to subsist merely as
a landing-place; and the whole adjoining plain was consecrated
to the Delphian god, whose domains thus touched the sea. Under
this sentence, pronounced by the religious feeling of Greece, and
sanctified by a solemn oath publicly sworn and inscribed at Delphi,
the land was condemned to remain untilled and unplanted, without any
species of human care, and serving only for the pasturage of cattle.
The latter circumstance was convenient to the temple, inasmuch as it
furnished abundance of victims for the pilgrims who landed and came
to sacrifice,—for without preliminary sacrifice no man could consult
the oracle;[118] while the entire prohibition of tillage was the only
means of obviating the growth of another troublesome neighbor on the
sea-board. The fate of Kirrha in this war is ascertained: that of
Krissa is not so clear, nor do we know whether it was destroyed, or
left subsisting in a position of inferiority with regard to Delphi.
From this time forward, however, the Delphian community appears
as substantive and autonomous, exercising in their own right the
management of the temple; though we shall find, on more than one
occasion, that the Phocians contest this right, and lay claim to
the management of it for themselves,[119]—a remnant of that early
period when the oracle stood in the domain of the Phocian Krissa.
There seems, moreover, to have been a standing antipathy between the
Delphians and the Phocians.
[117] Schol. ad Pindar, Pyth. Introduct.: Schol. ad Pindar,
Nem. ix, 2; Plutarch, Solon, c. 11; Pausan. ii, 9, 6. Pausanias
(x, 37, 4) and Polyænus (Strateg. iii, 6) relate a stratagem of
Solon, or of Eurylochus, to poison the water of the Kirrhæans
with hellebore.
[118] Eurip. Ion, 230.
[119] Thucyd. i, 112.
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