prevent war, but they made laws regulating the manner in which it should be conducted; there were laws, which no one was allowed to violate in any war; and it is possible that the expression ὁ κοινὸς τῶν Ἑλλήνων νόμος refers to them. It was ordained, _e.g._, that the Greeks should not carry on among themselves any internecine war, that the inhabitants of a Greek town should not be sold as slaves, that fruit-trees should not be cut down,[59] and that the supply of water should not be cut off from any town. All these laws originated in the Delphic Amphictyony, and were maintained without being written. We must carefully bear in mind, that they could not possibly prevent every outrage; but their express object was that war should be carried in a humane manner. The fact that England insists upon abolishing the slave trade, leads to smuggling those unhappy creatures, who are, in consequence of this, treated with all imaginable cruelty. In like manner an interdict forbidding war in Greece would have been of no avail, and hence it was better to inflict heavy penalties upon acts of inhumanity. These rules were not indeed always observed, the nature of man does not admit of it; but even if they were violated as often as they were observed, we still must own that they were in the highest degree salutary. The Phocians are unimportant in Greek history, and are mentioned only in connection with their misfortunes, first in the wars which they had to wage against the Thessalians,—for the Thessalians, after completing the conquest of Haemonia, also endeavoured to subdue Phocis, and its inhabitants had great difficulty in warding them off,—and afterwards in the Sacred War. The twenty-two Phocian towns, which were destroyed by Philip, were probably for the most part insignificant places. We are perfectly ignorant as to the relations subsisting among them, but they did not form a political community, with a common magistracy, a common commander in war, and the like; not a trace of such institutions is to be found. It is, in general, one of the most puzzling problems to state what were the bonds which kept an ἔθνος together: to acquire the name of an ἔθνος, no political band was needed; a co-operation for common objects is generally produced spontaneously through the power of circumstances. There are, however, traces to show, that in early times the Phocians formed a closer union among themselves. The case of their leaders in the Sacred War was of a different kind: they are generally called στρατηγοί, but sometimes also τύραννοι; Philomelus and Onomarchus were, in fact, not lawful magistrates; the circumstance that being elected in a lawful form, they were at the head of a numerous army of mercenaries, gave them a power which was limited by no laws, and was, therefore, formidable indeed.