CHAPTER I. That part of Phocis which is in the neighbourhood of Tithorea and Delphi took its name in very ancient times from the Corinthian Phocus, the son of Ornytion. But not many years afterwards all the country now called Phocis got that name, after the Æginetans and Phocus the son of Æacus crossed over there in their ships. Phocis is opposite the Peloponnese and near Bœotia and on the sea, and has ports at Cirrha (near Delphi) and Anticyra: the Epicnemidian Locrians prevent their being on the sea at the Lamiac Gulf, for they dwell in that part of Phocis, as the Scarpheans north of Elatea, and north of Hyampolis and Abæ the people of Opus, whose harbour is Cynus. The most eminent public transactions of the Phocians were as follows. They took part in the war against Ilium, and fought against the Thessalians, (before the Persians invaded Greece), when they displayed the following prowess. At Hyampolis, at the place where they expected the Thessalians to make their attack, they buried in the earth some earthenware pots, just covering them over with soil, and awaited the attack of the Thessalian cavalry: and they not knowing of the artifice of the Phocians spurred their horses on to these pots. And some of the horses were lamed by these pots, and some of the riders were killed others unhorsed. And when the Thessalians more angry than before with the Phocians gathered together a force from all their cities and invaded Phocis, then the Phocians (in no small alarm at the various preparations made by the Thessalians for war, and not least at the quantity and quality of their cavalry), sent to Delphi to inquire how they were to escape from the coming danger: and the answer of the oracle was, “I put together in combat a mortal and immortal, and I shall give victory to both, but the greater victory to the mortal.” When the Phocians heard this they sent 300 picked men under Gelon against the enemy at nightfall, bidding them watch as stealthily as they could the movements of the Thessalians, and return to the camp by the most out-of-the-way road, and not to fight if they could help it. These picked men were all cut to pieces by the Thessalians together with their leader Gelon, being ridden down by the horses, and butchered by their riders. And their fate brought such consternation into the camp of the Phocians, that they gathered together their women and children and all their goods, their apparel and gold and silver and the statues of the gods, and made a very large funeral pile, and left thirty men in charge with strict orders if the Phocians should be defeated in the battle, to cut the throats of the women and children, and offer them as victims with all the property on the funeral pile, and set light to it, and either kill one another there, or rush on the Thessalian cavalry. Desperate resolves such as this have ever since been called by the Greeks _Phocian Resolution_. And forthwith the