The greatness and the national importance of the Delphic Oracle lasted from the invasion of the Dorians down to the Persian War, certainly more than three centuries; when the part which it took in the latter struggle gave it a blow from which it seems never to have recovered. When the invasion of Xerxes was approaching, the Delphic priests informed accurately of the immense power of the Persians, made up their minds that all resistance was useless, and counselled absolute submission or flight. According to all human probabilities they were right, for nothing but a series of blunders could possibly have checked the Persians. But surely the god ought to have inspired them to utter patriotic responses, and thus to save themselves in case of such a miracle as actually happened. I cannot but suspect that they hoped to gain the favor of Xerxes, and remain under him what they had hitherto been, a wealthy and protected corporation.(112) Perhaps they even saw too far, and perceived that the success of the Greeks would bring the Ionic states into prominence; but we must not credit them with too much. The result, however, told greatly against them. The Greeks won, and the Athenians got the lead,—the Athenians, who very soon developed a secular and worldly spirit, and who were by no means awed by responses which had threatened them and weakened their hands, when their own courage and skill had brought them deliverance. And we can imagine even Themistocles, not to speak of Pericles and Antiphon, looking upon the oracles as little more than a convenient way of persuading the mob to follow a policy which it was not able to understand. The miraculous defeat of the Persians by the god, who repeated his wonders when the Gauls attacked his shrine, should be read in Herodotus and in Pausanias. It is with some sadness that we turn from the splendid past of Delphi to its miserable present. The sacred cleft in the earth, from which rose the cold vapor that intoxicated the priestess, is blocked up and lost. As it lay within the shrine of the temple, it may have been filled by the falling ruins, or still more completely destroyed by an earthquake. But, apart from these natural possibilities, we are told that the Christians, after the oracle was closed by Theodosius, filled up and effaced the traces of what they thought a special entrance to hell, where communications had been held with the Evil One.