The hero Amphictyon, whose temple stood at Thermopylae, passed in mythical genealogy for the brother of Hellen. And it may be affirmed, with truth, that the habit of forming Amphictyonic unions, and of frequenting each other's religious festivals, was the great means of creating and fostering the primitive feeling of brotherhood among the children of Hellen, in those early times when rudeness, insecurity, and pugnacity did so much to isolate them. A certain number of salutary habits and sentiments, such as that which the Amphictyonic oath embodies, in regard to abstinence from injury as well as to mutual protection, gradually found their way into men's minds: the obligations thus brought into play acquired a substantive efficacy of their own, and the religious feeling which always remained connected with them, came afterward to be only one out of many complex agencies by which the later historical Greek was moved. Athens and Sparta in the days of their might, and the inferior cities in relation to them, played each their own political game, in which religious considerations will be found to bear only a subordinate part. The special function of the Amphictyonic council, so far as we know it, consisted in watching over the safety, the interests, and the treasures of the Delphian temple. "If any one shall plunder the property of the god, or shall be cognizant thereof, or shall take treacherous counsel against the things in the temple, we will punish him with foot, and hand, and voice, and by every means in our power." So ran the old Amphictyonic oath, with an energetic imprecation attached to it. And there are some examples in which the council constitutes its functions so largely as to receive and adjudicate upon complaints against entire cities, for offences against the religious and patriotic sentiment of the Greeks generally. But for the most part its interference relates directly to the Delphian temple. The earliest case in which it is brought to our view is the Sacred War against Cirrha, in the 46th Olympiad or B.C. 595, conducted by Eurolychus the Thessalian, and Clisthenes of Sicyon, and proposed by Solon of Athens: we find the Amphictyons also about half a century afterward undertaking the duty of collecting subscriptions throughout the Hellenic world, and making the contract with the Alcmaeonids for rebuilding the temple after a conflagration. But the influence of this council is essentially of a fluctuating and intermittent character. Sometimes it appears forward to decide, and its decisions command respect; but such occasions are rare, taking the general course of known Grecian history; while there are other occasions, and those too especially affecting the Delphian temple, on which we are surprised to find nothing said about it. In the long and perturbed period which Thucydides describes, he never once mentions the Amphictyons, though the temple and the safety of its treasures form the