The student of Greek History, insensibly imbued with knowledge after the event, has a natural tendency to regard what is now known to have been the object of the great expedition, the subjugation of all Greece, as having been from the very first the declared and conspicuous design of the Persian king. Yet, as a fact, Herodotus makes it perfectly clear that this was not the case at the time,—at any rate, not wholly the case. ◆H. vii. 138.◆ He tells us that the expedition was nominally directed against Athens, ◆H. vii. 157.◆ but was really sent against all Greece; and then, curiously enough, ◆H. vii. 139.◆ he goes on to show in the very next chapter how disastrous for Greece it would have been had Athens followed the policy which Delphi advocated. ◆H. vii. 139.◆ He expressly says that the oracles which came thence and filled the Athenians with terror, did not induce them to abandon Greece. Despite his general respect for such divine utterances, he is in this case hardly at pains to conceal the fact that he believes that obedience to the oracle would have brought with it a political disaster of appalling magnitude to the whole of Hellas. The two responses given to the Athenians on the two occasions on which they consulted Delphi at some date immediately before the war are of a very remarkable nature if taken apart from one another, and still more remarkable if taken in contrast. The second indicates a complete change of policy from that advocated in the first. The priests of Delphi were no mere fortune-tellers. It may be taken for certain that they did not speak at haphazard on an occasion so momentous. There was something,—call it motive, or call it policy,—behind what they said. In the present instance the remarkable feature in the case is that the second response given is in so decided a contrast with the first that the motives or policies which lie behind the two must be essentially different. Were the policy advocated by Delphi a negligible quantity on Greek History, the matter, though interesting, could form little more than a subject for academic discussion. But in some way or other which cannot now be fully realized, the method being secret, the oracle was the voice of an inner ring, a secret society of Hellenic statesmen, whose authority was due to the average excellence of the information on which the policy they advocated was founded. Taking all the oracular responses which were uttered at this time, they seem to fall under two periods, during the earlier of which Delphic policy was distinctly opposed to a Pan-hellenic effort against the invader.