A review of the history of the council shows that it was almost powerless for good, except perhaps as a passive instrument, and that it was only active for purposes which were either unimportant or pernicious. In the great national struggles it lent no strength to the common cause; but it now and then threw a shade of sanctity over plans of ambition or revenge. It sometimes assumed a jurisdiction uncertain in its limits, over its members; but it seldom had the power of executing its sentences, and commonly committed them to the party most interested in exacting the penalty. Thus it punished the Dolopes of Scyros for piracy, by the hands of the Athenians, who coveted their island. But its most legitimate sphere of action lay in cases where the honour and safety of the Delphic sanctuary were concerned; and in these it might safely reckon on general co-operation from all the Greeks. Thus it could act with dignity and energy in a case where a procession, passing through the territory of Megara towards Delphi, was insulted by some Megarians, and could not obtain redress from the government; the Amphictyonic tribunal punished the offenders with death or banishment. [Sidenote: [590 B.C.]] A much more celebrated and important instance of a similar intervention, was that which gave occasion to the war above alluded to, which is commonly called the Crissæan, or the First Sacred War. Crissa appears to be the same town which is sometimes named Cirrha. Situate on that part of the Corinthian Gulf which was called from it the Gulf of Crissa, it commanded a harbour, much frequented by pilgrims from the West, who came to Delphi by sea, and was also mistress of a fruitful tract, called the Cirrhæan Plain. It is possible that there may have been real ground for the charge which was brought against the Crissæans, of extortion and violence used towards the strangers who landed at their port, or passed through their territory: one ancient author, who however wrote nearly three centuries later, assigned as the immediate occasion of the war an outrage committed on some female pilgrims as they were returning from the oracle. It is however at least equally probable, that their neighbours of Delphi had long cast a jealous and a wishful eye on the customs by which Crissa was enriched, and considered all that was there exacted from the pilgrims as taken from the Delphic god, who might otherwise have received it as an offering.