8. In ancient times the service of the temple, as appears from the Homeric Hymn, was performed both at Delos and Delphi by Cretans; but it is scarcely possible that they should have constituted the whole population of the country. For, in the first place, the extensive territory of the temple was cultivated by a subject people, of whom we shall speak hereafter, and who were certainly not of Doric, and probably in few cases of Cretan descent;(900) besides whom there was a native nobility, whose influence over the temple was very considerable. These are the persons who, according to Euripides, “_sat near the tripod, the Delphian nobles, chosen by lot_;”(901) called also “_the lords and princes of the Delphians_.” They also formed a criminal court, which, by the Pythian vote, sentenced all offenders against the temple to be hurled from a precipice.(902) To the same persons also doubtless belonged the permission and superintendence of the ancient rite of expiation; and it was their duty (as it was that of the court of the Samothracian priests) to determine whether a homicide was expiable or not. Their influence over the oracle was so great, that they may be considered to have been the actual managers of it. Their political bias may be inferred from the fact, that Timasitheus the Delphian distinguished himself by his boldness and resolution among the aristocratical party of Isagoras at Athens.(903) It appears that these families originally came to Delphi from the mountainous country in the interior. Thus the chief-priests of the god, the five Ὅσιοι, were chosen by lot from a number of families who derived their descent from Deucalion,(904) by which they probably meant to denote their origin from Lycoreia on the heights of Parnassus, founded (as was supposed) by Deucalion, the father of Hellen;(905) from which town it is known that great part of the population of Delphi had proceeded.(906) Now this place, of which traces still remain in the village of _Liacura_ (now only inhabited in summer by mountain shepherds)(907) was in all probability of Doric origin, since it formed the communication between the Tetrapolis and Delphi.(908) The language spoken at Delphi was likewise a Doric dialect.(909)