=--To protect the sanctuary of Delphi twelve of the
principal peoples of Greece had formed an association called an
Amphictyony.[60] Every year deputies from these peoples assembled at
Delphi to celebrate the festival of Apollo and see that the temple was
not threatened; for this temple contained immense wealth, a temptation
to pillage it. In the sixth century the people of Cirrha, a
neighboring city of Delphi, appropriated these treasures.[61] The
Amphictyons declared war against them for sacrilege. Cirrha was taken
and destroyed, the inhabitants sold as slaves, the territory left
fallow. In the fourth century the Amphictyons made war on the
Phocidians also who had seized the treasury of Delphi, and on the
people of Amphissa who had tilled a field dedicated to Apollo.
Still it is not necessary to believe that the assembly of the
Amphictyons ever resembled a Greek senate. It was concerned only with
the temple of Apollo, not at all with political affairs. It did not
even prevent members of the Amphictyony fighting one another. The
oracle and the Amphictyony of Delphi were more potent than the other
oracles and the other amphictyonies; but they never united the Greeks
into a single nation.
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