34G HlSTOltY OF GREECE. Athens was much more formidable than she had come to be at the commencement of that war : nor shall we thoroughly appre- ciate the ideas of that later period, unless we take them as handed down from the earlier date of the five years' truce, about 451- 446 B.C. Formidable as the Athenian empire both really was and ap- peared to be, however, this wide-spread feeling of antipathy proved still stronger, so that, instead of the threatened increase, the empire underwent a most material diminution. This did not arise from the attack of open enemies ; for during the five years' truce, Sparta undertook only one movement, and that not against Attica : she sent troops to Delphi, in an expedition dig- nified with the name of the Sacred War, — expelled the Phocians, who had assumed to themselves the management of the temple, — and restored it to the native Delphians. To this the Athe- nians made no direct opposition : but as soon as the Lacedaemo- nians were gone, they themselves marched thither and placed the temple again in the hands of the Phocians, who were then their allies.i The Delphians were members of the Phocian league, and there was a dispute of old standing as to the admin- istration of the temple, — whether it belonged to them sepa- rately or to the Phocians collectively. The favor of those who administered it counted as an element of considerable moment in Grecian politics ; the sympathies of the leading Delphians led them to embrace the side of Sparta, but the Athenians now hoped to counteract this tendency by means of their preponder- ance in Phocis. We are not told that the Lacedaemonians took any ulterior step in consequence of their views being frus- trated by Athens, — a significant evidence of the politics of that day. The blow which brought down the Athenian empire from this its greatest exaltation, was struck by the subjects themselves. The Athenian ascendency over Boeotia, Phocis, Lokris, and Eubcea, was maintained, not by means of garrisons, but through domestic parties favorable to Athens, and a suitable form of government; just in the same way as Sparta maintained her influence over her ' Thucyd. i, 112 ; compare Philochor. Fragm. 88, ed. Didot.
