374 HISTORY OJ GREECE. !>ther roving commissioners sent out by Athens to raise up anti- Macedonian combinations, had returned with nothing but dis- heartening announcement of refusal or lukewannness. And there occurred also about the same time in Phokis and Thermopylae, other events of grave augury to Athens, showing that the Sacred War and the contest between the Phokians and Thebans was turning, as all events had turned for the last ten years, to the farther aggrandizement of Philip. During the preceding two years, the Phokians, now under the command of Phalaekus, in place of Phayllus, had maintained their position against Thebes ; had kept possession of the Boeo- tian towns, Orchomenus, Koroneia, and Korsia, and were still masters of Alponus, Thronium, and Nikaea, as well as of the im- portant pass of Thermopylae adjoining. 1 But though on the whole successful in regard to Thebes, they had fallen into dissen- sion among themselves. The mercenary force, necessary to their defence, could only be maintained by continued appropriation of the Delphian treasures ; an appropriation becoming from year to year both less lucrative and more odious. By successive spolia- tion of gold and silver ornaments, the temple is said to have been stripped of ten thousand talents (about two million three hundred thousand pounds), all its available wealth; so that the Pho- kian leaders were now reduced to dig for an unauthenticated treasure, supposed (on the faith of a verse in the Iliad, as well as <>n other grounds of surmise), to lie concealed beneath its stone
- loor. Their search, however, was not only unsuccessful, but ar-
rested, as we are told, by violent earthquakes, significant of the anger of Apollo. 3 As the Delphian treasure became less and less, so the means of Phalaekus to pay troops and maintain ascendency declined. While the foreign mercenaries relaxed in their obedience, his opponents in Phokis manifested increased animosity against his continued sacrilege. So greatly did these opponents increase in power, that they deposed Phalaekus, elected Deinokrates with two others in his place, and instituted a strict inquiry into the antecedent ap- 1 Diodor. xvi. 58 ; Demosth. Fals Leg. p. 385-387 ; ^schines. Fals. L.g f . 45. c. 41.
- Diodor. xvi. 56
