united cities, to punish the violators of this oath, and to inflict vengeance on sacrilegious despoilers of the temple.
In theory, and upon paper, this apparatus of powers, seems amply sufficient for all general purposes. In several material instances, they exceed the powers enumerated in the articles of confederation. The Amphyctions had in their hands the superstition of the times, one of the principal engines by which government was then maintained; they had a declared authority to use coercion against refractory cities, and were bound by oath to exert this authority on the necessary occasions.
Very different, nevertheless, was the experiment from the theory. The powers, like those of the present congress, were administered by deputies appointed wholly by the cities in their political capacities; and exercised over them in the same capacities. Hence the weakness, the disorders, and finally the destruction of the confederacy. The more powerful members, instead of being kept in awe and subordination, tyrannized successively over all the rest. Athens, as we learn from Demosthenes, was the arbiter of Greece seventy-three years. The Lacedemonians next governed it twenty-nine years. At a subsequent period, after the battle of Leuctra, the Thebans had their turn of domination.
It happened but too often, according to Plutarch, that the deputies of the strongest cities, awed and corrupted those of the weaker; and that judgment went in favour of the most powerful party.
Even in the midst of defensive and dangerous wars with Persia and Macedon, the members never acted in concert, and were more or fewer of them, eternally the dupes, or the hirelings, of the common enemy. The intervals of foreign war, were filled up by domestic vicissitudes, convulsions, and carnage.
After the conclusion of the war with Xerxes, it appears that the Lacedemonians required that a number of the cities should be turned out of the confederacy for the unfaithful part they had acted. The Athenians, finding that the Lacedemonians would lose fewer partisans by such a measure than themselves, and would become
