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The members of the Council then passed a decree admitting Philip and his descendants to the Amphictyonic Council and according him two votes which formerly had been held by the Phocians,1 now defeated in war. They also voted that the three cities2 in the possession of the Phocians should have their walls removed and that the Phocians should have no participation in the shrine of Delphi or in the Council of the Amphictyons; that they should not be permitted to acquire either horses or arms until they should have repaid to the god the monies they had pillaged; that those of the Phocians who had fled and any others who had had a share in robbing the sanctuary were to be under a curse and subject to arrest wherever they might be; [2] that all the cities of the Phocians were to be razed and the men moved to villages, no one of which should have more than fifty houses, and the villages were to be not less than a stade distant from one another; that the Phocians were to possess their territory and to pay each year to the god a tribute of sixty talents until they should have paid back the sums entered in the registers at the time of the pillaging of the sanctuary. Philip, furthermore, was to hold the Pythian games together with the Boeotians and Thessalians,3 since the Corinthians had shared with the Phocians in the sacrilege committed against the god. [3] The Amphictyons and Philip were to hurl the arms of the Phocians and their mercenaries down the crags and burn what remained of them and to sell the horses. In similar tenor the Amphictyons laid down regulations for the custody of the oracle and other matters affecting due respect for the gods and the general peace and concord of the Greeks. [4] Thereafter, when Philip had helped the Amphictyons give effect to their decrees and had dealt courteously with all, he returned to Macedonia, having not merely won for himself a reputation for piety and excellent generalship, but having also made important preparations for the aggrandizement that was destined to be his. [5] For he was ambitious to be designated general of Hellas in supreme command and as such to prosecute the war against the Persians. And this was what actually came to pass. But these events we shall record severally in their proper periods; we shall now proceed with the thread of our narrative.

1 For the reorganization of the votes in the Amphictyonic League see P.-W. Realencyclopädie, 4.2681 ff., and Beloch, Griechische Geschichte （2）, 3.1.512, note 4; and Pickard-Cambridge, Cambridge Ancient History, 6.241.

2 These seem to be the three Boeotian cities in the hands of the Phocians (cp. chaps. 56.2 and 58.1). The MSS. read "in the land of the Phocians" which is inconsistent with section 2 below and other accounts (e.g. Dem. 19.325, where two of the towns mentioned, Orchomenus and Coroneia, are said to have been enslaved). (Cp. also Paus, 10.3.)

3 See Pickard-Cambridge, Cambridge Ancient History, 6.240 ff.

Diodorus Siculus. Diodorus of Sicily in Twelve Volumes with an English Translation by C. H. Oldfather. Vol. 4-8. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press; London: William Heinemann, Ltd. 1989.

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  • Cross-references to this page (2):
    • A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities (1890), PY´THIA
    • Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography (1854), PHOCIS
  • Cross-references in notes from this page (2):
    • Demosthenes, On the False Embassy, 325
    • Pausanias, Description of Greece, 10.3
  • Cross-references in general dictionaries to this page (1):
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