The Great Events by Famous Historians

There are also other proofs which show the high antiquity of this Amphictyonic convocation. Æschines gives us an extract from the oath which had been taken by the sacred deputies who attended on behalf of their respective races, ever since its first establishment, and which still apparently continued to be taken in his day. The antique simplicity of this oath, and of the conditions to which the members bind themselves, betrays the early age in which it originated, as well as the humble resources of those towns to which it was applied. "We will not destroy any Amphictyonic town—we will not cut off any Amphictyonic town from running water"—such are the two prominent obligations which Æschines specifies out of the old oath. The second of the two carries us back to the simplest state of society, and to towns of the smallest size, when the maidens went out with their basins to fetch water from the spring, like the daughters of Celeos at Eleusis, or those of Athens from the fountain Callirrhoe. We may even conceive that the special mention of this detail, in the covenant between the twelve races, is borrowed literally from agreements still earlier, among the villages or little towns in which the members of each race were distributed. At any rate, it proves satisfactorily the very ancient date to which the commencement of the Amphictyonic convocations must be referred. The belief of Æschines (perhaps also the belief general in his time) was, that it commenced simultaneously with the first foundation of the Delphian temple—an event of which we have no historical knowledge; but there seems reason to suppose that its original establishment is connected with Thermopylæ and Demeter Amphictyonia, rather than with Delphi and Apollo. The special surname by which Demeter and her temple at Thermopylæ was known—the temple of the hero Amphictyon which stood at its side—the word Pylœa

, which obtained footing in the language to designate the half-yearly meeting of the deputies both at Thermopylæ and at Delphi—these indications point to Thermopylæ (the real central point for all the twelve) as the primary place of meeting, and to the Delphian half-year as something secondary and superadded. On such a matter, however, we cannot go beyond a conjecture.

The hero Amphictyon, whose temple stood at Thermopylæ, passed in mythical genealogy for the brother of Hellen. And it may be affirmed, with truth, that the habit of forming Amphictyonic unions, and of frequenting each other's religious festivals, was the great means of creating and fostering the primitive feeling of brotherhood among the children of Hellen, in those early times when rudeness, insecurity, and pugnacity did so much to isolate them. A certain number of salutary habits and sentiments, such as that which the Amphictyonic oath embodies, in regard to abstinence from injury as well as to mutual protection, gradually found their way into men's minds: the obligations thus brought into play acquired a substantive efficacy of their own, and the religious feeling which always remained connected with them, came afterward to be only one out of many complex agencies by which the later historical Greek was moved. Athens and Sparta in the days of their might, and the inferior cities in relation to them, played each their own political game, in which religious considerations will be found to bear only a subordinate part.