town was destroyed or left to subsist merely us a landing-place; while the whole adjoining plain was consecrated to the Delphian god, whose domains thus touched the sea.  Under this sentence, pronounced by the religious fooling of Greece, and sanctified by a solemn oath publicly sworn and inscribed at Delphi, the land was condemned to remain untilled and implanted, without any species of human care, and serving only for the pasturage of cattle.  The latter circumstance was convenient to the temple, inasmuch as it furnished abundance of victims for the pilgrims who landed and came to sacrifice—­for without preliminary sacrifice no man could consult the oracle; while the entire prohibition of tillage was the only means of obviating the growth of another troublesome neighbor on the seaboard.  The ruin of Cirrha in this war is certain:  though the necessity of a harbor for visitors arriving by sea, led to the gradual revival of the town upon a humbler scale of pretension.  But the fate of Crissa is not so clear, nor do we know whether it was destroyed, or left subsisting in a position of inferiority with regard to Delphi.  From this time forward, however, the Delphian community appear as substantive and autonomous, exercising in their own right the management of the temple; though we shall find, on more than one occasion, that the Phocians contest this right, and lay claim to the management of it for themselves—­a remnant of that early period when the oracle stood in the domain of the Phocian Crissa.  There seems, moreover, to have been a standing antipathy between the Delphians and the Phocians.

The Sacred War emanating from a solemn Amphictyonic decree, carried on jointly by troops of different states whom we do not know to have ever before cooeperated, and directed exclusively toward an object of common interest—­is in itself a fact of high importance, as manifesting a decided growth of pan-Hellenic feeling.  Sparta is not named as interfering—­a circumstance which seems remarkable when we consider both her power, even as it then stood, and her intimate connection with the Delphian oracle—­while the Athenians appear as the chief movers, through the greatest and best of their citizens.  The credit of a large-minded patriotism rests prominently upon them.

But if this sacred war itself is a proof that the pan-Hellenic spirit was growing stronger, the positive result in which it ended reinforced that spirit still farther.  The spoils of Cirrha were employed by the victorious allies in founding the Pythian games.  The octennial festival hitherto celebrated at Delphi in honor of the god, including no other competition except in the harp and the paean, was expanded into comprehensive games on the model of the Olympic, with matches not only of music, but also of gymnastics and chariots—­celebrated, not at Delphi itself, but on the maritime plain near the ruined Cirrha—­and under the direct superintendence of the Amphictyons themselves.  I have already mentioned that Solon