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It was also thought that this narrow pass was the only means of access possible to the invading army; but it was soon discovered that there was also a narrow mountain path from the Phocian territory to Thermopylæ. The Phocians agreed to guard this path, and leave the defense of the main pass to the Peloponnesian troops.
Now, with an uncertainty of the consequence to myself, but with a conviction that you will benefit by adopting it, I proffer my advice. I trust only, that what is most for the common benefit will prevail. Soon after the close of the Phocian war, the attention of Philip was called to Peloponnesus, where the dissensions between Sparta and her old enemies afforded him an occasion of interference.
Their country bordered next upon Attica, they had great forces for the war, and at that time they were accounted the best soldiers of all Greece, but it was no easy matter to make them break with Philip, who by many good offices, had so lately obliged them in the Phocian war; especially considering how the subjects of dispute and variance between the two cities were continually renewed and exasperated by petty quarrels, arising out of the proximity of their frontiers.
Many of the Greek states rose at the call of the condemned Amphictyonic Council. The Phocians were in imminent peril. They were far from strong enough for the war they had invoked. Mercenary troops "soldiers of fortune" must be hired; and to hire them money must be had. The citizens of Delphi had already been taxed; the Phocian treasury was empty; where was money to be obtained?
He selected for his motto the Latin sentence which he had translated while at school, "Phocian always remained poor, though he might have been very rich." His fashionable friends deserted from him in a body, and old family acquaintances passed him in the street without recognition. The only society he had was his wife and Mrs. Chapman and the families of the few abolitionists who lived in Boston.
The guardian of Orestes arrives, and, in the character of a messenger from a Phocian friend, announces the death of Orestes, and minutely enumerates all the circumstances which attended his being killed in a chariot-race at the Pythian games.
A prize there was, noble, great, and glorious, one for which the mightiest states were contending all along; but as the Lacedaemonians were humbled, the Thebans had their hands full through the Phocian war, and we took no regard, he carried it off without competition.
He marched against the Phocians, who held Thermopylæ, while keeping his Athenian enemies quiet by lies and bribes. The leader of the Phocian garrison, finding that no aid came from the Athenian fleet, surrendered to Philip, and that astute monarch won what he had long schemed for, the Pass of Thermopylæ, the Key of Greece.
He tells us himself that he entered upon public business in the time of the Phocian war, and the same may be collected from his Philippics. For some of the last of them were delivered after that war was finished; and the former relate to the immediate transactions of it.
Now the Thebans, in their consultations, were well enough aware what suited best with their own interest, but every one had before his eye the terrors of war, and their losses in the Phocian troubles were still recent: but such was the force and power of the orator, fanning up their courage, and firing their emulation, that, casting away every thought of prudence, fear, or obligation, in a sort of divine possession, they chose the path of honor, to which his words invited them.
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