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Updated: June 14, 2025
The people of the small state of Phocis, adjoining Delphi, had been accused of cultivating a part of the Cirrhæan plain, which was consecrated to Apollo. This charge, like the former, was brought by Thebes, and the Amphictyonic Council, having fined Sparta, now, under Theban influence, laid a fine on the Phocians so heavy that it was far beyond their means of payment.
He penetrated into Thessaly, and encountered the Phocians near the gulf of Pagassae. This victory made Philip master of Thessaly. He now directed his march southwards with the view of subduing the Phocians; but upon reaching Thermopylae he found the pass guarded by a strong Athenian force, and was compelled, or considered it more prudent, to retreat.
They were aided by the Boeotians and Phocians. Myronides marched to Pharsalus, a Thessalian city, and mastered the surrounding country; but the obstinate resistance of the city promising a more protracted blockade than it was deemed advisable to await, the Athenians raised the siege without effecting the object of the expedition.
And yet, a little after he would say that thirteen cities of the Phocians were burned by the barbarians, their country laid waste, and the temple which was in Abae set on fire, and all of both sexes put to the sword, except those that by flight escaped to Parnassus.
Scarce had the Spartans withdrawn, than an Athenian force, headed by Pericles, who is said to have been freed by Anaxagoras from superstitious prejudices, entered the city, and restored the temple to the Phocians. The same image which had recorded the privilege of the Spartans now bore an inscription which awarded the right of precedence to the Athenians.
Hortensius, meantime, was conducted by Caphis, our countryman, another way unknown to the barbarians, by Parnassus, just under Tithora, which was then not so large a town as it is now, but a mere fort, surrounded by steep precipices, whither the Phocians also, in old time, when flying from the invasion of Xerxes, carried themselves and their goods and were saved.
And when he could not blame the Phocians actions, writing at his desk invented false causes and got up suspicions against them, and bids us judge them not by what they did, but by what they would have done if the Thessalians had not taken the same side, as if they had been prevented from treason because they found the place already occupied by others!
And Herodotus, as constrained to it, in his relation of the affairs at Plataea, confessed that the Phocians took part with the Greeks. Neither ought it to seem strange to any, if he thus bitterly inveighs against the unfortunate; since he reckons amongst enemies and traitors those who were present at the engagement, and together with the other Greeks hazarded their safety.
But when the Macedonian garrison sallied out upon them from the citadel, they were so hemmed in on all sides, that the greater part of them fell in the battle; the city itself being taken by storm, was sacked and razed, Alexander's hope being that so severe an example might terrify the rest of Greece into obedience, and also in order to gratify the hostility of his confederates, the Phocians and Plataeans.
A quarrel arising between the people of this state and the neighbouring Phocians, the latter invaded Doris, and captured one of its three towns . The Lacedaemonians marched at once to the assistance of their reputed father-land, with an army of no less than fifteen hundred heavy-armed Spartans and ten thousand of their Peloponnesian allies , under the command of Nicomedes, son of Cleombrotus, and guardian of their king Pleistoanax, still a minor.
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