The Ancient Olympics – 3

There are also other proofs which show the high antiquity of this Amphictyonic convocation.

Continuing The Ancient Olympics,
our selection from George Grote. The selection is presented in eight easy 5 minute installments.

Previously in The Ancient Olympics.

Time: 585 BC
Place: Delphia

There are also other proofs which show the high antiquity of this Amphictyonic convocation. Aeschines 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 Aeschines 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 Aeschines (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 Pyloea, which obtained footing in the language to designate the half-yearly meeting of the deputies both at Thermopylae and at Delphi — these indications point to Thermopylae (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 Thermopylae, 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.

The special function of the Amphictyonic council, so far as we know it, consisted in watching over the safety, the interests and the treasures of the Delphian temple. “If any one shall plunder the property of the god or shall be cognizant thereof or shall take treacherous counsel against the things in the temple, we will punish him with foot and hand and voice and by every means in our power.” So ran the old Amphictyonic oath, with an energetic imprecation attached to it. And there are some examples in which the council constitutes its functions so largely as to receive and adjudicate upon complaints against entire cities, for offences against the religious and patriotic sentiment of the Greeks generally. But for the most part its interference relates directly to the Delphian temple. The earliest case in which it is brought to our view is the Sacred War against Cirrha, in the 46th Olympiad or B.C. 595, conducted by Eurolychus the Thessalian and Clisthenes of Sicyon and proposed by Solon of Athens: we find the Amphictyons also about half a century afterward undertaking the duty of collecting subscriptions throughout the Hellenic world and making the contract with the Alcmæonids for rebuilding the temple after a conflagration. But the influence of this council is essentially of a fluctuating and intermittent character. Sometimes it appears forward to decide and its decisions command respect; but such occasions are rare, taking the general course of known Grecian history; while there are other occasions and those too especially affecting the Delphian temple, on which we are surprised to find nothing said about it. In the long and perturbed period which Thucydides describes, he never once mentions the Amphictyons, though the temple and the safety of its treasures form the repeated subject as well of dispute as of express stipulation between Athens and Sparta. Moreover, among the twelve constituent members of the council, we find three — the Perrhæbians, the Magnetes and the Achæans of Phthia — who were not even independent but subject to the Thessalians; so that its meetings, when they were not matters of mere form, probably expressed only the feelings of the three or four leading members. When one or more of these great powers had a party purpose to accomplish against others — when Philip of Macedon wished to extrude one of the members in order to procure admission for himself — it became convenient to turn this ancient form into a serious reality; and we shall see the Athenian Aeschines providing a pretext for Philip to meddle in favor of the minor Boeotian cities against Thebes, by alleging that these cities were under the protection of the old Amphictyonic oath.

Continued.

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