It has been recounted in the preceding chapter, how Philip, during the continuance of the Social War, aggrandised himself in Macedonia and Thrace at the expense of Athens, by the acquisition of Amphipolis, Pydna, and Potidæa—the two last actually taken from her, the first captured only under false assurances held out to her while he was besieging it: how he had farther strengthened himself by enlisting Olynthus both as an ally of his own, and as an enemy of the Athenians. He had thus begun the war against Athens, usually spoken of as the war about Amphipolis, which lasted without any formal peace for twelve years. The resistance opposed by Athens to these his first aggressions had been faint and ineffective—partly owing to embarrassments. But the Social War had not yet terminated, when new embarrassments and complications, of a far more formidable nature, sprang up elsewhere—known by the name of the Sacred War, rending the very entrails of the Hellenic world, and profitable only to the indefatigable aggressor in Macedonia.

Causes of the Sacred War—the Amphiktyonic assembly

The Amphiktyonic assembly, which we shall now find exalted into an inauspicious notoriety, was an Hellenic institution ancient and venerable, but rarely invested with, practical efficiency. Though political by occasion, it was religious in its main purpose, associated with the worship of Apollo at Delphi and of Dêmêtêr at Thermopylæ.