CHAP. armies. The soldiers of Philomelus were, as might have been expected, not dismayed but violently exasperated by this cruelty, and demanded vengeance for the blood of their comrades. Retaliation was absolutely necessary for his own safety. The mercenaries exerted their utmost efforts to collect as many prisoners as they could; and Philomelus led them all out to public execution according to the example set by the Thebans. This measure did not of course tend to allay the mutual animosity, but it prevented the repetition of the crime which had been perpetrated in the name of religion. We have no connected account of the military operations which ensued, and cannot determine the object of the movements by which the two armies were again brought into each other's presence near the town of Neon, or Tithorea, which lay at the foot of a precipice in one of the upper valleys of Parnassus.' The meeting is said to be have been unexpected: we might conjecture that Philomelus was taking the mountain road for the purpose of invading Boeotia, while it was left Defeat and unguarded. The enemy was far superior in numbers, and the engagement, which followed without any previous arrangement, ended in the defeat of the Phocians. Philomelus himself, after having fought with desperate valour, and received a number of wounds, was hurried along, it is said, in the general rout among the mountain crags, and perished. According to Diodorus he found his flight stopped by a precipice, and threw himself over its edge. Pausanias gives a more marvellous colour to the event: as if by a preternatural instinct he had sought the very kind of death, which, by ancient custom, and by the decree of the Amphictyonic council, was the appointed penalty of sacrilege; and we find this death of Philomelus. 1 Paus. x. 32. 9. 2 X. 2. 4. Elian, xi. 5. calls it Delphic law; but from Paus. v. 617., we may perhaps nfer a more general usage. view of the subject still more distinctly expressed in another tradition: that the rock on which he stood, rolled down and crushed him with its ruins.' Perhaps Justin's simpler statement, that he died fighting in the thickest of the battle, may be not less deserving of credit. CHAP. XLIII. Philomelus, it is said, was the eldest of three brothers; and Onomarchus, one of the younger 2, commanded a division of the Phocian army. It seems not to have taken so active a part in the battle as that which was immediately under Philomelus: he effected a safe retreat, and collected many of the fugitives. The victory was not so decided as to encourage the Thebans to attempt the recovery of Delphi; and they returned home to await the effect which the loss of Philomelus might produce on the enemy's counsels.3 Onomarchus led his army back to Delphi, and im- Onomarmediately called an assembly to deliberate on the state of affairs. A division, which had probably existed for some time before among the Phocians, but had been suppressed by the authority of Philomelus, now came openly to light. There was a party strongly desirous of peace: willing perhaps to purchase it by Philo, in Wesseling's note to Diodorus, xvi. 31. " I have adopted this statement on the authority of Diodorus, xvi. 56. 61. but I cannot help expressing surprise at the unhesitating assent it has received from, I believe, every modern writer who has had occasion to mention it. Flathe alone is silent: whether from doubt, does not appear. It is at least very strange that Diodorus should mention the relation between Onomarchus and Philomelus for the first time in this incidental way, and have said nothing of it before, when the name of Onomarchus was first introduced to the reader (xvi. 31.); and equally strange that Pausanias is silent about it, though he takes care to mention, that Phayllus was the brother of Onomarchus as does Diodorus in the proper place, that is, on the earliest occasion (xvi. 36.). A slip of the pen of such a nature would not be surprising in Diodorus. If Onomarchus was not the brother of Philomelus, he may have been the son of Euthycrates mentioned by Aristotle, Pol. v. 3. 3., whose quarrel with Mnaseas gave rise to the Sacred War: which Wachsmuth (1. 2. p. 374. n. 47.) denies, only because Onomarchus the general was a son of Theotimus; citing Pausanias, x. 2. 1., where the parentage of Philomelus alone is mentioned. Flathe, I. p. 147. thinks it evident that the cause which prevented the Thebans from making use of their victory, was that the Thessalians were called away to serve against the tyrants of Pheræ, and that they were probably followed by many of the northern allies. But this is surely too much to assume without authority. chus. CHAP. His profusion and despotic acts. any concessions not inconsistent with the national honour and independence; and averse to the war not merely through fear of a disastrous issue, but on account of its peculiar character, and of the consequences which were to be apprehended even from the most favourable event. There were no doubt many who were struck with religious scruples by the spoliation of the temple, and who thought at least that nothing could justify it but the most urgent necessity. But there were perhaps still more who were jealous of the power which the war, if successfully conducted, was likely to place in the hands of a single family, and contemplated with alarm the prospect of a dynasty resting on the support of a greedy and licentious foreign soldiery. On the other hand the house of Philomelus was strong in its hereditary and newly acquired influence, and in the cause itself: for it still preserved the aspect of a just and noble resistance to oppression: and whoever else might hope for safety in submission, the leaders in such a contest had no choice between their perilous eminence, and a ruinous fall. The popular feeling was probably with Onomarchus; his adherents prevailed, and he was elected to fill the place of the deceased autocrat. In military and political talents, in prudence and energy, he seems to have been not inferior to Philomelus. But he wanted the moderation, and selfcommand, which, even through the shade of adverse statements, may be clearly traced in the conduct of his predecessor. Philomelus was ready to sacrifice all that others held sacred to the interest of the state, perhaps to that of his own ambition. But Onomarchus was addicted to vicious pleasures, and reckless as to the means of indulging in them: and he appears from the first to have regarded the treasures of the temple as a patrimony which he might spend as he would, and as a mine which he needed not fear ever to ex XLIII. haust. The common metals of the sacred offerings CHAP. furnished arms: the gold and silver not only pay for his troops, but presents, with which he endeavoured to gain partizans, to conciliate enemies, and to quicken the zeal of his friends throughout Greece, and with which he did not scruple to reward the ministers of his sensual enjoyments. It was probably from him that Chares at one time received a sum it is said of sixty talents, with which he gave a feast to the people in honour of some not very important advantage gained over a body of Philip's troops, in a combat in which the Macedonian general Adæus was slain 1: an example which may serve to illustrate the rate at which the Delphic treasures were lavished. At the same time his domestic administration assumed a more despotic character than his predecessor's. Philomelus had treated the Delphians with great rigour; but they were enemies, who had only submitted to force, and their property might seem less sacred than that of the temple: Onomarchus ventured to arrest the principal Phocians of the opposite party, to put them to death, and confiscate their estates: whether with or without the forms of a trial, matters little. Considered even as the work of a faction, still, under the direction of such a chief, it amounted to little less than an act of military despotism under a thin disguise. The profusion however with which he lavished his gold, answered his immediate ends. It enabled him to recruit his army, and probably to increase it; so that after the retreat and separation of 'Theopompus in Athenæus, x11. 43., from a book tepl tŵv ẻk Acλpŵv συληθέντων χρημάτων. Compare Zenobius, vi. 34. There is nothing in the passage to mark the date, and not the slightest reason for referring it with Wichers ad Theopomp. p. 227., Böhnecke, p. 164. and others, to the period of the Olynthian War, in which the Phocians had but a remote interest. It seems most probable that it belongs to the time of Philip's first invasion of Thessaly, when we know Chares was commanding against him. Westermann (De orarationum Olynthiacarum ordine, p. 37.) supposes the victory to have been gained by Chares, when Philip was repulsed from Thermopylæ. CHAP. the confederates, he was able to fall upon them singly at a great advantage. He invaded both the western and the eastern Locrians, extorted humiliating concessions from those of Amphissa, and took Thronium, one of the Epicnemedian towns, and reduced its population to slavery: Doris too, and its little townships, he laid waste with fire and sword. He then advanced into Boeotia, and made himself master of Orchomenus, now perhaps inhabited by a Theban colony. He next undertook the siege of Charonea, but was compelled to raise it by the approach of a Theban army, and to retire with some loss into Phocis. It was at this juncture that a new party entered into the contest. Philip's eye had no doubt been fixed on it from the beginning; and he must soon have perceived that it was likely to afford him an opportunity of acquiring an influence in Greece, such as none of his predecessors had possessed or aspired to. It was so evenly balanced, that he might throw a decisive weight into either scale. But it was first necessary that he should be brought nearer to the scene of action, from which he was separated by Thessaly and it happened through a singularly opportune combination of events, that at the very time when it was most important to him to gain an entrance into that country, the way was opened for him by the state of its affairs. He had previously done all that rested with himself for this end, having removed the last obstacle that lay between him and the Thessalian frontier by the reduction of Methone, of Methone. on the west coast of the Thermaic Gulf, which appears to have offered an obstinate resistance', and he seems almost immediately afterwards to have begun his march southward. The expedition was under B. C. 352. Polyænus (IV. 2. 15.) relates that he ordered the scaling ladders to be taken away, when his soldiers had mounted the walls, that they might have no choice but between victory and death. |