Amphictyonies.—To protect the sanctuary of Delphi twelve of the principal peoples of Greece had formed an association called an Amphictyony.[60] Every year deputies from these peoples assembled at Delphi to celebrate the festival of Apollo and see that the temple was not threatened; for this temple contained immense wealth, a temptation to pillage it. In the sixth century the people of Cirrha, a neighboring city of Delphi, appropriated these treasures,[61] The Amphictyons declared war against them for sacrilege. Cirrha was taken and destroyed, the inhabitants sold as slaves, the territory left fallow. In the fourth century the Amphictyons made war on the Phocidians also who had seized the treasury of Delphi, and on the people of Amphissa who had tilled a field dedicated to Apollo.
Still it is not necessary to believe that the assembly of the Amphictyons ever resembled a Greek senate. It was concerned only with the temple of Apollo, not at all with political affairs. It did not even prevent members of the Amphictyony fighting one another. The oracle and the Amphictyony of Delphi were more potent than the other oracles and the other amphictyonies; but they never united the Greeks into a single nation.