The Ambivalent Legacy of the Crisaeans: Athens’ Interstate Relations (and the Phocian Factor) in 4th-Century Public Discourse

1. Introduction: A Brief Survey of the Evidence on the So-Called First Sacred War

As has long been recognized, the modern image of the so-called First Sacred War^[1] is based on several ancient sources;^[2] these sources divide into four groups.^[3] The older (“archaic”) sources form a first group and mention several attacks on Delphi, undertaken by various people or heroes in archaic times (among others, the Phlegyans, Dryopes and Kragalidai)^[4]. These stories have the flavour of legend, but cannot therefore be rejected a priori. They form the so-called prehistory of the First Sacred War.^[5] In recent studies, the sources belonging to this first group were connected with some archaeological remains suggesting a major horizon of violence and destruction in the years around and after the 580s.^[6]

The second group touches on the question of the holy land that cannot be cultivated, and actually only contains two sources: Isocrates (Plat. 31) who mentions that the plain of Crisa had been abandoned to pasturage, perhaps as a consequence of a war,^[7] and an inscription (CID I 10, 15–17), testifying to the fact that the cultivation of a plain consecrated by the Amphictyonians was prohibited, which most probably referred to land considered holy, as Crisa had been, since the time of Homer (Il. 2.519). These sources are very important for two reasons: from a strictly historical point of view, because they most probably reflect and hand down an early classical tradition (5th century?); from a heuristic point of view, because they allow us to exclude the idea that a war around Crisa dating back to previous (Archaic?) times was a fiction largely constructed during the Third Sacred War.^[8] Isocrates’s Plataicus was actually written between 373 and 371 BC.^[9]

A third group consists of sources written during – or very probably in the decades immediately after – the Third Sacred War, i.e. also at the time of the Fourth Sacred War. Here again, we can distinguish three subgroups: a) a text written at Plato’s Academy, the Letter of Speusippus;^[10] b) texts written by the intellectuals of Philip’s circle (Aristotle and his scholars, most probably in the 340s or 330s);^[11] c) the speeches of Aeschines and Demosthenes.^[12] In these sources the idea of a single war with a beginning and an end, with allies and enemies, is quite clear.

The fourth group is made up of more or less later sources.^[13] These provide the most detailed image of the First Sacred War, but are not relevant to the present analysis.^[14]

Here, the focus is on an important distinction that emerges within this third group. For the intellectuals that collaborated (or aspired to collaborate) with Philip, the First Sacred War functioned primarily as a precedent for the Third, while in the Athenian orations of Aeschines and Demosthenes, the First Sacred War was only considered as a precedent for the Fourth. The main aim of this paper is to understand why.

2. The Legacy of the Impious Crisaeans in Philip’s (Aspiring) Partisans’ Works

It is usually assumed that the retrospective shaping of earlier Phocian history was strongly fostered by the Third Sacred War.^[15] Newly invented details would have enriched older traditions while simultaneously manipulating them. This is not surprising: the Third Sacred War determined the glorious heyday in Greece of the Phocians, the zenith of their power in Delphi and, indeed, of their influence in most Greek affairs. As is well known, this war was caused by the Thessalians and the Thebans,^[16] and began when the Amphictyonians imposed a large fine on the Phocians, which the latter refused to pay.^[17] The Amphictyonians had to punish the Phocians for the offense of cultivating sacred land. The Phocians opposed the sanctions and eventually occupied Delphi,^[18] robbing the sanctuary of a significant part of its treasure, which, later on, they actually melted down for coinage.^[19] The resulting money was used to recruit mercenaries, who were employed against the adversaries of the Phocians. The Phocians fought surprisingly well, and their resistance was only broken when the Macedonian King Philip II sent his army against them. Philip used the Third Sacred War to polish his image in the Greek world.^[20] The Thessalian allies and the troops of the Amphictyonic Council fought with him,^[21] while Sparta and Athens sided with the Phocians. In 352 BC, Philip II defeated the Phocians in a decisive battle on the Crocus Field.^[22] As a punishment for their desecration of the sanctuary, Philip ordered the execution of 3,000 Phocians.

The Amphictyonians expelled the Phocians from the Council, tore down the walls of all their cities and broke them up into villages of not more than fifty houses.^[23] The Phocians were also ordered to pay taxes to Delphi until they had replaced the 10,000 talents stolen from the sanctuary. Philip received their votes in the Amphictyony.^[24] The peace of Philocrates (346 BC) sealed the peace terms. Athens had to recognize Philip’s territorial expansion and the city’s former colony, Amphipolis, thus also lost its claim to autonomy. Philip, moreover, obliged the Athenians to enter into a defensive alliance.^[25]

It is not surprising that the traditions about the First Sacred War were extensively altered (or even invented, according to some scholars)^[26] during the Third Sacred War and in its aftermath. Considerable research has already been devoted to this matter. In the second half of the 4th century, a number of intellectuals were attempting to promote themselves in Philip’s eyes. One of them was Speusippus, Plato’s nephew and successor as director of the Academy in 347 (whose head he remained for eight years).^[27] Speusippus’ letter, written between 343 and 341,^[28] was designed to cause Philip to look unfavourably upon Isocrates by discrediting his “Philip” (of 346), while simultaneously, through justifying Philip’s conquests, to win the King’s approval of Speusippus’ own writings. To this end, both earlier and more recent history was depicted using a mixture of legends and historical sources. The historical and mythological research of the otherwise unknown Antipater of Magnesia was useful for these purposes; he belonged to the Academy circle, wrote his history in the forties^[29] and was probably one of Speusippus’ own students.^[30]

In this letter, Speusippus also deals with the story of the Amphictyony of Delphi and the First Sacred War, in order to demonstrate precedents for Philip’s acts from his point of view. It was necessary to create a counter-narrative to the image of the desperate Phocians being abused by the barbarian Macedonians – a picture that Demosthenes had strengthened and exploited in his speech De falsa legatione, in 343.^[31] According to Speusippus (and to Antipater), the Crisaeans, like the Phlegyans and the Dryopes, were probably Amphictyonians who had committed crimes against Delphi. The Phlegyans were defeated by Apollo, the Dryopes by Heracles, the Crisaeans by their fellow Amphictyonians. All of them were therefore expelled from the Amphictyony, and their votes were eventually given to others. The whole story is suspicious. Neither Phlegyans nor Dryopes nor Crisaeans are mentioned as members of the Amphictyony in the extant membership lists.^[32]

Nevertheless, we should not assume that Antipater invented this ex novo,^[33] but rather imagine that he recounted (at least the) kernel of a tradition which had been largely forgotten, and was afterwards exploited by Speusippus.^[34] And to what end? There are clear parallels between all of this and the end of the Third Sacred War, the fate of the Phocians and the fact that their votes were given to Philip.^[35] Speusippus states that very clearly: “(8) […] he [Antipater] asserts that you [Philip] have imitated the example of some of these and taken the Phocians’ two votes from the Amphictyonians as the Pythian prize of your Delphic campaign.” Philip was thus put on a par with Heracles and Apollo, who had punished the Phlegyans, Dryopes and Crisaeans.^[36] Through these devices, the First Sacred War was turned into a more plausible precedent for the Third.

In the texts written by intellectuals in Philip’s circle who actually worked closely with the Macedonian kings (not only aspired to do so), the question seems a bit more complicated. In contrast to Noel Robertson, who maintained that Callisthenes, like Speusippus, “held up the Archaic conflict as a worthy precedent for the Third Sacred War and Philip’s intervention”^[37], I argue that in the historian’s work the legacy of the Crisaeans is not uniquely related to the impious Phocians. Two different but connected pieces of evidence are significant in this regard.

In the late 340s or in the 330s, either in a period when he was already at Philip’s court, or immediately before,^[38] Callisthenes of Olynthus compiled the Pythionikai with Aristotle,^[39] a table (πίναξ) of Pythian victors and of the organizers of the contest which included discursive entries, some of which dealt with the First Sacred War.^[40] Callisthenes was a relative (probably a nephew) and a student of Aristotle and together with Aristotle he played a significant role at the Macedonian court.^[41] He knew the work Amphiktyonikos by Isocrates of Apollonia Pontica, a student of Isocrates. Only a few fragments of this catalogue of the winners in the Pythian Games survive,^[42] but Plutarch (Sol. 11.1–2)^[43], who uses it as a source,^[44] says very clearly that he learnt from a note in the Pythionikai that Solon took part in a war against the inhabitants of Cirrha (Crisa, or somewhere nearby)^[45]. This indicates that a note on the First Sacred War was preserved in the Pythionikai^[46] and that this note highlighted the role of a prominent Athenian, Solon,^[47] who had advised the Amphictyonians to attack the Cirrhaeans.^[48] Thus, in the Pyhtionikai, the defenders of Delphi are the Amphictyonians.

Around the same period in which he compiled the Pythionikai,^[49] Callisthenes also wrote a work on the Third Sacred War which mentioned the war for Cirrha as well. In this narrative, the root cause of the war was purported to be a woman: the Cirrhaeans had raped Megisto, the daughter of Pelagon the Phocian, and the daughters of the Argives, as they were returning from the Pythian temple. The war for Cirrha (which is mentioned as Κρισαικὸς πόλεμος by Callisthenes)^[50] lasted ten years, and as adversaries of the impious Cirrhaeans, the Phocians- and not more generally the Amphictyonians- were mentioned (Κιρραῖοι πρὸς Φωκεῖς ἐπολέμησαν).^[51] These details deserve our attention: on the one hand, the topos of rape as a cause of war, which is widespread and whose most famous case is the rape of Helen causing the Trojan Wars,^[52] seems to establish a link between the First and the Third Sacred Wars: indeed, before citing Callisthenes’ remark on the First Sacred War, Athenaeus cites Duris on the Third Sacred War (FGrHist 76 F 2), and according to Duris the cause of the Third Sacred War is the rape of a Theban girl, Theano, by a Phocian.^[53] So, we may assume that in the second half of the 4th century, the First and Third Sacred wars were put on a par because of various similarities. Furthermore, the very fact that Callisthenes cites the First Sacred War in a monograph on the Third hints at the possibility that in the imaginary these two wars were connected.

On the other hand, however, we should not neglect to note that in Callisthenes the Phocians are deemed the defenders of Delphi and the adversaries of the Cirrhaeans, who are considered guilty.

This positive role accorded to the Phocians becomes even more interesting if one thinks that it resonates with a well-known passage by Thucydides which refers to a “sacred war” (ἱερὸν πόλεμον) which modern scholars call the “Second” War. This war took place between 449 and 448 BC (but had deeper roots^[54]) and erupted when Sparta liberated Delphi from the Phocians and handed it back to the Delphians, and the Athenians recaptured Delphi in order to return it the Phocians, their allies,^[55] to whom, in Thucydides’ words, (the control of) Delphi has been handed over.^[56]

In the light of Thucydides’ picture of the Phocians, we may infer that Callisthenes’ representation of the Phocians as defenders of Delphi inserts itself in a strong tradition (Thucydides); what’s more, it must have prevented the establishment of a complete equivalence between the First and the Third Sacred Wars (in the latter, it was the Phocians as a whole that were accused of being guilty for having offended Delphi). This leads us to suggest that Callisthenes is responding not so much to the events of the Third Sacred War and its aftermath, but to other events. Which ones?

Just a few years after the “Third” Sacred War, another Sacred War broke out: the Fourth, partly also caused by the Athenian orator Aeschines. In March 339 BC, in the Amphictyonic council, he accused the Ozolian Locrians of Amphissa of having illegally used the plain of Cirrha, which belonged to Apollo, to their own advantage.^[57] In October 339 BC, the Amphictyonians called upon King Philip II of Macedonia to lead the war, which was about to begin in this traditionally strategic area, and which would give him an opportunity to defeat the Locrians.^[58] This incident led to the Battle of Chaeronea, which had a considerable impact on the entire Greek world.^[59] However, this is another story. What is of interest for us is that it was exactly in the aftermath of the Third Sacred War that the Fourth war broke out and this might have led Callisthenes and his circle to at least rethink this notice about the First Sacred War which survived – fragment 1 – with an eye to the impious Locrians of Amphissa,^[60] who were punished by Philip with the support of his allies, among them the Phocians. That would explain why in this reference to the First Sacred War the Phocians appear as defenders of Delphi.

Thus, we may conclude that for the intellectuals collaborating, or aspiring to collaborate, with Philip, the First Sacred War was more often considered as a precedent for the Third Sacred War, and only sometimes also considered a precedent for the Fourth. This made the legacy of the impious Crisaeans ambivalent. What was happening in the meantime in the Attic speeches?

3. Guilty Phocians and Locrians in the Attic Speeches

In the Attic speeches, the ἀσέβεια (“impiety”) of the Cirrhaeans makes its first appearance rather late: in fact, Aeschines and Demosthenes mention it first in their speeches of 339 and 330 with reference to the Fourth Sacred War (and not earlier) and the impious Locrians of Amphissa.^[61]

Aeschines mentions the impious Cirrhaeans in his speech “Against Ctesiphon” (330), in which he accuses Ctesiphon – who had suggested the honour of a golden crown for Demosthenes – of irregularity. In Aeschines’ opinion, the (First Sacred) war occurred because the Cirrhaeans and the Kragalidai had committed offences against the sanctuary in Delphi and its votive offerings, and this angered the Amphictyonians, who asked for an oracle concerning the appropriate procedure (Aeschin. 3.107–112, esp. 107–109).^[62] The Athenians were the first to react to these offences, and Solon suggested that the Amphictyonians declare war. Aeschines also reports the capture of the city and the enslavement of its inhabitants. The country was consecrated to Apollo, Artemis, Leto and Athena Pronaia. This is the story which Aeschines links to the lawless Locrians of Amphissa, i.e. to the Fourth Sacred War.^[63]

Demosthenes’ immediate response to Aeschines, in the speech “On the Crown” (18.149), denies any historicity to the First Sacred War. According to Demosthenes, the First Sacred War was used by Aeschines to exploit the naivety of the hieromnemones, who believed that the plain of Cirrha was holy.^[64] There is no mention of the fate of the Phocians in the Third Sacred War.

This may seem surprising, given that they had spoken of the unlawful and/or desperate Phocians more than once in speeches over the previous decades; especially in the case of Aeschines, who usually denigrated the Phocians and emphasised their unlawful behaviour. This deserves more attention: the picture portrayed by Aeschines triggered, in turn, a defense of the Phocians by Demosthenes, who represents them as desperate and victims of deceit (which in turn may have encouraged Aeschines to further emphasize the unlawful behaviour of the Phocians), as the following scheme makes clear (tab. 1):^[65]

Aeschines and Demosthenes built contrasting images of the Phocians. According to Aeschines, the Phocians were guilty of hybris, victims of μανία and unlawful: Philip was εὐσεβής (pious) because he punished them; according to Demosthenes they were also somewhat ἀσεβεῖς, but this was because they were desperate, because Philip cheated them. Given that stories about the impious Cirrhaeans were already circulating in Athens and beyond (as proved by the works of Antipater, Speusippus and Callisthenes-Aristotle), one wonders why Aeschines, in opposing Demosthenes, did not exploit them with reference to the impious Phocians in the Third Sacred War. After all, he could have exploited the Cirrhaeans both with reference to the Third and to the Fourth Sacred Wars, since he explicitly put them on par (3.14). But he does not. Why?

There are two reasons in my view. The first one is that Aeschines depends on Callisthenes and on the Pythionikai, as the reference to Solon’s intervention and the use of Cirrha instead of Crisa reveal.^[66] As we have stressed above, Callisthenes exploits the Thucydidean image of the Phocian as “those to whom (the control of) Delphi has been handed over”. This positive role accorded to the Phocians contrasts with Aeschines’ general picture of the Phocians as unlawful.

To shed light on the second reason, it is necessary to take a closer look at the relations between Philip and the Athenians between the 350s and the end of the 340s. In the 340s, the Attic orators had many awkward issues to deal with concerning the fate of Athens, Philip, and the Phocians after the Peace of Philocrates.^[67] These troubles were made more embarrassing by a fact that is important to remember: Athens had assisted the Phocians during the Third Sacred War, and the alliance with the Phocians has distant roots, since it can be traced back to at least the fifties of the 5th century.^[68] Relations between Athens and Philip were generally complex and delicate; the Philip-Phocian-Athenian triangle is, in this context, very tense, and further complicated by Theban and Thessalian affairs.

As is well known, Philip and the Athenians had both many common and many conflicting geopolitical interests, all of which contributed to the tensions between them. The Chalcidian peninsula was a hot spot in this respect. Philip took Amphipolis in 357, and Potidaea in 356, the latter then being handed over to the Chalcidian League (Diod. 16.8). Although Athens was still involved in the Social War, troops were sent to help the Potidaeans, but failed to arrive in time (Diod. 4.35). Moreover, Philip was invited to take on the protectorship of Crenides (which he later refounded as Philippi) in the Pangaeum, and towards the end of 355 he besieged Methone on the Thermaic Gulf, the last Athenian foothold in the north-west Aegean (Diod. 16.34). Athens was avoiding involvement in costly foreign commitments, since the city’s coffers were almost empty after the Social War, which ended in 355, so Philip’s control over areas of Athenian interest steadily increased: by 354 he was in control of the entire Macedonian coastal region apart from the Chalcidic peninsula. At this point, due to his Thessalian connections, he became involved in the Third Sacred War (355–346). Phocis was an ally of the tyrants of the Thessalian city Pherae, and in 353 Larissa appealed to Philip for assistance against Pherae. This meant that Philip entered the war as an enemy of the Phocians, who were supported by the Athenians (Diod. 16.35–38). The Macedonian king took an army to Thessaly but was defeated twice by Lycophron’s Phocian allies under Onomarchus and forced to withdraw to Macedonia (Diod. 16.35.2). In 352, however, he returned to defeat the Phocians on the Thessalian coastal plain at the Battle of the Crocus Field (Diod. 16.35.3–6, see above). He even tried to enter central Greece by advancing towards the strategically important Pass of Thermopylae. This was too much: the Athenian politician Eubulus finally supported military involvement and an Athenian force arrived in time to block Philip’s way (Diod. 16.38.1–2). Philip made no attempt to continue, withdrew to Thessaly and returned to Macedonia. Tensions with Athens were, however, soon to rise again, and again over the Chalcidic area. In 349 Philip turned against the Chalcidian League and started to besiege their most important city, Olynthus (Diod. 16.53; Iust. 8.3.10). Demosthenes incited the Athenians against Philip in his three “Olynthiac Speeches”, but the Athenians failed to respond quickly to the threat being posed to Olynthus. In the summer of 348 Philip conquered the city (Diod. 16.53.2), razed it to the ground and sold the inhabitants into slavery (Diod. 16.53.3). The open wound between Athens and the Macedonians got worse: Philip also captured a number of Athenians in Olynthus and transported them to Macedonia as slaves. The fall of Olynthus led to the collapse of the Chalcidian League and Athens then tried to call Greece to arms against Philip, but the other Greeks failed to respond. Diplomatic negotiations between Philip and Athens followed in 346, initiated by the Macedonian ruler. The Athenian politician Philocrates proposed that the Athenians listen to Philip’s terms, so three Athenian embassies (including Philocrates, Demosthenes and his later rival Aeschines) went to Pella and a Macedonian embassy (including Antipater and Parmenion) travelled to Athens. The last of the three embassies to Pella returned when the envoys learnt that the Phocians had been defeated by Philip; one of the topics discussed by the first and second embassies had in fact been the fate of the Phocians. The Athenians did their best to defend their former allies but failed, partly because other elements were at play, and Athens was trying to gain as much as possible from Philip. The peace of Philocrates ended the war over Amphipolis and the Athenians recognized Philip’s conquests on the coast and renounced all claims to Amphipolis. In return, Philip released his Athenian prisoners from Olynthus and promised to spare Athens’ settlements in the Thracian Chersonese (these settlements were crucial to Athenian survival, since they controlled the grain supply from the Black Sea). Phocis was excluded from the peace: the Athenians were far from happy with the terms, but they seem to have accepted that Phocis was the price to pay. The Athenian support for the temple-robbers was proving unsustainable, and now was the time of reckoning.^[69] Nevertheless, even now the Athenians did not completely abandon the Phocians. The peace negotiations between Athens and Philip were taking place during the Third Sacred War; Thebes appealed for help from Philip to free several Boeotian cities from Phocian control. Philip saw his chance and managed to gain control of Thermopylae, at that point under Phocian control. The Athenians were attended to send Philip a force against the Phocians because of their recent alliance with him, but they did not do so. Nevertheless, the Phocians were defeated and punished by the Amphictyonians, the temple robbers were executed and Philip was given the two Phocian seats in the Amphictyonic Council (Diod. 16.60.1). The Athenians expressed their discontent by refusing to recognize his membership, or to attend the Pythian Games, over which he presided that year (Demosth. or. 19.128). At that stage, in the forties, the Athenians were not yet ready to disavow the Phocians – the memory of their alliance was still fresh (Aischin. 3.118).

4. The Ambivalent Legacy of the Crisaeans in 4th-Century Public Discourse

One usually investigates 4th-century evidence related to the First Sacred War to distinguish historical elements from mythical ones: the main aim is to understand how far back in the past one can trace the historical information in order to reconstruct the historicity of the First Sacred War, one of the monster-problems of Archaic Greek history.

The focus of this article was different. The aim was not to investigate 4th-century evidence related to the First Sacred War in order to reconstruct Archaic History but rather to shed light on how interstate relations between Athens and Central Greece people in the 4th century were shaped in public discourse by drawing on the story of the First Sacred War.

In this framework, the ‘Phocian factor’ played a major role: Athens’ alliance with the Phocians during the Third Sacred War became an embarrassing friendship in the following decade. This had a valuable consequence: whereas, in the intellectual circles close to Philip, the First Sacred War was considered as a precedent for the Third Sacred War in which the impious Phocians were defeated by the pious Philip II; in the Athenian forensic and deliberative arena, the only possible way to use the First Sacred War as an argument was by relating it to the Fourth Sacred War and the impious Locrians of Amphissa. Indeed, the Phocians were Athens’ allies during the Third Sacred War, and Athens supported them even in its immediate aftermath, while negotiating the Peace of Philocrates. It would have made no sense to compare them to the impious Crisaeans. However, stories about the First Sacred War had begun to circulate more broadly. Moreover, in the same period these stories were heavily shaped by intellectuals. The most efficient way to deal with these stories was not to neglect them, but to shape them further in order to convert them into a precedent for the Fourth Sacred War. Thus, the impious Crisaeans became the ancestors of the impious Locrians of Amphissa; and this allowed the Athenians to address their previous otherwise embarrassing friendships.