ances of the
primitive habit of religious fraternization, but wider and more
comprehensive than the rest; at first purely religious, then religious
and political at once, lastly more the latter than the former; highly
valuable in the infancy, but unsuited to the maturity of Greece, and
called into real working only on rare occasions, when its efficiency
happened to fall in with the views of Athens, Thebes, or the king of
Macedon. In such special moments it shines with a transient light which
affords a partial pretense for the imposing title bestowed on it by
Cicero--_commune Graeciae concilium;_ but we should completely
misinterpret Grecian history if we regarded it as a federal council
habitually directed or habitually obeyed. Had there existed any such
"commune concilium" of tolerable wisdom and patriotism, and had the
tendencies of the Hellenic mind been capable of adapting themselves to
it, the whole course of later Grecian history would probably have been
altered; the Macedonian kings would have remained only as respectable
neighbors, borrowing civilization from Greece and expending their
military energies upon Thracians and Illyrians; while united Hellas
might even have maintained her own territory against the conquering
legions of Rome.

The twelve constituent Amphictyonic races remained unchanged until the
Sacred War against the Phocians (B.C. 355), after which, though the
number twelve was continued, the Phocians were disfranchised, and their
votes transferred to Philip of Macedon. It has been already mentioned
that these twelve did not exhaust the whole of Hellas. Arcadians,
Eleans, Pisans, Minyae, Dryopes, AEtolians, all genuine Hellenes, are not
comprehended in it; but all of them had a right to make use of the
temple of Delphi, and to contend in the Pythian and Olympic games. The
Pythian games, celebrated near Delphi, were under the superintendence of
the Amphictyons, or of some acting magistrate chosen by and presumed to
represent them. Like the Olympic games, they came round every four years
(the interval between one celebration and another being four complete
years, which the Greeks called a _Pentaeteris_): the Isthmian and Nemean
games recurred every two years. In its first humble form a competition
among bards to sing a hymn in praise of Apollo, this festival was
doubtless of immemorial antiquity; but the first extension of it into
pan-Hellenic notoriety (as I have already remarked), the first
multipl