876 HISTORY OF GREECE. of the Amphiktyonic assembly, tc rescue the Delphian temple from its sacrilegious plunderers. The King of Macedon, with his past conquests and his well- known spirit of aggressive enterprise, was now a sort of present deity, ready to lend force to all the selfish ambition, or blind fear and antipathy, prevalent among the discontented fractions of the Hellenic world. While his intrigues had procured numerous par- tisans even in the centre of Peloponnesus, as -ZEschines, on re- turn from his mission, had denounced, not having yet himself enlisted in the number, he was now furnished with a pious pre- tence, and invited by powerful cities, to penetrate into the heart of Greece, within its last line of common defence, Thermopylae. The application of the Thebans to Philip excited much alarm in Phokis. A Macedonian army under Parmenio did actually enter Thessaly, where we find them, three months later, be- sieging Halus. 1 Reports seem to have been spread, about Sep- tember 347 B. c., that the Macedonians were about to march tc Thermopylae ; upon which the Phokians took alarm, and sent en- voys to Athens as well as to Sparta, entreating aid to enable them to hold the pass, and offering to deliver up the three important towns near it, Alponus, Thronium, and Nikaea. So much were the Athenians alarmed by the message, that they not only ordered Proxenus, their general at Oreus, to take immediate possession of the pass,' but also passed a decree to equip fifty triremes, and to send forth their military citizens under thirty years of age, with an energy like that displayed when they checked Philip before at the same place. But it appears that the application had been made by the party in Phokis opposed to Phalaekus. So vehemently did that chief resent the proceeding, that he threw the Phokian en- voys into prison on their return ; refusing to admit either Proxe- nus or Archidamus into possession of Thermopylae, and even dis- missing without recognition the Athenian heralds, who came in their regular rounds to proclaim the solemn truce of the Eleusin- ian mysteries. 2 This proceeding on the part of Phalaekus was 1 Dcmosth. Fals. Leg. p. 392.
- JEschines, Fals. Leg. p. 46. c. 41. It is this notice of the ftvarripturidef
ant vdal which serves as indication of time for the event. The Eleusinian mysteries were celebrated in the month BoCdromion (September). These events took place in September, 347 B. c., Olymp. 108, 2 the archonship of
