Page:History of Greece Vol XI.djvu/460

434 HISTORY OF GREECE. when a storm of thunder and lightning arose, so violent, tltat his engines " were burnt by the divine fire,"* and he himself with several soldiers perished in trying to extinguish the flames. His remaining army passed into Peloponnesus, where they embraced the cause of some Eleian exiles against the government of Elis ; but were vanquished, compelled to surrender, and either sold into slavery or put to death. 2 Even the wives of the Phokian leaders, who had adorned themselves with some of the sacred donatives out of the Delphian Temple, were visited with the like extremity of suffering. And while the gods dealt thus rigorously with the authors of the sacrilege, they exhibited favor no less manifest to- wards their champion Philip, whom they exalted uaore and more towards the pinnacle of honor and dominion.3 CHAPTER XC. FROM THE PEACE OF 346 B. C., TO THE BATTLE OF CILEV-9NEIA AND THE DEATH OF PHILIP. I HAVE described in my last chapter the conclusion of the Sacred War, and the reestablishment of the Amphiktyoni-? as- sembly by Philip ; together with the dishonorable peace of 46 B. cl, whereby Athens, after a war, feeble in management and inglorious in result, was betrayed by the treachery of her own envoys into the abandonment of the pass of Thermopylae; a new sacrifice, not required by her actual position, and more fatal to her future security than any of the previous losses. This important pass, the key of Greece, had now come into possession 1 Diodor. xvi. 63. iiirb rov ddov irvpbf Kore^/le^^ffav, etc. 2 Diodor. xvi. 61, 62, 63. 3 Diodor. xvi. 64 ; Justin, viii. 2. " Dignnm itaqne qui a Diis proxi- mus habeatur, per quern Deorum majestas vindicata sit." Some of these mercenaries, however, who had been employed in Phokis perished in Sicily in the service of Timoleon as has been already rt Utod.