Page:History of Greece Vol XI.djvu/520

494 HISTORY OF GREECE. villages, impoverished, or driven into exile. These exiles, of whom were at Athens, now returned, and the Phokian popula- tion were aided by the Athenians and Thebans in reoccupying and securing their towns. 1 Some indeed of these towns were so small, such as Parapotamii 9 and others, that it was thought inexpedient to reconstitute them. Their population was transferred to the others, as a msans of increased strength. Ambrysus, in the south- western portion of Phokis, was refortified by the Athenians and Thebans with peculiar care and solidity. It was surrounded with a double circle of wall of the black stone of the country ; each wall be- ing fifteen feet high and nearly six feet in thickness, with an interval of six feet between the two. 3 These walls were seen, five centuries afterwards, by the traveller Pausanias, who numbers them among the most solid defensive structures in the ancient world. 4 Am- brysus was valuable to the Athenians and Thebans as a military position for the defence of Breotia, inasmuch as it lay on that rough southerly road near the sea, which the Lacedaemonian king Kleombrotus 5 had forced when he marched from Phokis to the position of Leuktra; eluding Epaminondas and the main Theban force, who were posted to resist him on the more frequented road by Koroneia. Moreover, by occupying the south-western parts of Phokis on the Corinthian Gulf, they prevented the arrival of reinforcements to Philip by sea out of Peloponnesus. The war in Phokis, prosecuted seemingly upon a large scale and with much activity, between Philip and his allies on one side, and the Athenians and Thebans with their allies on the other ended with the fatal battle of Chaeroneia, fought in August 338 B. C. ; having continued about ten months from the time when Philip, after being named general at the Amphiktyonic assembly (about the autumnal equinox), marched southward and occupied Elateia. 6 But respecting the intermediate events, we are unfortu- 1 1'ausanias, x. 3, 2. * Pausanias, x. 33, 4. J Pausanias, x. 36, 2. 4 Pausanias, iv. 31, 5. He places the fortifications of Ambrysus in a class with those of Byzantium and Rhodes. 6 Pausan. ix. 13, 2 ; Diodor. xv. 53 ; Xeno/ih. Hell. vi. 4, 3. 6 The chronology of this period has caused mucli perplexity, and has leen differently arranged by different authors. But it will be found that all the