Amphiktuones.
[From Harper’s Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities. 1898. From
PERSEUS DIGITAL LIBRARY.]
Literally,“those
dwelling around,,” but in a special sense applied
to populations which at stated times met at the same sanctuary to keep a
festival in common, and to transact common business.
The most famous and extensive union of the kind was that
called, par excellence, the Amphictyonic League, whose common sanctuaries
were the temple of Pythian Apollo at Delphi, and the temple of Demeter at
Anthela, near Pylae or Thermopylae. After Pylae the assembly was named the
Pylaean, even when it met at Delphi, and the deputies of the league Pylagorae.
The league was supposed to be very ancient, as old even as the name of Hellenes;
for its founder was said to be Amphictyon, the son of Deucalion and brother
of Hellen, the common ancestor of all Hellenes. ( Herod.vii. 200.)
It included twelve populations: Malians, Phthians, Aenianes
or Oetoeans, Dolopes, Magnetians, Perrhoebians, Thessalians, Locrians, Dorians,
Phocians, Boeotians, and Ionians, together with the colonies of each. Though
in later times their extent and power were very unequal, yet in point of
law they all had equal rights. Besides protecting and preserving those two
sanctuaries, and celebrating from the year B.C. 586 on wards the Pythian
Games, the league was bound to maintain certain principles of international
right, which forbade them, for instance, ever to destroy utterly any city
of the league, or to cut off its water, even in time of war.
To the assemblies, which met every spring and autumn, each
nation sent two hieromnmones (= wardens of holy things) and several pylagorae.
The latter took part in the debates, but only the former had the right of
voting. When a nation included several States, these took by turns the privilege
of sending deputies. But the stronger states, such as the Ionian Athens
or the Dorian Sparta, were probably allowed to take their turn oftener than
the rest, or even to send to every assembly.
When violations of the sanctuaries or of popular right
took place the assembly could inflict fines, or even expulsion; and a State
that would not submit to the punishment had a “holy war,” declared
against it. By such a war the Phocians were expelled B.C. 346, and their
two votes given to the Macedonians; but the expulsion of the former was
withdrawn because of the glorious part they took in defending the Delphian
temple when threatened by the Gauls in B.C. 279, and at the same time the
Aetolian community, which had already made itself master of the sanctuary,
was acknowledged as a new member of the league. In B.C. 191 the number of
members amounted to seventeen, who nevertheless had only twenty-four votes,
seven having two votes each, the rest only one. Under the Roman rule the
league continued to exist, but its action was now limited to the care of
the Delphian temple. It was reorganized by Augustus, who incorporated the
Malians, Magnetians, Aenianes, and Pythians with the Thessalians, and substituted
for the extinctDolopes the city of Nicopolis in Acarnania, which he had
founded after the battle of Actium.
The last notice we find of the league is in the second
century A.D.
See Freeman, Hist. of Federal Government (2d ed. 1893);
Tittmann, Ueber den Bund der Amphictyonen; Mºller, Dorians; and Grote,
vol. ii. chap. ii.
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