and a fine imposed on the Locrians, the payment of which, however, the army was not sufficiently powerful to compel.
The congress of which we have just spoken was not the regular Amphictyonic meeting. This was held in the autumn of 339 B.C. Philip by that time had returned to his kingdom. The meeting was now at Delphi; and Athens, as might be expected, took part in it. Æschines again was one of her representatives. It was on this occasion that the fatal step was taken of invoking the aid of Philip. It is not very difficult to understand how such a vote was carried. Macedon itself was a member of the Council; and so, too, were several states like Thessaly and Phthiotis, which now were simply Macedonian dependencies. Æschines, it may be from really corrupt motives, supported the vote. Accordingly Philip was elected general of the Amphictyonic army; and a request was forwarded to him that "he would march to the aid of Apollo and the Amphictyons, and not suffer the rights of the god to be invaded by the impious Locrians of Amphissa."
The die was now cast. The peril to Greece might possibly even yet have been warded off; but it was great and imminent. And Thebes and Athens, on whom all now depended, were still notoriously unreconciled. Philip, of course, instantly accepted the Council's invitation. He would enter Greece as the representative of a holy cause, as well as the head of a very powerful army. From Thermopylæ he marched straight through Phocis to Elateia, the chief Phocian town and the key to southern Greece. It was not sixty
