recently taken by force from the Delphians, who were supported by Thebes; and in
the 'Sacred War' to which this act (which was considered to be sacrilege) gave
rise in 355 B.C., the Thebans and Locrians fought against the Phocians in the
name of the Amphictyonic Council, a body (composed of representatives of tribes
and states of very unequal importance[3]) to which the control of the temple
traditionally belonged. Thessaly appears to have been at this time more or less
under Theban influence, but was immediately dominated by the tyrants of Pherae,
though the several cities seem each to have possessed a nominally independent
government. The Greek peoples were disunited in fact and unfitted for union by
temperament. The twofold desire, felt by almost all the more advanced Greek
peoples, for independence on the one hand, and for 'hegemony' or leadership
among other peoples, on the other, rendered any effective combination
impossible, and made the relations of states to one another uncertain and
inconstant. While each people paid respect to the spirit of autonomy, when their
own autonomy was in question, they were ready to violate it without scruple when
they saw their way to securing a predominant position among their neighbours;
and although the ideal of Panhellenic unity had been put before Greece by
Gorgias and Isocrates, its realization did not go further than the formation of
leagues of an unstable character, each subject, as a rule, to the more or less
tyrannical domination of some one member.

Probably the power which was most generally feared in the Greek world was that
of the King of Persia. Several times in recent years (and particularly in 387
and 367) he had been requested to make and enforce a general settlement of
Hellenic affairs. The settlement of 387 (called the King's Peace, or the Peace
of Antalcidas, after the Spartan officer who negotiated it) had ordained the
independence of the Greek cities, small and great, with the exception of those
in Asia Minor, which were to form part of the Persian Empire, and of Lemnos,
Imbros, and Scyros, which were to belong to Athens as before. The attempt to
give effect to the arrangement negotiated in 367 failed, and the terms of the