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When the Phocians out of fear of the judgement elected him general with absolute power, Philomelus set about energetically to fulfil his promise. First he went to Sparta, where he conversed in private with Archidamus king of the Lacedaemonians, representing that the king had an equal interest in the effort to render null and void the judgments of the Amphictyons, for there existed serious and unjust pronouncements of that Council to the injury of the Lacedaemonians also. He accordingly disclosed to Archidamus that he had decided to seize Delphi and that if he succeeded in obtaining the guardianship of the shrine he would annul the decrees of the Amphictyons. [2] Although Archidamus approved of the proposal, he said he would not for the present give assistance openly, but that he would co-operate secretly in every respect, providing both money and mercenaries. Philomelus, having received from him fifteen talents and having added at least as much on his own account, hired foreign mercenaries and chose a thousand of the Phocians, whom he called peltasts. [3] Then, after he had gathered a multitude of soldiers and had seized the oracle, he slew the group of Delphians called Thracidae1 who sought to oppose him and confiscated their possessions; but, observing that the others were terror-stricken, he exhorted them to be of good cheer since no danger would befall them. [4] When news of the seizure of the shrine was noised abroad, the Locrians, who lived near by,2 straightway took the field against Philomelus. A battle took place near Delphi and the Locrians, having been defeated with the loss of many of their men, fled to their own territory, and Philomelus, being elated by his victory, hacked from the slabs the pronouncements of the Amphictyons, deleted the letters recording their judgements, [5] and personally caused the report to be circulated that he had resolved not to plunder the oracle nor had he purposed to commit any other lawless deed, but that in support of the ancestral claim to the guardianship and because of his desire to annul the unjust decrees of the Amphictyons, he was vindicating the ancestral laws of the Phocians.

1 Unknown. Wesseling thinks they may be the Φοίβου Δελφοὶ θέραπες, noble attendants of the shrine, cp. Eur. Ion 94.

2 Near Amphissa. The account of the battle is repeated chap. 28.3.

Diodorus Siculus. Diodorus of Sicily in Twelve Volumes with an English Translation by C. H. Oldfather. Vol. 4-8. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press; London: William Heinemann, Ltd. 1989.

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