Note 529 — Chapter LXXXVII · FROM THE COMMENCEMENT OF THE SACRED WAR TO THAT OF THE OLYNTHIAN WAR.

Diodor. xvi. 30. ἠναγκάζετο (Philomelus) τοῖς ἱεροῖς ἀναθήμασιν ἐπιβαλεῖν τὰς χεῖρας καὶ συλᾷν τὸ μαντεῖον. A similar proposition had been started by the Corinthian envoys in the congress at Sparta, shortly before the Peloponnesian war; they suggested as one of their ways and means the borrowing from the treasures of Delphi and Olympia, to be afterwards repaid (Thucyd. i. 121). Perikles made the like proposition in the Athenian assembly; “for purposes of security,” the property of the temples might be employed to defray the cost of war, subject to the obligation of replacing the whole afterwards (χρησαμένους τε ἐπὶ σωτηρίᾳ ἔφη χρῆναι μὴ ἐλάσσω ἀντικαταστῆσαι πάλιν, Thucyd. ii. 13). After the disaster before Syracuse, and during the years of struggle intervening before the close of the war, the Athenians were driven by financial distress to appropriate to public purposes many of the rich donatives in the Parthenon, which they were never afterwards able to replace. Of this abstraction, proof is found in the Inscriptions published by Boeckh, Corp. Inscript. No. 137-142, which contain the official records of the successive Boards of Treasurers of Athênê. It is stated in an instructive recent Dissertation, by J. L. Ussing (De Parthenone ejusque partibus Disputatio, p. 3. Copenhagen, 1849), “Multæ in arce Athenarum inventæ sunt tabulæ Quæstorum Minervæ, in quibus quotannis inscribebant, quænam vasa aurea aliæque res pretiosæ in æde Minervæ dedicata extarent. Harum longe maxima pars ante Euclidem archontem scripta est...: Nec tamen una tabula templi dona continebat universa, sed separatim quæ in Pronao, quæ in Hecatompedo, quæ in Parthenone (the part of the temple specially so called), servabantur, separatim suis quæque lapidibus consignata erant. Singulari quadam fortuna contigit, ut inde ab anno 434 B. C., ad 407 B. C., tam multa fragmenta tabularum servata sint, ut hos donorum catalogos aliquatenus restituere possimus. In quo etiam ad historiam illius temporis pertinet, quod florentibus Athenarum rebus opes Deæ semper augeri, fractis autem bello Siculo, inde ab anno 412 B. C., eas paulatim deminui videmus.... Urgente pecuniæ inopia Athenienses ad Deam confugiebant, et jam ante annum 406 B. C., pleraque Pronai dona ablata esse videmus. Proximis annis sine dubio nec Hecatompedo nec Parthenoni pepercerunt; nec mirum est, post bellum Peloponnesiacum ex antiquis illis donis fere nulla comparere.”