century been known, and when, three or four years after the great
victory of the Crimesus, Timoleon suddenly died, the grief of the people
was universal and profound. His funeral obsequies were splendidly
celebrated at the public cost, his body was burned on a vast funeral
pile, and as the flames flashed upward a herald proclaimed,--

"The Syracusan people solemnize, at the cost of two hundred minae, the
funeral of this man, the Corinthian Timoleon, son of Timodemus. They
have passed a vote to honor him for all future time with festival
matches in music, horse and chariot races, and gymnastics; because,
after having put down the despots, subdued the foreign enemy, and
recolonized the greatest among the ruined cities, he restored to the
Sicilian Greeks their constitution and laws."

And thus died one of the noblest and most successful men the world has
ever known. The fratricide of his earlier years was for the good of
mankind, and his whole life was consecrated to the cause of human
liberty, while not a thought of self-aggrandizement seems to have ever
disturbed his noble soul.

_THE SACRED WAR._

There were two places in Greece which had been set aside as
sacred,--Plataea, the scene of the final defeat of the Persian invaders,
and Delphi, the seat of the great temple of Apollo, in whose oracles all
Greece placed faith. We have already seen how little the sacredness of
Plataea protected it from ruin. We have next to see how the sacredness of
Delphi was condemned, and how all Greece suffered in consequence.

The temple of Apollo at Delphi had long been held so inviolate that it
became a rich reservoir of treasures, gathered throughout the centuries.
Croesus, the rich king of Lydia, sent thither the overflow of his
wealth, and hundreds of others paid liberally for the promises of the
priestess, until the treasures of Delphi became a by-word in Greece.
This vast wealth was felt to be safe. The god would protect his own.
Men's voices were deep with awe when they told how the wrath of Apollo
had overthrown the Persian robbers who sought to rifle his holy fane.
And yet the time came when a horde of bandit Greeks made the temple
their prey and the hand of the god was not lifted in its defence, nor
did outraged Greece rise to punish the sacrilegious robbers. This is the
tale that we have next to tell, that of the so-called Sacred War, with
all it meant to Greece.

There was a great Greek council, centuries old, c