The Amphictyonic council long sur vived the independence of Greece, and was, probably, in the constant exercise of its religious functions. So late as the battle of Actium, it retained enough of its former dignity at least to induce Augustus to claim a place in it for his new city of NXQpolis. Strabo says that in his time it had ceased to ads' If his words are to be understood literally, it must have been revived ; for we know from Pausanias (x. 8), that it was iu existence in the second century after Christ. It reckoned at that time twelve constituent states, who furnished in all thirty deputies; but a preponderance was given to the new town of Nicopolis, which sent six deputies to each meeting ; Delphi sent two to each meeting, and Athens one deputy : the other states sent their deputies according to a certain cycle, and not to every meeting. For the time of its final dissolution we have no authority on which we can rely.
It is not easy to estimate with much certainty the effects produced on the Greek nation generally by the institution of this council. It is, however, something more than conjecture that the country which was the seat of the original mem bers of the Amphictyonic confederacy was also the cradle of the Greek nation, such as it is known to us in the historical ages. This country was subject to incur sions from barbarous tribes, especially on its western frontier, probably of a very different character from the occupants of whom we have been speaking. In the pressure of these incursions, the Amphic tyonic confederacy may have been a powerful instrument of preservation, and must have tended to maintain at least the separation of its members from their fo reign neighbours, and so to preserve the peculiar character of that gifted people, from which knowledge and civilization have flowed over the whole western world.
It may also have aided the cause of hu manity; for it is reasonable to suppose that in earlier times differencal between its own members were occasionally com posed by interference of the council ; and thus it may have been a partial check on the butchery of war, and may at least have diminished the miseries resulting from the cruel lust of military renown. In one respect its influence was greatly and permanently beneficial. In common with the great public festivals, it helped to give a national unity to numerous in dependent states, of which the Greek nation was composed. But it had merit which did not belong to those 8 tivals in an equal degree. It cannot doubted that the Amphictyonic las which regulated the originally small cc federacy, were the foundation of th international law which was recognis throughout Greece ; and which, imp feet as it was, had some effect in res lating beneficially national intercom among the Greeks in peace and war, at so far as it went, was opposed to tt brute force and lawless aggression whip no Greek felt himself restrained by tt law from exercising towards those w were not of the Greek name. To t investigator of that dark but intense period in the existence of the Greek tion which precedes its authentic sewn the hints which have been left us on t earlier days of this council, faint at scanty as they are, have still their vale They contribute something to those fro meuts of evidence with which the Lear ing and still more the ingenuity of t present generation are converting mytl cal legends into a body of ancient histor