guides, marched toward the temple at Delphi. This they did purposing to spoil the temple, and to bring the treasure to the King; and indeed the King knew all the notable things that were laid up in the treasury at Delphi better than he knew the things that he had left in his own house; for there was continually much talk about them, and especially about the offering which Crœsus, King of the Lydians, had made to the god.
The men of Delphi, when they knew of the coming of the Persians, were in great fear; therefore they inquired of the oracle what they should do with the treasures of the temple, whether they should bury them in the earth, or take them away to some other land. But the god answered them in these words, “Move them not, for I am sufficient to defend that which is mine own.” When the men of Delphi heard these words, they took counsel about themselves. First they carried their women and children across the gulf of Corinth to the land of Achaia, and after that they fled, for the most part, to the heights of Parnassus, and their goods they hid in the Corycian cave; but some of them escaped to Amphissa, a city of the Locrians; of all the men of Delphi there were left in the city sixty only, and the prophet.
So soon as the barbarians were come near so that they could see the temple, the prophet (his name was Acetatus) espied the holy arms which it is not lawful for a man to touch, lying without the temple. And while he went to tell this marvel to them that were in the city, and the barbarians were coming up with all speed, and were now near to the temple of Athene, there befel marvels greater by far than that which has been told. A great marvel indeed is it that arms should move of their own accord so as to be seen lying without the temple, but the things that befell afterward are greater by far, and such indeed that nothing can be compared with them. First of all, so soon as the barbarians, coming up the road, were now hard by the temple of Athene, there fell on them great thunderbolts from heaven, and two great rocks brake off from the