The chronology of the Third Sacred War, notorious for massive Phocian plundering of Delphic treasures to employ mercenaries on a hitherto unheard-of scale (Buckler 2003: 412: ‘‘Philomelos and Onomarchos ushered into the mainstream of Greek history the era of the hired army’’), is highly confused. The most detailed and by far the best analysis of the various problems involved - including a useful survey of the largely jejune earlier scholarship on the topic - is that of Buckler (1989: 148-195; 2003: 385ff. adds nothing). Unfortunately, his traditional determination to treat
Diodorus throughout as a bird-brain (still noticeable in Buckler 2003: 50 n. 11, 67 n., 114 n. 16, etc.) both vitiates a number of his conclusions and results in overfacile solutions to a number of discrepancies, thus leaving the real difficulties unexamined. Some of these are general: like many ancient historians, Buckler takes insufficient account, in his chronological calculations, of variations produced by (1) Diodorus’ habit of including those years partially covered by an event such as a war in the estimation of its total length; (2) the often surprising lack of agreement as to what, precisely, constituted that event’s beginning or end; and (3), perhaps most importantly, the errors and uncertainties that creep in, again and again, in particular over the summer months, when texts that date by campaigning seasons are applied (as regularly in Diodorus’ Bibliotheke) to a schema based on the Athenian archon-year running roughly from July through the following June, so that a week or even a day can make all the difference between, say, a 357/6 and a 356/5 date (see below, pp. 365-366).
When we add to this Diodorus’ regular, well-documented, but frequently ignored, habit of tracking backward or forward in time when technically within a specific archon-year - a habit virtually forced on him by the annalistic structure of his historical, as opposed to his mythological, books (for the best-known instance, see Diodorus’ excursus on Themistocles, 11.54.2-58.5, all technically included within the archon-year 471/0) - the opportunities for both ancient and modern confusion should be all too apparent. The Third Sacred War presents a truly classic instance of just about every error listed above, as well as forcing us to reexamine the radically different research methods imposed on historians with neither indexes nor adequate facilities for cross-referencing at their disposal. In fact Diodorus shows himself to be better than most ancient historians at the tricky business of cross-referencing in and between scrolls (see Rubincam 1989 and 1998, pioneering articles). He can on occasion, like any ancient historian, be proved wrong: the important thing for us is to discover why he was wrong, rather than dismissing him out of hand as a Dummkopf.
Where Buckler is at his best is in the establishment of firm markers on the basis of contemporary, mostly epigraphical, evidence: this gives us a valuable framework against which to judge the literary record. The clearest date established is that of Philomelus’ seizure of the shrine. From a combination of Delphian and Amphicty-onic inscriptions (Pouilloux 1949 and Fouilles de Delphe III.5, nos. 19-20) Buckler is able to work out that Delphi was occupied early in July 356, shortly before the end of the Athenian archon-year of Agathocles (357/6). This date is confirmed by Pausanias (10.2.3), who likewise dates the seizure of the shrine, very specifically, to the Athenian archonship of Agathocles and the fourth year of Olympiad 105. Diod. 14.117.8 confirms this, and 16.59.1 implies it. This dating, it should be noted, offers an excellent example of the danger of sliding between adjacent archon-years.
For the termination of the war epigraphic evidence is lacking, but Demosthenes (19.59) states, very specifically, that it was concluded on 23 Skirophorion (i. e., probably about mid-July, though a month earlier is just possible), right at the end of Themistocles’ archon-year of 347/6. This gives us a normal count of ten years for the war’s duration, a time span confirmed by Aeschines (2.131, ‘‘the ten-year war,’’ cf. 3.148) and Duris of Samos (FGrHist 76 F 2), who states that ‘‘it ended in the tenth year, after Philip’s intervention.’’ Pausanias too, like Diodorus (59.1), emphasizes that the war lasted ten years (9.6.4, 10.2.4). Elsewhere (8.2, 10.3.1) he states that it ended in the tenth year after Philomelus’ occupation. So far, so good.
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