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A little before this, and just after the blow had been struck at
Thermopylae, a herald was sent into Phocis by the Thessalians, who
had always been on bad terms with the Phocians, and especially since
their last overthrow. For it was not many years previous to this
invasion of Greece by the king, that the Thessalians, with their
allies, entered Phocis in full force, but were defeated by the
Phocians in an engagement wherein they were very roughly handled. The
Phocians, who had with them as soothsayer Tellias of Elis, were
blocked up in the mountain of Parnassus, when the following stratagem
was contrived for them by their Elean ally. He took six hundred of
their bravest men, and whitened their bodies and their arms with
chalk; then instructing them to slay every one whom they should meet
that was not whitened like themselves, he made a night attack upon the
Thessalians. No sooner did the Thessalian sentries, who were the
first to see them, behold this strange sight, than, imagining it to
be a prodigy, they were all filled with affright. From the sentries
the alarm spread to the army, which was seized with such a panic that
the Phocians killed four thousand of them, and became masters of their
dead bodies and shields. Of the shields one half were sent as an
offering to the temple at Abae, the other half were deposited at
Delphi; while from the tenth part of the booty gained in the battle,
were made the gigantic figures which stand round the tripod in front of
the Delphic shrine, and likewise the figures of the same size and
character at Abae.
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