by Theopompus) and by contemporary epigraphic sources. Modern historians' dates for the war have been hotly debated, with no clear consensus. It is generally accepted that the war lasted 10 years, and ended in summer 346 BC (one of the few firm dates), which yields a date of 356 BC for the beginning of the war, with Philomelos's seizure of Delphi. Diodorus's chronology for the sacred war is very confused—he dates the start and end of the war a year too late, variously says the war lasted 9, 10 or 11 years, and included the siege of Methone twice under different dates—and his dates cannot therefore be relied upon. After Philomelos's defeat at Neon, the Thebans thought it safe to send the general Pammenes to Asia with 5000 hoplites; Pammenes probably met with Philip at Maroneia in 355 BC, presumably on his outward journey. Buckler, the only historian to produce a systematic study of the sacred war, therefore places Neon in 355 BC, and suggests after the meeting with Pammenes, Philip went to begin the siege of Methone. Other historians have placed Neon in 354 BC, because Diodorus says that the battle took place while Philip besieged Methone which Diodorus (at one point) places in 354 BC. Disregarding the dates, most historians agree upon the same sequence of events for the first phases of the Sacred War. The principal question is therefore when that sequence started. Thus, Buckler (as well as Beloch and Cloche) dates Neon to 355 BC, Methone to 355–354 BC, Philip's first Thessalian campaign to 354 BC, and his second to 353 BC. Conversely, Cawkwell, Sealey, Hammond and others lower all these dates by one year, beginning with Neon in 354 BC. Background The war was ostensibly caused by the refusal of the Phocian Confederation to pay a fine imposed on them in 357 BC by the Amphictyonic League, a pan-Hellenic religious organisation which governed the most sacred site in Ancient Greece, the Temple of Apollo at Delphi. The fine was occasioned by the Phocians's illegal cultivation of sacred land on the Kirrhaean plain, which they did not deny; the fine was, however, far beyond the Phocians' ability to pay. Under normal circumstances, refusal to pay the fine would have made the Phocians religious (and therefore political) outcasts in Greece, and liable to have a sacred war declared against them. Behind the religious element, there probably lay