The town was supplied with water by a canal from the river Pleistus. This canal was turned off, filled with hellebore, and then allowed to resume its former course; but scarcely had the thirsty Crissaeans drank of the poisoned water, than they were so weakened by its purgative effects that they could no longer defend their walls. This account sounds like a romance; but it is a curious circumstance that near the ruins of Cirrha there is a salt spring having a purgative effect like the hellebore of the ancients. Cirrha was thus destroyed; but the fate of Crissa is uncertain. It is not improbable that Crissa had sunk into insignificance before this war, and that some of its inhabitants had settled at Delphi, and others at Cirrha. At all events, it is certain that Cirrha was the town against which the vengeance of the Amphictyons was directed. The spoils of Cirrha were employed by the Amphictyons in founding the Pythian Games. Near the ruins of the town in the Cirrhaean plain was the Hippodrome, and in the time of Pindar the Stadium also. The Hippodrome always remained in the maritime plain; but at a later time the Stadium was removed to Delphi. Cirrha remained in ruins, and the Cirrhaean plain continued uncultivated down to the time of Philip II of Macedon, the father of Alexander the Great, when the Amphissians dared to cultivate again the sacred plain, and attempted to rebuild the ruined town. This led to the Second Sacred War, in which Amphissa was taken by Philip, to whom the Amphictyons had entrusted the conduct of the war, in 338 BCE. Cirrha, however, was afterwards rebuilt as the port of Delphi. It is first mentioned again by Polybius; and in the time of Pausanias (2nd century) it contained a temple common to Apollo, Artemis, and Leto, in which were statues of Attic work. Between Crissa and Cirrha was a fertile plain, bounded on the north by Parnassus, on the east by Cirphis, and on the west by the mountains of the Ozolian Locrians. On the western side it extended as far north as Amphissa, which was situated at the head of that part of the plain. This plain, as lying between Crissa and Cirrha, might be called either the Crissaean or Cirrhaean, and is sometimes so designated by the ancient writers; but, properly speaking, there appears to have