H.'s account of the deliverance of Delphi is obviously a temple legend told the author by the Delphic priests (cf. 35. 2, 39. 1, 2), who would also have furnished the inscription recorded by Diodorus (xi. 14). That the legend was widely accepted is shown by its repetition with minor variations when the Gaul attacked Delphi, 279 B. C. (Paus. x. 23). The stories in Ctesias (Pers. 25, 27, p. 70) of an attempted sack by Mardonius who fell there (after Plataea but while Xerxes is marching to Athens) and of actual spoliation by the eunuch Matacas dispatched by Xerxes after his return to Sardis deserve no credit. Even H.'s story is open to grave suspicions. The oracle had certainly shown strong signs of favouring the Mede (cf. vii. 140, 148, 169), and the bulk of the tribes forming the Delphic Amphictyony (cf. vii. 132 n.) had now joined Xerxes; it would therefore be impolitic (cf. Meyer, iii. p. 384) for the Persians to plunder Delphi. This fact they seem themselves to recognize though perhaps not till a year later (ix. 42). The certain fact seems to be that the Persians could have plundered Delphi and did not do so; tradition strongly supports the view that a Persian force marched on Delphi. Three interpretations have been given of this difficult problem.

1. Xerxes, seeing that Delphi, tempted perhaps by the promised tithe (vii. 132), wavered (cf. the encouragement to the Greeks vii. 178, 189), and the second answer to Athens (vii. 141-3), sent a detachment to take it, which was repulsed on the difficult mountain-road by the Phocians aided by a storm and some manifestations held to be supernatural. Since the priests forbade any defence (cf. 36) and Delphi was an open town, Xerxes might have sent quite a small force expecting no resistance (Duncker vii. 276 n.; Grundy, pp. 349, [p. 247] 350). Afterwards the Persians saw how impolitic any attack on Delphi was.

2. The Persians who attacked Delphi were a mere hand of disorderly plunderers acting without orders (Pomtow, Jahr. kl. Philol. cxxix. 227 f.). This is, however, opposed to H.'s statement, ch. 34, 35.

3. The force was sent to protect Delphi from casual plunderers (Munro, J. H. S. xxii. 320), but was perhaps harassed by Phocian zealots from Mount Parnassus.

This view assumes that Delphi had come to a definite agreement with Xerxes (Curtius, Wecklein, Meyer), and afterwards put out the legend to cloak its Medism. Casson (C.R. xxviii. 145-51, xxxv. 144) suggests that Xerxes sent a force to Delphi to make an inventory of the temple treasures. (How and Wells, A Commentary on Herodotus, 1928).