Onomarchus the Phocian

Brother of Philomelus, succeeded him as Phocian commander after his suicide at Neon in 354. Continued the appropriation of the Delphic temple-gold to fund mercenary armies — the cumulative ten-thousand-talent debt to Apollo that the Amphictyons would after 346 require Phocis to repay at sixty talents a year (Diod. 16.60.1–2). In 353 he twice defeated Philip II in Thessaly and forced him to retreat into Macedonia; in 352 Philip returned with the Thessalian League cavalry and met Onomarchus on the Crocus Field at the head of the Pagasitic Gulf. The Macedonians wore laurel-wreaths into the battle, marking their cause as the cause of Apollo. Diodorus 16.35.5–6 preserves the close: more than six thousand Phocians and mercenaries slain, three thousand captured, Onomarchus 'fled toward the sea' but was caught when Chares the Athenian's relief fleet arrived too late. 'Philip hanged Onomarchus; the rest he threw into the sea as temple-robbers' (τὸν μὲν Ὀνόμαρχον ἐκρέμασε, τοὺς δ᾽ ἄλλους ὡς ἱεροσύλους κατεπόντισεν). The body of Onomarchus crucified on the field and the three thousand mercenaries drowned mark the moment Philip claimed for himself the Apollo-as-vindicator religious authority that two years later, at the Peace of Philocrates, would be ratified by the Amphictyonic seats.

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