Phokis was a region of Greek notably unpopular with other Greeks due to a habit of consistently picking the wrong side. Only about 625 miles in total area, Phokis is transected by Mount Parnassus (over 8,000 feet high) which divides the region into two separate portions. Thus, Phokis was not only geographically divided, but lacked minerals or trading resources, significant rivers or markets. Throughout its classical history, Phokis was largely a land of flocks and shepherds, lacking important cities or kings. Perhaps for that reason, Phokis could show particularly poor judgment when facing stronger, richer regions of Hellas and it was always surrounded by more aggressive neighbors.

The Phocians first come into history with Herodotus, and apparently joined the national effort to thrust back the Persian invasion of 480 BC. However, although they served with the "band of brothers" at Thermopylae, their performance was abysmal. Posted by King Leonidas of Sparta on the heights, where a little-known back trail led along the ridge behind the Hot Gates, the 1,000 Phocian volunteers might never have seen action – if the traitor, Ephialtes, had not led the Persians by the back door to destroy the Spartans. The shepherd boys comprising the Phocian force took one look at the advancing Persians and fled: thus helping ensuring the Spartan defeat that became legendary in its own time.

If this was not bad enough, a year later, at the critical Battle of Plataea, the Phocians were actually enrolled on the Persian side and partook of that famous defeat. In 457 BC, attempting to control more territory against the Dorians, the Phocians found the ally of the Dorians - the Spartans - in their own country. Once again, when the Phocians tried to capture and control the internationally-renowned oracle at Delphi, they at first faced the Spartans and later hung on to the sanctuary only through the alliance with the Athenians during the Peloponnesian War. Athens, of course, lost the war to Sparta.

In the constant conflicts of the fourth century, the Phocians swayed with whatever stronger neighbors required their alliance, without notable success. After Thebes trounced Sparta, Phokis once again attempted to seize and hold Delphi, in 356 BC. They broke into the sacred temple funds to purchase mercenaries to defend their "conquest". Unfortunately, as several Greek cities turned against them in the (third) Sacred War, they ran up against the warlike young king of Macedon, Philip II, who crushed the Phocians in 346. Philip demanded that the Phocians repay all the looted treasures to the Delphic temples. When the Phocians failed in this charge, they then joined Athens and Thebes in fighting Philip and his young son, Alexander, at the landmark battle of Charonaea. Needless to say, Phocis and the other Greek allies were crushed by Philip's victory.

After two decades controlled by Macedon, in 323 BC, Phokis joined with other Greek allies in rebelling against Macedon’s General Antipater, following the death of Alexander the Great. Antipater won. Apparently Phokis now largely turned against military involvement.

Eventually, Phokis was subsumed into the Hellenistic Kingdom of Macedon and when that kingdom was conquered by Rome in the early second century, it continued to be a small cog in a large imperial wheel.

After the Roman conquest, Phokis largely disappears from the records in the early Roman Empire. It continues to be a small and relatively unimportant rural area, overwhelmed by the fame of its one great center, Delphi.

So Phokis was then, and is now, largely known as the entry to the great religious site of Delphi, home of the Pythia and Apollo’s great oracle.

• Map showing Phokis (Phocis) courtesy of Wikipedia

  A New Classical Dictionary of Greek and Roman Mythology (book online)