Phocis, an agriculturally rich district in the Cephissus valley and Crisa plains of central Greece that contains Delphi, Elatea, and Mount Parnassos, extends northward from the Gulf of Corinth over the range of Mount Parnassus to the Locrian Mountains, which form the northern frontier.

The early history of Phocis is obscure: mainly pastoral, it population is thought to be of the Aeolians, one of the earliest Greek-speaking peoples in the peninsula.

Boeotians from the east and Thessalians from the north had encroached on their territory before the sixth century BCE, however,.

In the fertile Cephissus River valley, between the two mountain ranges, lie most of the Phocian settlements: Amphicleia (or Amphicaea), Tithorea, Elatea, Hyampolis, Abae, and Daulis.

A mountain spur running south from Mount Parnassus to the gulf separates the city of Crisa and its port, Cyrrha, on the Crisaean plain from the port city of Anticyra.

Traditionally, the Phocians controlled the sanctuary of Delphi, to which priests from Knossos had brought the cult of Apollo in the eighth century BCE; pilgrims landing at Cyrrha on their way to the sacred oracle are tolled heavily on the road through Crisa (Krisa).

Galled by this impiety, a coalition of Greek states, led by Cleisthenes of Sicyon, initiate a conflict, later known as the First Sacred War, in about 595 BCE.

Known as the Amphictyonic League, “dwellers around” Thermopylae and later Delphi, the coalition organizes to supervise the temporal affairs of the shrines and to conduct the Pythian Games.Megacles' son Alcmaeon leads an Athenian contingent that fights with Thessaly and of Sicyon.

The fleet of Cleisthemes, blockades Crisa while the league besieges its landward side, ultimately resulting around 590 in the city’s fall and destruction.