The essays here collected focus on a series of issues pertaining to the region of eastern Phocis in the history of central Greece and to the process of construction of the Phocian federal state. The position along the necessary itinerary that took from Thermopylae to southern Greece marked Phocis' character as a frontier region. The image of profound unity by which the Phocians elaborated their selfrepresentation is coherent with the strong sentiment of national identity that constituted a key factor in some of the major political and military moments of their history; it emerged in the communal cult to the ethnos' eponymous hero and in the profound significance of the pan-national festivals held at the federal sanctuary. Mt. Parnassus can be taken as the landmark most charged with actual and symbolic meanings in the region's history, even if the presence of the panhellenic sanctuary of Apollo in western Phocis brought upon this mountain an sacral aura that made it an emblem for all of the Greek world.