, which proposal was
most honorably rejected by the Athenians. In every thing, except the
defense of Greece Proper, and especially the Peloponnesus, the Spartans
showed themselves inferior to the Athenians in magnanimity and enlarged
views. After the capture of Sestos, B.C. 478, which relieved the Thracian
Chersonese from the Persians, the fleet of Athens returned home. The
capture of this city concludes the narration of Herodotus, which ended
virtually the Persian war, although hostilities were continued in Asia.
The battle of Marathon had given the first effective resistance to Persian
conquests, and created confidence among the Greeks. The battle of Salamis
had destroyed the power of Persia on the sea, and prevented any
co-operation of land and naval forces. The battle of Plataea freed Greece
altogether of the invaders. The battle of Mycale rescued the Ionian
cities.

(M451) Athens had, on the whole, most distinguished herself in this great
and glorious contest, and now stood forth as the guardian of Hellenic
interests on the sea and the leader of the Ionian race. Sparta continued
to take the lead of the military States, to which Athens had generously
submitted. But a serious rivalry now was seen between these leading
States, chiefly through the jealousy of Sparta, which ultimately proved
fatal to that supremacy which the Greeks might have maintained overall the
powers of the world. Sparta wished that Athens might remain unfortified,
in common with all the cities of Northern Greece, while the isthmus should
be the centre of all the works of defense. But Athens, under the sagacious
and crafty management of Themistocles, amused the Spartans by delays,
while the whole population were employed upon restoring its
fortifications.

(M452) Although the war against the Persians was virtually concluded by
the capture of Sestos, an expedition was fitted out by Sparta, under
Pausanias, the hero of Plataea, to prosecute hostilities on the shores of
Asia. After liberating most of the cities of Cyprus, and wresting
Byzantium from the Persians, which thus left the Euxine free to Athenian
ships, from which the Greeks derived their chief supplies of foreign corn,
Pausanias, giddy with his victories, unaccountably began a treasonably
correspondence with Xerxes, whose daughter he wished to marry, promising
to bring all Greece again under his sway. He was recalled to Sparta,
before this correspondence was known, having given offense by