ns and their allies, on the
contrary, secure in the protection of great buckler, helmet and
greaves, marched in solid line and were irresistible; they broke the
enemy with their long pikes and at once the battle became a massacre.

=Results of the Persian Wars.=--Sparta had commanded the troops, but
as Herodotus says,[77] it was Athens who had delivered Greece by
setting an example of resistance and constituting the fleet of
Salamis. It was Athens who profited by the victory. All the Ionian
cities of the Archipelago and of the coast of Asia revolted and formed
a league against the Persians. The Spartans, men of the mountains,
could not conduct a maritime war, and so withdrew; the Athenians
immediately became chiefs of the league. In 476[78] Aristides,
commanding the fleet, assembled the delegates of the confederate
cities. They decided to continue the war against the Great King, and
engaged to provide ships and warriors and to pay each year a
contribution of 460 talents ($350,000). The treasure was deposited at
Delos in the temple of Apollo, god of the Ionians. Athens was charged
with the leadership of the military force and with collecting the tax.
To make the agreement irrevocable Aristides had a mass of hot iron
cast into the sea, and all swore to maintain the oaths until the day
that the iron should mount to the surface.

A day came, however, when the war ceased, and the Greeks, always the
victors, concluded a peace, or at least a truce,[79] with the Great
King. He surrendered his claim on the Asiatic Greeks (about 449).

What was to become of the treaty of Aristides? Were the confederate
cities still to pay their contribution now that there was no more
fighting? Some refused it even before the war was done. Athens
asserted that the cities had made their engagements in perpetuity and
forced them to pay them.

The war finished, the treasury at Delos had no further use; the
Athenians transferred the money to Athens and used it in building
their monuments. They maintained that the allies paid for deliverance
from the Persians; they, therefore, had no claim against Athens so
long as she defended them from the Great King. The allies had now
become the tributaries of Athens: they were now her subjects. Athens
increased the tax on them, and required their citizens to bring their
cases before the Athenian courts; she even sent colonists to seize a
part of their lands. Athens, mistress of the league, was sovereign
over