The Persian soldiers were ill-equipped; they were embarrassed by their long robes, the head was poorly protected by a felt hat, the body ill-defended by a shield of wicker-work.  For arms they had a bow, a dagger, and a very short pike; they could fight only at a great distance or hand-to-hand.  The Spartans 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 more than three hundred cities spread over the islands and the coasts of the Archipelago, and the tribute paid her amounted to six hundred talents a year.

STRIFE AMONG THE GREEK STATES