Alike they forced the Median bows to yield,
Breaking their foremost ranks. Now here they lie,
Their names inscribed on rolls of victory.
--Trans. by MERIVALE.

On the recall of Pausanias from Asia Minor Sparta lost, and Athens
acquired, the command in the war against Persia. Athens was now
rapidly approaching the summit of her military renown. The war
with Persia did not prevent her from extending her possessions
in Greece by force of arms; and island after island of the AEgean
yielded to her sway, while her colonies peopled the winding shores
of Thrace and Macedon. The other states and cities of Greece could
not behold her rapid, and apparently permanent, growth in power
without great dissatisfaction and anxiety. When the Persian war
was at its height, a sense of common danger had caused many of
them to seek an alliance with Athens, the result of what is known
as the Confederacy of Delos; but, now that the danger was virtually
passed, long existing jealousies broke out, which led to political
dissensions, and, finally, to the civil wars that caused the ruin
of the Grecian republics. Sparta, especially, had long viewed
with indignation the growing resources of Athens and was preparing
to check them by an invasion of Attica, when sudden and complicated
disasters forced her to abandon her designs, and turn her attention
to her own dominions. In 464 B.C. the city was visited by an
earthquake that laid it in ruins and buried not less than twenty
thousand of its chosen citizens; and this calamity was immediately
followed by a general revolt of the Helots. BULWER'S description
of this terrible earthquake, and of the memorable conduct of the
Laconian government in opposing, under such trying circumstances,
the dreadful revolt that occurred, has been greatly admired for