(M450) While these great events were transpiring in Bœotia, the fleet of the Greeks, after the battle of Salamis, undertook to rescue Samos from the Persians, and secure the independence of the Ionian cities in Asia. The Persian fleet, now disheartened, abandoned Samos and retired to Mycale, in Ionia. The Greek fleet followed, but the Persians abandoned or dismissed their fleet, and joined their forces with those of Tigranes, who, with an army of sixty thousand men, guarded Ionia. The Greeks disembarked, and prepared to attack the enemy just as the news reached them of the battle of Platæa. This attack was successful, partly in consequence of the revolt of the Ionians in the Persian camp, although the Persians fought with great bravery. The battle of Mycale was as complete as that of Platæa and Marathon, and the remnants of the Persian army retired to Sardis. The Ionian cities were thus, for the time, delivered of the Persians, as well as Greece itself chiefly by means of the Athenians and Corinthians. The Spartans, with inconceivable narrowness, were reluctant to receive the continental Ionians as allies, and proposed to transport them across the Ægean into Western Greece, 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 Platæa 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.