Ne'er since that olden time, when Asia stood First torn from Europe by the ocean flood, Since horrid Mars first poured on either shore The storm of battle and its wild uproar, Hath man by land and sea such glory won As by the mighty deed this day was done. By land, the Medes in myriads press the ground; By sea, a hundred Tyrian ships are drowned, With all their martial host; while Asia stands Deep groaning by, and wrings her helpless hands. --Trans. by MERIVALE. The same poet pays the following tribute to the Greeks who fell in this conflict: These, by the streams of famed Eurymedon, There, envied youth's short brilliant race have run: In swift-winged ships, and on the embattled field, 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 Ægean 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 its eloquence and its strict adherence to facts. The Earthquake at Sparta and the Revolt of the Helots.