The conflict was inevitable, though both sides were reluctant to enter upon it; twenty years after the battle of Salamis it broke out. The fact that Athens was trying at the same time to continue the war against Persia and wrest Cyprus and Egypt from it gave her opponents the advantage; she had far overestimated her strength. After a struggle of eleven years (460-449 B.C.) Athens found herself compelled to make peace with Persia and free the Greek mainland, only retaining absolute control over the sea. Under the rule of Pericles she consolidated her power, and the ideals that lived in her were embodied in splendid creations. She proved herself equal, in spite of all internal instability and crises, to a second attack of her Greek opponents (431-421 B.C.). But it again became evident that the radical democracy, which was now at the helm, had no grasp of the realities of the political situation; for the second time it stretched out its hand for the hegemony over all Hellas, in unnatural alliance with Alcibiades, the conscienceless, ambitious man who was aiming at the crown of Athens and Hellas. Mighty indeed was the plan to subdue the Western world, Sicily first of all; then with doubled power first to crush the opponents at home and then gain the supremacy over the whole Mediterranean world. But what a united Hellas might have accomplished was far beyond the resources of Athens, even if the democrats had not overthrown their dangerous ally at the first opportunity, and thus lamed the undertaking at the outset. The catastrophe of the Athenians before Syracuse (413 B.C.) is the turning-point of Greek history. All the opponents of Athens united, and the Persian king, who saw that the hour had come to regain his former power without a struggle, made an alliance with them. Only through his subsidies was it possible for Sparta and her allies to reduce Athens--until she lay prostrate. And the gain fell to Persia alone, however feeble the kingdom had meanwhile become internally. Sparta, after overthrowing the despotism of Lysander, made an honest attempt to reorganise the Greek world after the conservative programme, and to fulfil the task laid upon the nation in the contest with Persia. But she only furnished her opponents at home, and particularism, which now immediately turned against its former ally, an occasion for a fresh uprising, which Sparta could master only by forming a new alliance with Persia. After the peace of 386 the king of Asia utters the decisive word even in the affairs of the Greek mother-country.