6. In this war a new confederacy was formed, which was extended beyond Peloponnesus; the community of danger and of victory having, besides a momentary combination, also produced an union destined for some duration. It was the assembly of this league—a fixed congress at Corinth during, and at Sparta after, the war—that settled the internal differences of Greece, that invited Argos, Corcyra, and Gelon to join the league, and afterwards called upon Themistocles to answer for his proceedings.(804) So much it did for the present emergency. But at the same time Pausanias, the regent of Sparta, after the great victory of Platæa (at which, according to Æschylus, the power of Persia fell by the Doric spear),(805) prevailed upon the allies to conclude a further treaty. Under the auspices of the gods of the confederacy, particularly of the Eleutherian (or Grecian) Zeus, they pledged themselves mutually to maintain the independence of all states, and to many other conditions, of which the memory has been lost. To the Platæans in particular security from danger was promised.(806) The Ionians also, after the battle of Mycale, were received into this confederacy.(807) 7. The splendid victories over the Persians had for some time taken Sparta, which was fitted for a quiet and passive existence, out of her natural sphere; and her king Pausanias had wished to betray his country for the glitter of an Asiatic prince. But this state soon perceived her true interest, and sent no more commanders to Asia, “that her generals might not be made worse:” she likewise decided to avoid any further war with the Persians, thinking that Athens was better fitted to carry it on than herself.(808) The decision of the Spartans was doubtless influenced by the defection of the Ionians from Pausanias, and their refusal to obey Dorcis, whom the Spartans had sent with a small body of men in his place. Nevertheless, the chief motives which determined them must have lain deeper; for without the Greeks of Asia Minor, they could, by the assistance of the naval powers of Peloponnesus, Corinth, Ægina, &c, have continued a war which promised more gain and plunder than trouble and danger. If the speech were now extant in which Hetoëmaridas the Heraclid proved to the councillors that it was not expedient for Sparta to aim at the mastery of the sea,(809) we should doubtless possess a profound view, on the Spartan side, of those things which we are now accustomed to look on with Athenian eyes. Nor is it true that the supremacy over the Greeks was in fact transferred at all from Sparta to Athens, if we consider the matter as Sparta considered it, however great the influence of this change may have been on the power of Athens. But Sparta continued to hold her pre-eminence in Peloponnesus, and most of the nations of the mother-country joined themselves to her: while none but the Greeks of Asia Minor and the islands, who had previously been subjects of Persia, and