ABSTRACT
The invading forces of the Persian king, Xerxes, had forced it to be abandoned in 480. The greater part of its defensive wall and most of its houses were subsequently destroyed. The Athenian sailors who, with other Greeks and under Spartan leadership, defeated Xerxes’ fleet in 480 at nearby Salamis, were men without a city. The naval alliance under this changed leadership is called by scholars “the Delian League”; its treasury and meetings were located on the symbolic mid-Aegean island of Delos. Thucydides gives a detailed sketch of the precariously describable period 479-436, which includes the entire life of the Delian League, in Chapters 89 to 117 of Book I. Scholars have sometimes believed that the ravaging of the Persian Empire was projected by the Delian League for the sake of loot. A purpose of the original Delian League which the Mytileneans could not mention in this context was to get rid of Spartan control.
