Athens provided most ships for the Delian League which won the final years of the war. It paid for the ships and crews from funds contributed by the nearly 200 member cities. When peace was declared, Athens continued to extort the money from the cities, using the ships to collect it. This effectively turneed the Delian League, whose treasury was moved from Delos to Athens, into an empire of Athens – the cities exchanged Persia’s rule for Athens’ rule.
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With no war to fight, there was a lot of surplus money. Athens diverted it to glorification of the city (Parthenon etc), paying for the arts, philosophy etc, and in putting half its citizens on the public service payroll.
A golden age indeed, which lasted until it became embroiled in the Peloponnesian War and was stripped of the empire, and went back to trying to live on its own poor resources, which were not golden.
