The war ended when the Persians agreed to stay away from the Greek city-states in the eastern Mediterranean. This left the Greek cities free to return to their usual activities fighting each other. Athens was in a strong position as it turned the Delian League formed to fight the Persian Empire into an empire of its own.
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Athens used this empire and its financial resources to benefit itself, and further felt confident and free to use the military strength to interfere in the Greek cities outside its empire.
This led to the Peloponnesian War against those cities led by Sparta. After 27 years of this war, the Greek world was devastated – a Persian-imposed peace would have been much kinder than this – and Athens was stripped of its empire, sinking to a second rate power.
