In 458/7 BC a war broke out between Athens’ ally Phocis and Doris, traditionally identified as the homeland of the Dorians and having a longstanding alliance with Sparta. A Spartan army under the general Nicomedes entered Boeotia, which was neutral, and forced the Phocians to accept terms. Meanwhile, the Athenians sent a squadron of fifty ships round the Peloponnese to Pegae to prevent the Spartan force returning across the Corinthian Gulf. Nicomedes led his army back to Boeotia and the Athenians marched out to meet them. When the two armies met at Tanagra, the Thessalians deserted and the Athenians were defeated, but both sides suffered heavy losses. The Spartans then marched home across the Isthmus.
A few months later the Athenians dispatched an army under Myronides to Boeotia, and the Boeotian army gave battle at Oenophyta (457 BC). The Athenians scored a crushing victory and won control of Boeotia, Phocis and east Locris. The Athenians took this chance to complete the construction of their Long Walls, and it was probably during this time that Naupactus was captured from the west Locrians. Shortly after this, Aegina was taken and forced to join the Delian League.
In 456 BC the Athenians sent a naval expedition under the general Tolmides to ravage the coasts of the Peloponnese. He burnt the Spartan dockyards at Gytheum, captured the city of Chalcis on the Corinthian Gulf, and then landed in the territory of Sicyon and defeated the Sicyonians in battle.
In 455/4 BC Myronides led an expedition against Thessaly to punish them for their desertion at Tanagra and to restore a Thessalian exile, Orestes. But nothing was achieved against the Thessalian cavalry. Not long after, Pericles took a thousand Athenian hoplites on a naval expedition starting from Pegae in the Megarid. There was a successful battle at Sicyon, but with no long term results. With Achaean help Pericles crossed the Gulf of Acarnania and unsuccessfully besieged Oeniadae, at the mouth of the Achelous. Further operations were curtailed by news of the crushing defeat in Egypt in 454 BC. The Athenians now took the opportunity, allegedly because of a possible Persian attack on Delos, to transfer the league’s treasury from Delos to Athens.
Plutarch (c.46-120), however, indicates that many of Pericles’ rivals viewed the transfer as usurping the league’s resources to fund Pericles’ elaborate building projects. Athens also switched from accepting ships, men and weapons as dues from league members, to only accepting money. From this time the league can be described as the Athenian Empire.
Cimon was recalled from exile as the statesman who could best make peace with Sparta. In 451 BC he negotiated a five-year truce with Sparta, in which Athens retained most of her territorial gains, including the island of Aegina, interests in Boeotia, and a foothold in the Peloponnese itself. Argos chose to back out of her alliance with Athens, and Sparta made a Thirty-year truce with Argos to clear its access to Attica.
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