course of that and the following year the confederacy was extended to nearly all the islands and Asiatic Greek states. It was called the confederacy of Delos, because the money of the confederacy was to be deposited there, as a neutral place, and its object was to keep the Persian fleets from the Aegean, to put down piracy, and to set free every Greek state. This was to be secured by each state—according to its means—agreeing to supply ships, or an equivalent in money, for the maintenance of a fleet of seventy triremes. This confederacy was a league of free states and did not in theory imply any loss of independence, nor a special superiority of any one state. That it gradually came to be regarded as a kind of empire in which Athens exercised the supreme authority was partly due to accident, partly to natural development.
The combined fleet sent out in B.C. 478 to continue the liberation of Greek states from Persian garrisons was under the command of Pausanias of Sparta, uncle and guardian of the young king, the son of Leonidas. His position was the result of the traditional primacy of Sparta. But recent events had raised the prestige of Athens, and Aristides, the commander of the Athenian squadron, was a man to win respect and confidence from all. In his own city he had been generally in opposition to the forward and astute policy of Themistocles; but though for a time the people preferred his rival, they had come back to him, and now trusted him beyond all others.
His name of "the Just," according to the common story, had become so stale that some voted
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