...espouses the cause of the Locrians of…

The withdrawal of Sparta and her Peloponnesian allies from the Greek flee has left the perils and the glories of the Persian War to Athens, which, though at the outset merely the leading state in a confederacy of free allies, soon begins to make herself the mistress of an empire.

The reluctant withdrawal of Sparta is ominous, but Greek unity remains intact by the middle of the 470s.

At the Olympic Games of 476, an unusually political celebration (the first after the last of the Persian Wars and held in the honored presence of the Athenian Themistocles), there are still victorious competitors from Sparta, as well as from other Dorian states such as Argos and Aegina and from Italy and Sicily.

Initial actions taken against Persia in the first years of the Delian League's existence are scattered.

Eion on the Strymon, an economically and strategically important site in Thrace, is still held by a Persian commander.

In the first act of the league recorded by Thucydides, Cimon undertakes Athens' successful capture of Eion, also in 476, an act perfectly in keeping with the league's ostensibly Panhellenic or anti-Persian program.

However, the natives will soon destroy an Athenian settlement (cleruchy) sent to that district.

Leotychides returns to Sparta, is tried for bribery, and flees to the temple of Athena Alea in Tegea.

He is sentenced to exile and his house is burned.

The citizens of Himera—where Greek forces under Gelo of Syracuse, and Theron, the sole ruler of Akragas, had defeated the Carthaginian force of Hamilcar in 480 BCE, ending the Carthaginian threat to the Greek colonies on the island—appeal in 476 BCE to Hiero I for aid against the oppressive rule of Theron’s son Thrasideios, but this only leads to the citizens' massacre by Theron and a resettlement of the town with Dorians.

Hiero also removes the inhabitants of Naxos and Catana (Catania) to ...

...Leontini, ...

...resettles Catana (originally a Sicelian city called Inessa or Inessum, which he renames Aetna in 476) with Dorians, ...

...concludes an alliance with Akragas (Agrigentum, modern Agrigento), and ...

...Anaxilas, tyrant of Rhegium.

The Greek poet Pindar visits Sicily and is made welcome at the courts of Theron of Akragas and Hieron I of Syracuse, who commission some of his greatest poetry.

It is through these connections that Pindar's reputation will spread throughout the Greek world.