<P> However, in 479 BC, the remaining Persian forces under Mardonius devastated Attica, Athenian pressure forced Sparta to lead an advance . The outcome was a standoff where both the Persians and the Greeks attempted to fight on favorable terrain, and this was resolved when the Persians attacked during a botched Greek withdrawal . In the resulting Battle of Plataea the Greeks under the generalship of the Spartan Pausanias overthrew the lightly armed Persian infantry, killing Mardonius . </P> <P> The superior weaponry, strategy, and bronze armour of the Greek hoplites and their phalanx again proved their worth one year later when Sparta assembled at full strength and led a Greek alliance against the Persians at the battle of Plataea . The decisive Greek victory at Plataea put an end to the Greco - Persian War along with Persian ambition of expanding into Europe . Even though this war was won by a pan-Greek army, credit was given to Sparta, who besides being the protagonist at Thermopylae and Plataea, had been the de facto leader of the entire Greek expedition . </P> <P> In the same year a united Greek fleet under the Spartan King, Leotychidas, won the Battle of Mycale . When this victory led to a revolt of the Ionian Greeks it was Sparta that rejected their admission to the Hellenic alliance . Sparta proposed that they should abandon their homes in Anatolia and settle in the cities that had supported the Persians . It was Athens who, by offering these cities alliance sowed the seeds of the Delian League . In 478 BC, the Greek fleet led by Pausanias, the victor of Plataea, mounted moves on Cyprus and Byzantium . However, his arrogant behavior forced his recall . Pausanias had so alienated the Ionians that they refused to accept the successor, Dorcis, that Sparta sent to replace him . Instead those newly liberated from Persia turned to Athens . The sources give quite divergent impressions about Spartan reactions to Athens' growing power and this may reflect the divergence of opinion within Sparta . According to this view one Spartan faction was quite content to allow Athens to carry the risk of continuing the war with Persia while an opposing faction deeply resented Athens' challenge to their Greek supremacy . </P> <P> In later Classical times, Sparta along with Athens, Thebes, and Persia had been the main powers fighting for supremacy against each other . As a result of the Peloponnesian War, Sparta, a traditionally continental culture, became a naval power . At the peak of its power Sparta subdued many of the key Greek states and even managed to overpower the elite Athenian navy . By the end of the 5th century BC, it stood out as a state which had defeated the Athenian Empire and had invaded the Persian provinces in Anatolia, a period which marks the Spartan Hegemony . </P>

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