The state of Athens after the expulsion of the Thirty was in some respects apparently less desolate than that in which she had been left after the battle of Platæa. It is possible indeed that the invasions of Xerxes and Mardonius may have inflicted less injury on her territory than the methodical and lingering ravages of the Peloponnesians during the Decelean war. But in 479 the city, as well as the country, had been, for a part of two consecutive years, in the power of an irritated enemy. All that it required both for ornament and defence was to be raised afresh from the ground. Yet the treasury was empty: commerce had probably never yet yielded any considerable supplies, and it had been deeply disturbed by the war; the state possessed no dependent colonies or tributary allies, and was watched with a jealous eye by the most powerful of its confederates. Nevertheless it was impossible for an Athenian patriot to compare the situation and prospects of his country at these two epochs without a sigh. In 479 Athens was mistress of a navy which gave her the pre-eminence over all the maritime states of Greece, and enabled her to carry her arms against any part of the enemy's coasts, to which she might be invited by the propects of plunder or conquest; and a little vigour and prudence was sufficient to secure the city itself against the hostility of Sparta.