History of the Peloponnesian War

Now the manner how the Athenians came to the administration of those affairs by which they so raised themselves was this.

After that the Medes, overcome by sea and land, were departed, and such of them as had escaped by sea to Mycale were there also utterly overthrown, Leotychides, king of the Lacedaemonians, then commander of the Grecians at Mycale, with their confederates of Peloponnesus went home. But the Athenians with their confederates of Ionia and the Hellespont, as many as were already revolted from the king, stayed behind and besieged Sestus, holden then by the Medes; and when they had lain before it all the winter, they took it abandoned by the barbarians. And after this they set sail from the Hellespont, everyone to his own city.

And the body of the Athenians, as soon as their territory was clear of the barbarians, went home also and fetched thither their wives and children and such goods as they had from the places where they had been put out to keep, and went about the reparation of their city and walls. For there were yet standing some pieces of the circuit of their wall, and likewise a few houses (though the most were down) which the principal of the Persians had reserved for their own lodgings.