The Temple of Zeus, on which construction begins in about 470 at Olympia, designed by Libon of Elis, will eventually house one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World—the monumental statue of Zeus by Phidias, which will be added to the temple around 435 BCE and located towards the back of the naos.

Constructed of limestone and covered with stucco built on a raised rectangular platform of approximately sixty-four by twenty-eight meters, with thirteen ten-meter columns on each side and six at either end, the temple is divided into three sections: the pronaos, naos and opisthodomos.

It is constructed in the Doric order, with carved metopes and triglyph frieze, topped by pediments filled with sculptures in the Severe Style now attributed to the Olympia Master and his studio.

The east pediment, erroneously attributed to Paeonius by Pausanias, depicts, in relief, the myth of the chariot race between Pelops and Oenomaus, with Zeus standing in the center.

The west pediment depicts the legendary battle between the Centaurs and the Lapiths.

Apollo stands in the center, flanked by Peirithoos and Theseus (fragments now remain at the Archaeological Museum in Olympia).

A sequence of twelve metopes—six over the pronaos and six over the opithodomos—show the twelve labors of Herakles.

Like the pediments, they are carved from Parian marble.

The temple will be destroyed in the fifth century CE by earthquake.

Pausanias, who had retired to Colonae near Troy, is again recalled to Sparta to face charges of Medism, or conspiracy.

Suspected of plotting to seize power in Sparta by instigating a helot uprising, he takes refuge in the Temple of Athena of the Brazen House in Sparta to escape arrest.

The Spartans wall in the sanctuary and starve him to death. (Although Herodotus doubted that Pausanias had colluded with the Persians, Thucydides, writing years after the events, was certain of his guilt. It is conceivable that the Spartans had made Pausanias a scapegoat for their failure to retain the leadership of Greece.)

While Argos is preoccupied with fighting and subduing its neighboring cities, Mycenae and Tiryns, and thus unavailable to support Tegea, Sparta completely mobilizes to defeat the Arcadians in 470 at the Battle of Dipaea, after which Tegea submits to Sparta.

The prosperous Rhodian cities of Ialysos, …

…Kameiros, and …

…Lindos join the Delian League around 470 BCE.

The tyrannical house of Theron at Akragas, which had fallen shortly after his death in 473, is in 470 replaced by a democracy under the control of Syracuse.

Archidamus II of the Eurypontid dynasty becomes one of the two hereditary kings of Sparta in 469 when his grandfather Leotychides dies in exile.

His father was Zeuxidamus (called Cyniscus by many Spartans), who had died before his father, Leotychidas.

Mycenae had sent four hundred men to fight against the Persians at Thermopylae in 480 BCE, and its men were at Plataea in 479 BCE.

In 470 BCE, however, while Sparta is preoccupied elsewhere, Argos, which had been neutral in the Persian war, takes an ignoble revenge in 468 BCE by besieging its neighbor Mycenae and destroying it, executing a tenth of its male citizens as a tribute to the war god and enslaving the rest of its population.

Aristides has remained a major figure in Athenian politics until he dies in 468.

Aeschylus, having returned to Athens, writes Seven against Thebes, the final installment of a trilogy about the destruction of the House of Oedipus.

The play focuses on the decision of Eteocles, the son of Oedipus and the ruler of Thebes, to meet his brother in battle, where each kills the other.

It also marks the first known appearance in Aeschylus' work of a theme that will continue through his plays, that of the polis (the city) being a vital development of human civilization.