238 HISTORY OF GREECE. claimed, " Father, the stranger will corrupt you, if you do not at once go away." The exclamation so struck Kleomenes, that he broke up the interview, and Aristagoras forthwith quitted Sparta. 1 Doubtless Herodotus heard the account of this interview from Lacedaemonian informants. But we may be permitted to doubt, whether any such suggestions were really made, or any such hopes held out, as those which he places in the mouth of Aristag- cras, suggestions and hopes which might well be conceived in 450-440 B.C., after a generation of victories over the Persians, but which have no pertinence in the year 502 B.C. Down even to the battle of Marathon, the name of the Medes was a terror to the Greeks, and the Athenians are highly and justly extolled as the first who dared to look them in the face. 2 To talk about an easy march up to the treasures of Susa and the empire of all Asia, at the time of the Ionic revolt, would have been considered as a proof of insanity. Aristagoras may very probably have represented, that the Spartans were more than a match for Persians in the field ; but even thus much would have been con- sidered, in 502 B.C., rather as the sanguine hope of a petitioner than as the estimate of a sober looker-on. The Milesian chief had made application to Sparta, as the presiding power of Hellas, a character which we thus find more and more recognized and passing into the habitual feeling of the Greeks. Fifty years previously to this, the Spartans had been flattered by the circumstance, that Croesus singled them out from all other Greeks to invite as allies : now they accepted euch priority as a matter of course. 2 1 Herodot. v, 49, 50, 51. Compare Plutarch, Apophthegm. Laconic, p. 240. We may remark, both in this instance and throughout all the life and time of Kleomenes, that the Spartan king has the active management and direction of foreign affairs, subject, however, to trial and punishment by the ephors in case of misbehavior (Herodot. vi, 82). We shall hereafter 'ind the ephors gradually taking into their own ban Is, more and more, the sctual management.
- Herodot. vi, 112. irpuroi re uveff^ovTO ta&rjr i re tili]6iK^v dpsovref,
v<i2 uvdpac TnvTTjv iodfjfievovf reuf 6e rjv rolai E/.2.Tj<7i nal TO oiivo/ia rd Ur/6uv popof unovaai.
- Aristagoras says to the Spartans (v, 49) TU Kar^Kovra yitp tort ravra-
Itlvuv naldaf dovtovf dvai uvr' kfavdtpuv, oveidof /cat uAj'Of iieyiarov fut
