This blank menace of Lakrinês, an insulting provocation to the enemy rather than a real support to the distressed, was the only benefit which the Ionic Greeks derived from Sparta. They were left to defend themselves as best they could against the conqueror; who presently, however, quitted Sardis to prosecute in person his conquests in the East, leaving the Persian Tabalus with a garrison in the citadel, but consigning both the large treasure captured, and the authority over the Lydian population, to the Lydian Paktyas. As he carried away Crœsus along with him, he probably considered himself sure of the fidelity of those Lydians whom the deposed monarch recommended. But he had not yet arrived at his own capital, when he received the intelligence that Paktyas had revolted, arming the Lydian population, and employing the treasure in his charge to hire fresh troops. On hearing this news, Cyrus addressed himself to Crœsus, according to Herodotus, in terms of much wrath against the Lydians, and even intimated that he should be compelled to sell them all as slaves. Upon which Crœsus, full of alarm for his people, contended strenuously that Paktyas alone was in fault, and deserving of punishment; but he at the same time advised Cyrus to disarm the Lydian population, and to enforce upon them effeminate attire, together with habits of playing on the harp and shopkeeping. “By this process (he said) you will soon see them become women instead of men.”[352] This suggestion is said to have been accepted by Cyrus, and executed by his general Mazarês. The conversation here reported, and the deliberate plan for enervating the Lydian character supposed to be pursued by Cyrus, is evidently an hypothesis imagined by some of the contemporaries or predecessors of Herodotus,—to explain the contrast between the Lydians whom they saw before them, after two or three generations of slavery, and the old irresistible horsemen of whom they heard in fame, at the time when Crœsus was lord from the Halys to the Ægean sea. [352] Herodot. i, 155.