This measure must have been taken later in the autumn of 499, just at the close of the campaigning season; for Aristagoras could not otherwise have ventured on the journey to Greece which he immediately undertook with a view to getting assistance. It was to Sparta that he first turned for help. The tale of his visit to Kleomenes, the Spartan king, is told at considerable length. As told, it contained at least one incident which was likely to render it famous in Greek story. The version of it which Herodotus has preserved is of Lacedæmonian origin.[19] Aristagoras brought with him a map of the world engraved on a bronze tablet, the work of one of the Ionian geographers,—possibly of the famous Hecatæus. The strong appeal which he addressed to Kleomenes as leader of the foremost state in Greece to save the Ionians from their slavery comes strangely from the mouth of one who has just been represented as doing all in his power to bring one of the European islands into that state from which he now begged Kleomenes to save the Asiatic Greeks. It is still more strange that in this story, whose origin is manifestly different from that of the affair at Naxos, there is no mention whatever of any suspicion having been excited by Aristagoras’ conduct; and no explanation of it was demanded from him. Coming to the practical question of the possibilities offered by a campaign in Asia, Aristagoras emphasizes in a very remarkable way the superiority of the Greek military equipment over that of the Persian. ◆H. v. 49.◆ His proposal does not confine itself to the liberation of Ionia: he even holds out the prospect of the conquest of the rich lands of Western Asia. To the men of the time at which Herodotus wrote, this part of the story must have seemed a striking example of the wild exaggeration of the Ionian imagination. As an estimate of possibilities it was, however, far more near the truth than they can have supposed—nearer, perhaps, than Aristagoras supposed himself. “When it is in your power,” said he, “to rule all Asia with ease, will you choose aught else?” Kleomenes took three days for consideration, and then, at a second conference, asked Aristagoras how far the king was from the Ionian sea. When informed that it was a journey of three months up country to Susa, he broke off negotiations and dismissed Aristagoras at once. Aristagoras would not accept dismissal, but returned once more, and, so the story goes, in the presence of the king’s little daughter Gorgo, tempted him with ever-increasing bribes. The child, with more than childish wisdom, brought the interview to a conclusion by saying, “Father, the stranger will corrupt you, unless you go away.” Whether the story itself be truth or fiction the fact remains that Sparta abided by that policy which she had followed for some years past, and refused to become embroiled with the great empire of the East. ◆H. v. 55.◆