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Updated: June 4, 2025
These ambassadors declared that all the Ionians waited only the moment to revolt from the Persian yoke, and that the signal would be found in the first active measures of the Grecian confederates. Leotychides, induced by these representations, received the Samians into the general league, and set sail to Samos.
When Syloson, the brother of the murdered Polykrates, came to Susa and reminded the king of his former services, Darius received him as a friend, placed ships and troops at his service, and helped him to recover Samos. The Samians made a desperate resistance, and said, when at last they were obliged to yield: "Through Syloson we have much room in our land."
As the Samians were among the dependant allies, Pericles, in the name of the Athenian people, ordered them to refer to Athens the decision of the dispute; on their refusal an expedition of forty galleys was conducted against them by Pericles in person.
These things coming into my memory as I am writing this story, it would be unnatural for me to omit them. Pericles, however, was particularly charged with having proposed to the assembly the war against the Samians, from favor to the Milesians, upon the entreaty of Aspasia.
The Samians sent a delegation to Athens headed by Pisander, who boldly proposed Alcibiades' return, the dissolution of the democracy in Samos and alliance with Tissaphernes. These proposals were rejected, but the democracy at Athens was not destined to last much longer, power being usurped by the famous Four Hundred in 411.
Pericles demolished their walls, confiscated their fleet, and imposed a heavy fine upon them, some part of which was paid at once by the Samians, who gave hostages for the payment of the remainder at fixed periods.
Although, in the earlier contest, mutual animosities had been so keen that the prisoners on either side had been contumeliously branded , it was, perhaps, the festive and easy manner in which the siege was afterward carried on, that, mitigating the bitterness of prolonged hostilities, served to procure, at last, for the Samians articles of capitulation more than usually mild.
As soon as a favourable opportunity offered for his voyage, he launched his ships and got out to sea, and by sailing during the day with his sails down and low, and putting them up at night, he got safe to Rhodes. The Rhodians supplied him with some more ships, and he persuaded the people of Kos and Knidus to quit the king's side, and join him in an attack on the Samians.
These brands upon the Samians' foreheads, they say, are the allusion in the passage of Aristophanes, where he says, For, oh, the Samians are a lettered people.
The Persians were so exasperated at what appeared to them the basest treachery, that, as soon as they could recover their arms and get once more into battle array, they commenced a universal slaughter of the Samians.
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