XVIII. CHAP. influx of strangers at the yearly sessions held for the foreign suitors, was undoubtedly great; but the loss and inconvenience inflicted by the same means on their subjects was still greater. Justice was rendered needlessly expensive, slow, and uncertain. Not only were the most important causes delayed to the season proper for a voyage, but it might happen through the unavoidable accumulation of business, even where no dishonest artifices were employed, that after a long stay in a foreign city, the parties were forced to return home, leaving their suits still pending. The authority which Athens assumed over her allies and her interference in their domestic concerns, proved the occasion of a war, which threatened to put an end to the Thirty Years' Truce in the sixth or seventh year from its commencement, but by its issue consolidated the Athenian empire, and raised the reputation of Pericles, by what he and his contemporaries considered as the most brilliant of his military triumphs. A quarrel had arisen between Samos and Miletus, Thucydides says, about Priene. But the more especial object of contention seems to have been the town of Anæa, on the main land opposite Samos, a place of some note in the early history of the Ionian settlers.1 A war ensued, in which the Milesians were vanquished, and now sought protection from Athens, and endeavoured to excite her jealousy against their successful rivals. In this application they were seconded by a party in Samos itself, which hoped with Athenian assistance to overthrow the oligarchical government which had been hitherto permitted to subsist in the island. They found a favourable hearing. Pericles indeed was charged with sacrificing the Samians to private feelings, which will be hereafter explained. 1 See Vol. II. p. 87. Hence in the Life of Sophocles the war is called τ 'Avalav Toλéμq. See Brunck, Sophocles, 1. p. xv. Seidler's Dissertation on the Antigone in Hermann's edition, p. xxiv. Boeckh on the Antigone in the Berlin Transactions, 1824. But it was probably a political motive, more than any ordered to desist from hostilities, and to submit the In the meanwhile a body of Samians - the more resolute perhaps, or the more obnoxious of the defeated party-had quitted the island on the approach of the Athenians, and had opened a correspondence with Pissuthnes the satrap of Sardis, who is even said to have furnished them with gold, when hopes were entertained of bribing Pericles. When the Athenian squadron had retired, they concerted a plan with their Persian ally for regaining possession of their country, and seem to have shown great energy and dexterity in carrying it into execution. First of all, having raised seven hundred mercenaries, and given notice to their friends at home, they crossed over to Samos in the night, overpowered and secured the That this garrison was left in Samos, not in Lemnos (where the whole population being friendly it was not needed), is moreover so clear from the context, that it might have been thought impossible to mistake the meaning of Thucydides. CHAP. XVIII. CHAP. Athenian garrison, and the greater part of their political adversaries, and abolished the newly established form of government. Next, and probably before news of this revolution had reached Lemnos, they secretly conveyed away the hostages who had been deposited there1, and being thus freed from all restraint, openly renounced the Athenian alliance or authority, and bent their thoughts on the means of maintaining their independence. They placed their Athenian prisoners in the hands of the satrap: the condition perhaps on which they obtained a promise that they should be supported by a Phoenician fleet; they also found means of engaging Byzantium to join in the revolt, and prepared immediately to renew hostilities against Miletus, in the hope perhaps of striking a decisive blow before succour should arrive from Athens. Yet these aids, even if none should fail them, could not inspire a reasonable confidence, so long as Athens was able to direct her whole. strength against them; and the general inaction of the other subject states seemed to prove the hopelessness of their undertaking. Their only fair prospect of success and safety depended on the disposition which they might find among the enemies of Athens in Greece to take up their cause. The allies of Sparta, probably at their request, held a congress, in which the question seems to have been earnestly discussed. According to the slight and rhetorical allusion made by Thucydides to the proceedings of this assembly, it was Corinth that determined her confederates to abandon the Samians to the vengeance of their incensed sovereign. The ground on which the historian represents the Corinthians to have acted · ἐκκλέψαντες, Thuc. 1. 115. The use of this term seems clearly to prove that those who conveyed away the hostages did not at the same time make themselves masters of an Athenian force that had been left to guard them, even if it was possible to reconcile this supposition with the expression of Hoav wapà opiow. Plutarch (Per. 25.) makes Pissuthnes himself carry off the hostages; if so, the prisoners delivered to him must have been taken at Samos. XVIII. on this occasion, is too consonant to their general CHAP. policy, and too important to be looked upon as a rhetorical invention. It is indeed alleged by a Corinthian orator before an Athenian assembly, as a claim upon Athenian gratitude; but it cannot have been feigned; and it implies that the authority which Athens exercised over her allies was generally acknowledged to be legitimate. The Corinthians, it is said, voted against the Samians, when many of the other Peloponnesian states were inclined to send them succours, and at the same time laid down the general principle, that every state had a right to punish its offending allies. Whether in fact the Corinthians apprehended that the lending assistance to the revolted Samians might prove a precedent attended with dangerous consequences to the system which they themselves observed towards their colonies, or they only put the principle forward as a pretext to cover the unwillingness which they may have felt on other accounts to break the truce so early, is a question of little importance. But under all the circumstances of the case to treat the Samians as rebels, in an assembly where every one present avowedly wished well to their cause, was certainly a large admission in favour of the highest pretensions that Athens had ever maintained as to the extent of her supremacy. These deliberations, if begun, were probably not at an end before Pericles, accompanied by nine colleagues, had crossed the sea with a fleet of sixty sail, to suppress the insurrection. They had learnt that a fleet was expected to come to the assistance of the Samians from Phoenicia, and some galleys were sent to look out for it, while another small squadron was dispatched to bring up the reinforcements to be furnished by Chios and Lesbos. Though his num 1 Thuc. 1. 40. CHAP. bers were reduced by these detachments to forty-four galleys, Pericles did not shrink from engaging with a Samian fleet of seventy, including twenty transports, as it was returning from Miletus, and gained a victory. Shortly after he received an addition to his forces, of forty ships from Athens, and five-andtwenty from Chios and Lesbos, which enabled him to land a body of troops sufficient to drive the enemy into the town, and to invest it with a triple line of intrenchments. Yet it appears that even after the siege was formed another sea-fight took place, in which the Samians, who were commanded by the philosopher Melissus 1, were victorious. The advantage however must have been very slight, or soon followed by a reverse; for we find that, while the hopes of the Samians rested on the Phoenician fleet, and they despatched five galleys to hasten its movements2, Pericles thought himself strong enough to take sixty ships, and sail along the coast of Caria, to meet the expected enemy. The Phoenicians did not come up; but during his absence the besieged drew out their remaining galleys, and surprised the naval encampment of the Athenians, sank their guardships, and defeated the rest, which were brought out in disorder to repel the sudden attack. This success made them masters of the sea, and enabled them to introduce supplies into the town. They retained the See Vol. II. p. 137. It is on the authority of Aristotle that Plutarch, Per. 26. relates this fact, of which Thucydides does not give the slightest hint, and, but for the extreme brevity of his narrative, he might seem to contradict it. Brandis (Handbuch der Geschichte der Griechisch-Roemischen Philosophie, 1. p. 397.) suggests a doubt, whether this Melissus was the philosopher. * Thuc. r. 116. ᾤχετο γὰρ καὶ ἐκ τῆς Σάμου πέντε ναυσὶ Στησαγόρας καὶ ἄλλοι ἐπὶ τὰς Φοινίσσας. It seems strange that any scholar could fail to perceive that Thucydides is speaking of a Samian squadron. Poppo justly observes on the passage: "Causa indicatur cur hæc classis adventura esse credita sit, et Stesagoras quum èk Tîs Záμov profectus esse perhibeatur, necesse est Samius fuerit. Verte: ad Phænicias naves arcessendas, quæ est vis usitatissima præpositionis ènì cum accusativo junctæ." Yet in a recent essay in the Rhein. Mus. 1843, by Franz Ritter. intended to prove the groundlessness of the tradition that Sophocles was one of the generals who commanded in this war (Vorgebliche Strategie des Sophokles gegen Samos,) a part of the writer's argument is founded on the assumption (p. 183.) that Stesagoras was one of the colleagues of Pericles. |