We may here notice the gradually increasing tendency in the Grecian world to recognize Sparta as something like a head, protector, or referee, in cases either of foreign danger or internal dispute. The earliest authentic instance known to us, of application to Sparta in this character, is that of Crœsus against Cyrus: next, that of the Ionic Greeks against the latter: the instance of the Samians now before us, is the third. The important events connected with, and consequent upon, the expulsion of the Peisistratidæ from Athens, manifesting yet more formally the headship of Sparta, occur fifteen years after the present event; they have been already recounted in a previous chapter, and serve as a farther proof of progress in the same direction. To watch the growth of these new political habits, is essential to a right understanding of Grecian history.
On reaching Sparta, the Samian exiles, borne down with despondency and suffering, entered at large into the particulars of their case. Their long speaking annoyed instead of moving the Spartans, who said, or are made to say: “We have forgotten the first part of the speech, and the last part is unintelligible to us.” Upon which the Samians appeared the next day, simply with an empty wallet, saving: “Our wallet has no meal in it.” “Your wallet is superfluous,” (said the Spartans;) i. e. the words would have been sufficient without it.[438] The aid which they implored was granted.
We are told that both the Lacedæmonians and the Corinthians,—who joined them in the expedition now contemplated,—had separate grounds of quarrel with the Samians,[439] which operated as a more powerful motive than the simple desire to aid the suffering exiles. But it rather seems that the subsequent Greeks generally construed the Lacedæmonian interference against Polykratês as an example of standing Spartan hatred against despots. Indeed, the only facts which we know, to sustain this anti-despotic sentiment for which the Lacedæmonians had credit, are, their proceedings against Polykratês and Hippias; there may have been other analogous cases, but we cannot specify them with certainty. However this may be, a joint Lacedæmonian and Corinthian force accompanied the exiles back to Samos, and assailed Polykratês in the city. They did their best to capture it, for forty days, and were at one time on the point of succeeding, but were finally obliged to retire without any success. “The city would have been taken,” says Herodotus, “if all the Lacedæmonians had acted like Archias and Lykôpas,”—who, pressing closely upon the retreating Samians, were shut within the town-gates, and perished. The historian had heard this exploit in personal conversation with Archias, grandson of the person above mentioned, in the deme Pitana at Sparta,—whose father had been named Samius, and who respected the Samians above any other Greeks, because they had bestowed upon the two brave warriors, slain within their town, an honorable and public funeral.[440] It is rarely that Herodotus thus specifies his informants: had he done so more frequently the value as well as the interest of his history would have been materially increased.
On the retirement of the Lacedæmonian force, the Samian exiles were left destitute; and looking out for some community to plunder, weak as well as rich, they pitched upon the island of Siphnos. The Siphnians of that day were the wealthiest islanders in the Ægean, from the productiveness of their gold and silver mines,—the produce of which was annually distributed among the citizens, reserving a tithe for the Delphian temple.[441] Their treasure-chamber was among the most richly furnished of which that holy place could boast, and they themselves, probably, in these times of early prosperity, were numbered among the most brilliant of the Ionic visitors at the Delian festival. The Samians landing at Siphnos, demanded a contribution, under the name of a loan, of ten talents: which being refused, they proceeded to ravage the island, inflicting upon the inhabitants a severe defeat, and ultimately extorting from them one hundred talents. They next purchased from the inhabitants of Hermionê, in the Argolic peninsula, the neighboring island of Hydrea, famous in modern Greek warfare. But it appears that their plans must have been subsequently changed, for, instead of occupying it, they placed it under the care of the Trœzenians, and repaired themselves to Krete, for the purpose of expelling the Zakynthian settlers at Kydônia. In this they succeeded, and were induced to establish themselves in that place. But after they had remained there five years, the Kretans obtained naval aid from Ægina, whereby the place was recovered, and the Samian intruders finally sold into slavery.[442]
Such was the melancholy end of the enemies of Polykratês: meanwhile, that despot himself was more powerful and prosperous than ever. Samos, under him, was “the first of all cities, Hellenic or barbaric:[443]” and the great works admired by Herodotus in the island,[444]—an aqueduct for the city, tunnelled through a mountain for the length of seven furlongs,—a mole to protect the harbor, two furlongs long and twenty fathoms deep, and the vast temple of Hêrê, may probably have been enlarged and completed, if not begun, by him. Aristotle quotes the public works of Polykratês as instances of the profound policy of despots, to occupy as well as to impoverish their subjects.[445] The earliest of all Grecian thalassokrats, or sea-kings,—master of the greatest naval force in the Ægean, as well as of many among its islands,—he displayed his love of letters by friendship to Anakreon, and his piety by consecrating to the Delian Apollo[446] the neighboring island of Rhêneia. But while thus outshining all his contemporaries, victorious over Sparta and Corinth, and projecting farther aggrandizement, he was precipitated on a sudden into the abyss of ruin;[447] and that too, as if to demonstrate unequivocally the agency of the envious gods, not from the revenge of any of his numerous victims, but from the gratuitous malice of a stranger whom he had never wronged and never even seen. The Persian satrap Orœtês, on the neighboring mainland, conceived an implacable hatred against him: no one could tell why,—for he had no design of attacking the island; and the trifling reasons conjecturally assigned, only prove that the real reason, whatever it might be, was unknown. Availing himself of the notorious ambition and cupidity of Polykratês, Orœtês sent to Samos a messenger, pretending that his life was menaced by Kambysês, and that he was anxious to make his escape with his abundant treasures. He proposed to Polykratês a share in this treasure, sufficient to make him master of all Greece, as far as that object could be achieved by money, provided the Samian prince would come over to convey him away. Mæandrius, secretary of Polykratês, was sent over to Magnêsia on the Mæander, to make inquiries; he there saw the satrap with eight large coffers full of gold,—or rather apparently so, being in reality full of stones, with a layer of gold at the top,[448]—tied up ready for departure. The cupidity of Polykratês was not proof against so rich a bait: he crossed over to Magnêsia with a considerable suite, and thus came into the power of Orœtês, in spite of the warnings of his prophets and the agony of his terrified daughter, to whom his approaching fate had been revealed in a dream. The satrap slew him and crucified his body; releasing all the Samians who accompanied him, with an intimation that they ought to thank him for procuring them a free government,—but retaining both the foreigners and the slaves as prisoners.[449] The death of Orœtês himself, which ensued shortly afterwards, has already been described. It is considered by Herodotus as a judgment for his flagitious deed in the case of Polykratês.[450]
At the departure of the latter from Samos, in anticipation of a speedy return, Mæandrius had been left as his lieutenant at Samos; and the unexpected catastrophe of Polykratês filled him with surprise and consternation. Though possessed of the fortresses, the soldiers, and the treasures, which had constituted the machinery of his powerful master, he knew the risk of trying to employ them on his own account. Partly from this apprehension, partly from the genuine political morality which prevailed with more or less force in every Grecian bosom, he resolved to lay down his authority and enfranchise the island. “He wished (says the historian, in a remarkable phrase)[451] to act like the justest of men; but he was not allowed to do so.” His first proceeding was to erect in the suburbs an altar in honor of Zeus Eleutherius, and to inclose a piece of ground as a precinct, which still existed in the time of Herodotus: he next convened an assembly of the Samians. “You know (says he) that the whole power of Polykratês is now in my hands, nor is there anything to hinder me from continuing to rule over you. Nevertheless, what I condemn in another I will not do myself,—and I have always disapproved of Polykratês, and others like him, for seeking to rule over men as good as themselves. Now that Polykratês has come to the end of his destiny, I at once lay down the command, and proclaim among you equal law; reserving to myself as privileges, first, six talents out of the treasures of Polykratês,—next, the hereditary priesthood of Zeus Eleutherius for myself and my descendants forever. To him I have just set apart a sacred precinct, as the God of that freedom which I now hand over to you.”
This reasonable and generous proposition fully justifies the epithet of Herodotus. But very differently was it received by the Samian hearers. One of the chief men among them, Telesarchus, exclaimed, with the applause of the rest, “You rule us, low-born and scoundrel as you are! you are not worthy to rule: don’t think of that, but give us some account of the money which you have been handling.”[452]
Such an unexpected reply caused a total revolution in the mind of Mæandrius. It left him no choice but to maintain dominion at all hazards,—which he accordingly resolved to do. Retiring into the acropolis, under pretence of preparing his money-accounts for examination, he sent for Telesarchus and his chief political enemies, one by one,—intimating that they were open to inspection. As fast as they arrived they were put in chains, while Mæandrius remained in the acropolis, with his soldiers and his treasures, as the avowed successor of Polykratês. And thus the Samians, after a short hour of insane boastfulness, found themselves again enslaved. “It seemed (says Herodotus) that they were not willing to be free.”[453]
We cannot but contrast their conduct on this occasion with that of the Athenians about twelve years afterwards, on the expulsion of Hippias, which has been recounted in a previous chapter. The position of the Samians was far the more favorable of the two, for the quiet and successful working of a free government; for they had the advantage of a voluntary as well as a sincere resignation from the actual despot. Yet the thirst for reactionary investigation prevented them even from taking a reasonable estimate of their own power of enforcing it: they passed at once from extreme subjection to overbearing and ruinous rashness. Whereas the Athenians, under circumstances far less promising, avoided the fatal mistake of sacrificing the prospects of the future to recollections of the past; showed themselves both anxious to acquire the rights, and willing to perform the obligations, of a free community; listened to wise counsels, maintained unanimous action, and overcame, by heroic efforts, forces very greatly superior. If we compare the reflections of Herodotus on the one case and on the other,[454] we shall be struck with the difference which those reflections imply between the Athenians and the Samians,—a difference partly referable, doubtless, to the pure Hellenism of the former, contrasted with the half-Asiatized Hellenism of the latter,—but also traceable in a great degree to the preliminary lessons of the Solonian constitution, overlaid, but not extinguished, during the despotism of the Peisistratids which followed.
The events which succeeded in Samos are little better than a series of crimes and calamities. The prisoners, whom Mæandrius had detained in the acropolis, were slain during his dangerous illness, by his brother Lykarêtus, under the idea that this would enable him more easily to seize the sceptre. But Mæandrius recovered, and must have continued as despot for a year or two: it was, however, a weak despotism, contested more or less in the island, and very different from the iron hand of Polykratês. In this untoward condition, the Samians were surprised by the arrival of a new claimant for their sceptre and acropolis,—and, what was much more formidable, a Persian army to back him.