Sylosôn, the brother of Polykratês, having taken part originally in his brother’s conspiracy and usurpation, had been at first allowed to share the fruits of it, but quickly found himself banished. In this exile he remained during the whole life of Polykratês, and until the accession of Darius to the Persian throne, which followed about a year after the death of Polykratês. He happened to be at Memphis, in Egypt, during the time when Kambysês was there with his conquering army, and when Darius, then a Persian of little note, was serving among his guards. Sylosôn was walking in the agora of Memphis, wearing a scarlet cloak, to which Darius took a great fancy, and proposed to buy it. A divine inspiration prompted Sylosôn to reply,[455] “I cannot for any price sell it; but I give it you for nothing, if it must be yours.” Darius thanked him, and accepted the cloak; and for some years the donor accused himself of a silly piece of good-nature.[456] But as events came round, Sylosôn at length heard with surprise that the unknown Persian, whom he had presented with the cloak at Memphis, was installed as king in the palace at Susa. He went thither, proclaimed himself as a Greek, as well as benefactor of the new king, and was admitted to the regal presence. Darius had forgotten his person, but perfectly remembered the adventure of the cloak, when it was brought to his mind,—and showed himself forward to requite, on the scale becoming the Great King, former favors, though small, rendered to the simple soldier at Memphis. Gold and silver were tendered to Sylosôn in profusion, but he rejected them,—requesting that the island of Samos might be conquered and handed over to him, without slaughter or enslavement of inhabitants. His request was complied with. Otanês, the originator of the conspiracy against Smerdis, was sent down to the coast of Ionia with an army, carried Sylosôn over to Samos, and landed him unexpectedly on the island.[457]
Mæandrius was in no condition to resist the invasion, nor were the Samians generally disposed to sustain him. He accordingly concluded a convention with Otanês, whereby he agreed to make way for Sylosôn, to evacuate the island, and to admit the Persians at once into the city; retaining possession, however—for such time as might be necessary to embark his property and treasures—of the acropolis, which had a separate landing-place, and even a subterranean passage and secret portal for embarkation,—probably one of the precautionary provisions of Polykratês. Otanês willingly granted these conditions, and himself with his principal officers entered the town, the army being quartered around; while Sylosôn seemed on the point of ascending the seat of his deceased brother without violence or bloodshed. But the Samians were destined to a fate more calamitous. Mæandrius had a brother named Charilaus, violent in his temper, and half a madman, whom he was obliged to keep in confinement. This man looking out of his chamber-window, saw the Persian officers seated peaceably throughout the town and even under the gates of the acropolis, unguarded, and relying upon the convention: it seems that these were the chief officers, whose rank gave them the privilege of being carried about on their seats.[458] The sight inflamed both his wrath and his insane ambition; he clamored for liberty and admission to his brother, whom he reviled as a coward no less than a tyrant. “Here are you, worthless man, keeping me, your own brother, in a dungeon, though I have done no wrong worthy of bonds; while you do not dare to take your revenge on the Persians, who are casting you out as a houseless exile, and whom it would be so easy to put down. If you are afraid of them, give me your guards; I will make the Persians repent of their coming here, and I will send you safely out of the island forthwith.”[459]
Mæandrius, on the point of quitting Samos forever, had little personal motive to care what became of the population. He had probably never forgiven them for disappointing his honorable intentions after the death of Polykratês, nor was he displeased to hand over to Sylosôn an odious and blood-stained sceptre, which he foresaw would be the only consequence of his brother’s mad project. He therefore sailed away with his treasures, leaving the acropolis to his brother Charilaus; who immediately armed the guards, sallied forth from his fortress, and attacked the unsuspecting Persians. Many of the great officers were slain without resistance before the army could be got together; but at length Otanês collected his troops and drove the assailants back into the acropolis. While he immediately began the siege of that fortress, he also resolved, as Mæandrius had foreseen, to take a signal revenge for the treacherous slaughter of so many of his friends and companions. His army, no less incensed than himself, were directed to fall upon the Samian people and massacre them without discrimination,—man and boy, on ground sacred as well as profane. The bloody order was too faithfully executed, and Samos was handed over to Sylosôn, stripped of its male inhabitants.[460] Of Charilaus and the acropolis we hear no farther, perhaps he and his guards may have escaped by sea. Lykarêtus,[461] the other brother of Mæandrius, must have remained either in the service of Sylosôn or in that of the Persians; for we find him some years afterwards intrusted by the latter with an important command.
Sylosôn was thus finally installed as despot of an island peopled chiefly, if not wholly, with women and children: we may, however, presume, that the deed of blood has been described by the historian as more sweeping than it really was. It seems, nevertheless, to have sat heavily on the conscience of Otanês, who was induced sometime afterwards, by a dream and by a painful disease, to take measures for repeopling the island.[462] From whence the new population came, we are not told: but wholesale translations of inhabitants from one place to another were familiar to the mind of a Persian king or satrap.
Mæandrius, following the example of the previous Samian exiles under Polykratês, went to Sparta and sought aid for the purpose of reëstablishing himself at Samos. But the Lacedæmonians had no disposition to repeat an attempt which had before turned out so unsuccessfully, nor could he seduce king Kleomenês by the display of his treasures and finely-wrought gold plate. The king, however, not without fear that such seductions might win over some of the Spartan leading men, prevailed with the ephors to send Mæandrius away.[463]
Sylosôn seems to have remained undisturbed at Samos, as a tributary of Persia, like the Ionic cities on the continent: some years afterwards we find his son Æakês reigning in the island.[464] Strabo states that it was the harsh rule of Sylosôn which caused the depopulation of the island. But the cause just recounted out of Herodotus is both very different and sufficiently plausible in itself; and as Strabo seems in the main to have derived his account from Herodotus, we may suppose that on this point he has incorrectly remembered his authority.[465]
CHAPTER XXXIV.
DEMOKEDES. — DARIUS INVADES SCYTHIA.
Darius had now acquired full authority throughout the Persian empire, having put down the refractory satrap Orœtês, as well as the revolted Medes and Babylonians. He had, moreover, completed the conquest of Ionia, by the important addition of Samos; and his dominion thus comprised all Asia Minor, with its neighboring islands. But this was not sufficient for the ambition of a Persian king, next but one in succession to the great Cyrus. The conquering impulse was yet unabated among the Persians, who thought it incumbent upon their king, and whose king thought it incumbent upon himself, to extend the limits of the empire. Though not of the lineage of Cyrus, Darius had taken pains to connect himself with it by marriage; he had married Atossa and Artystonê, daughters of Cyrus,—and Parmys, daughter of Smerdis, the younger son of Cyrus. Atossa had been first the wife of her brother Kambysês; next, of the Magian Smerdis, his successor; and thirdly of Darius, to whom she bore four children.[466] Of those children the eldest was Xerxês, respecting whom more will be said hereafter.
Atossa, mother of the only Persian king who ever set foot in Greece, the Sultana Validi of Persia during the reign of Xerxês, was a person of commanding influence in the reign of her last husband,[467] as well as in that of her son, and filled no inconsiderable space even in Grecian imagination, as we may see both by Æschylus and Herodotus. Had her influence prevailed, the first conquering appetites of Darius would have been directed, not against the steppes of Scythia, but against Attica and Peloponnesus; at least, so Herodotus assures us. The grand object of the latter in his history is to set forth the contentions of Hellas with the barbarians or non-Hellenic world; and with an art truly epical, which manifests itself everywhere to the careful reader of his nine books, he preludes to the real dangers which were averted at Marathon and Platæa, by recounting the first conception of an invasion of Greece by the Persians,—how it originated, and how it was abandoned. For this purpose,—according to his historical style, wherein general facts are set forth as subordinate and explanatory accompaniments to the adventures of particular persons,—he give us the interesting, but romantic, history of the Krotoniate surgeon Dêmokêdês.