[569] Thucyd. viii, 18.
[570] Thucyd. viii, 84-109.
[571] Thucyd. viii, 44.
[572] Thucyd. viii, 21. Ἐγένετο δὲ κατὰ τὸν χρόνον τοῦτον καὶ ἡ ἐν Σάμῳ ἐπανάστασις ὑπὸ τοῦ δήμου τοῖς δυνατοῖς, μετὰ Ἀθηναίων, οἳ ἔτυχον ἐν τρισὶ ναυσὶ παρόντες. Καὶ ὁ δῆμος ὁ Σαμίων ἐς διακοσίους μέν τινας τοὺς πάντας τῶν δυνατῶν ἀπέκτεινε, τετρακοσίους δὲ φυγῇ ζημιώσαντες καὶ αὐτοὶ τὴν γῆν αὐτῶν καὶ οἰκίας νειμάμενοι, Ἀθηναίων τε σφίσιν αὐτονομίαν μετὰ ταῦτα ὡς βεβαίοις ἤδη ψηφισαμένων, τὰ λοιπὰ διῴκουν τὴν πόλιν, καὶ τοῖς γεωμόροις μετεδίδοσαν οὔτε ἄλλου οὐδενὸς, οὔτε ἐκδοῦναι οὐδ’ ἀγαγέσθαι παρ’ ἐκείνων οὐδ’ ἐς ἐκείνους οὐδενὶ ἔτι τοῦ δήμου ἐξῆν.
[573] Thucyd. viii, 21. The dispositions and plans of the “higher people” at Samos, to call in the Peloponnesians and revolt from Athens, are fully admitted even by Mr. Mitford, and implied by Dr. Thirlwall, who argues that the government of Samos cannot have been oligarchical, because, if it had been so, the island would already have revolted from Athens to the Peloponnesians.
Mr. Mitford says (ch. xix, sect. iii, vol. iv, p. 191): “Meanwhile the body of the higher people at Samos, more depressed than all others since their reduction on their former revolt, were proposing to seize the opportunity that seemed to offer through the prevalence of the Peloponnesian arms, of mending their condition. The lower people, having intelligence of their design, rose upon them, and, with the assistance of the crews of three Athenian ships then at Samos, overpowered them,” etc. etc. etc.
“The massacre and robbery were rewarded by a decree of the Athenian people, granting to the perpetrators the independent administration of the affairs of their island; which, since the last rebellion, had been kept under the immediate control of the Athenian government.”
To call this a massacre is perversion of language. It was an insurrection and intestine conflict, in which the “higher people” were vanquished, but of which they also were the beginners, by their conspiracy—which Mr. Mitford himself admits as a fact—to introduce a foreign enemy into the island. Does he imagine that the “lower people” were bound to sit still and see this done? And what means had they of preventing it, except by insurrection; which inevitably became bloody, because the “higher people” were a strong party, in possession of the powers of government, with great means of resistance. The loss on the part of the assailants is not made known to us, nor indeed the loss in so far as it fell on the followers of the geômori. Thucydidês specifies only the number of the geômori themselves, who were persons of individual importance.
I do not clearly understand what idea Mr. Mitford forms to himself of the government of Samos at this time. He seems to conceive it as democratical, yet under great immediate control from Athens, and that it kept the “higher people” in a state of severe depression, from which they sought to relieve themselves by the aid of the Peloponnesian arms.
But if he means by the expression, “under the immediate control of the Athenian government,” that there was any Athenian governor or garrison at Samos, the account here given by Thucydidês distinctly refutes him. The conflict was between two intestine parties, “the higher people and the lower people.” The only Athenians who took part in it were the crews of three triremes, and even they were there by accident (οἳ ἔτυχον παρόντες), not as a regular garrison. Samos was under an indigenous government; but it was a subject and tributary ally of Athens, like all the other allies, with the exception of Chios and Methymna (Thucyd. vi, 85). After this resolution, the Athenians raised it to the rank of an autonomous ally, which Mr. Mitford is pleased to call “rewarding massacre and robbery,” in the language of a party orator rather than of an historian.