Samian War
Encyclopedia
The Samian War was an Ancient Greek
Ancient Greece
Ancient Greece is a civilization belonging to a period of Greek history that lasted from the Archaic period of the 8th to 6th centuries BC to the end of antiquity. Immediately following this period was the beginning of the Early Middle Ages and the Byzantine era. Included in Ancient Greece is the...

 military conflict between Athens
Athens
Athens , is the capital and largest city of Greece. Athens dominates the Attica region and is one of the world's oldest cities, as its recorded history spans around 3,400 years. Classical Athens was a powerful city-state...

 and Samos
Samos Island
Samos is a Greek island in the eastern Aegean Sea, south of Chios, north of Patmos and the Dodecanese, and off the coast of Asia Minor, from which it is separated by the -wide Mycale Strait. It is also a separate regional unit of the North Aegean region, and the only municipality of the regional...

. The war was initiated by Athens' intervention in a dispute between Samos and Miletus
Miletus
Miletus was an ancient Greek city on the western coast of Anatolia , near the mouth of the Maeander River in ancient Caria...

. When the Samians refused to break off their attacks on Miletus as ordered, the Athenians easily drove out the oligarchic
Oligarchy
Oligarchy is a form of power structure in which power effectively rests with an elite class distinguished by royalty, wealth, family ties, commercial, and/or military legitimacy...

 government of Samos and installed a garrison in the city, but the oligarchs soon returned, with Persian support.

A larger Athenian fleet was dispatched to suppress this agitation. This fleet initially defeated the Samians and blockaded the city, but Pericles
Pericles
Pericles was a prominent and influential statesman, orator, and general of Athens during the city's Golden Age—specifically, the time between the Persian and Peloponnesian wars...

, in command, was then forced to lead a substantial portion of the fleet away upon learning that the Persian
Achaemenid Empire
The Achaemenid Empire , sometimes known as First Persian Empire and/or Persian Empire, was founded in the 6th century BCE by Cyrus the Great who overthrew the Median confederation...

 fleet was approaching from the south. Although the Persians turned back before the two fleets met, the absence of most of the Athenian fleet allowed the Samians to drive off the remaining blockaders and, for two weeks, control the sea around their island; upon Pericles' return, however, the Athenians again blockaded and besieged Samos; the city surrendered nine months later. Under the terms of the surrender, the Samians tore down their walls, gave up hostages, surrendered their fleet, and agreed to pay Athens a war indemnity over the next 26 years.

During the course of the war, the Samians had apparently appealed to Sparta
Sparta
Sparta or Lacedaemon, was a prominent city-state in ancient Greece, situated on the banks of the River Eurotas in Laconia, in south-eastern Peloponnese. It emerged as a political entity around the 10th century BC, when the invading Dorians subjugated the local, non-Dorian population. From c...

 for assistance; the Spartans were initially inclined to grant this request, and were prevented from doing so primarily by Corinth
Corinth
Corinth is a city and former municipality in Corinthia, Peloponnese, Greece. Since the 2011 local government reform it is part of the municipality Corinth, of which it is the seat and a municipal unit...

's unwillingness to participate in a war against Athens at the time. In 433 BC, when Corcyra requested Athenian assistance against Corinth, the Corinthians would remind the Athenians of the good will they had shown at this time.

Prelude and dispute

In 440 BC
440 BC
Year 440 BC was a year of the pre-Julian Roman calendar. At the time, it was known as the Year of the Consulship of Macerinus and Lanatus...

 Samos
Samos Island
Samos is a Greek island in the eastern Aegean Sea, south of Chios, north of Patmos and the Dodecanese, and off the coast of Asia Minor, from which it is separated by the -wide Mycale Strait. It is also a separate regional unit of the North Aegean region, and the only municipality of the regional...

 was at war with Miletus
Miletus
Miletus was an ancient Greek city on the western coast of Anatolia , near the mouth of the Maeander River in ancient Caria...

 about Priene
Priene
Priene was an ancient Greek city of Ionia at the base of an escarpment of Mycale, about north of the then course of the Maeander River, from today's Aydin, from today's Söke and from ancient Miletus...

, an ancient city of Ionia
Ionia
Ionia is an ancient region of central coastal Anatolia in present-day Turkey, the region nearest İzmir, which was historically Smyrna. It consisted of the northernmost territories of the Ionian League of Greek settlements...

 on the foot-hills of Mycale
Mycale
Mycale, also Mykale and Mycali , called Samsun Daği and Dilek Daği in modern Turkey, is a mountain on the west coast of central Anatolia in Turkey, north of the mouth of the Maeander and divided from the Greek island of Samos by the 1300 metre wide Samos Strait...

. Worsted in the war, the Milesians came to Athens with loud complaints against the Samians. Miletus was militarily weak, having been compelled to disarm and pay tribute after rebelling from Athens twice, once in the 450s and again in 446 BC; Samos, meanwhile, was one of only three remaining fully independent states in the Delian League
Delian League
The Delian League, founded in circa 477 BC, was an association of Greek city-states, members numbering between 150 to 173, under the leadership of Athens, whose purpose was to continue fighting the Persian Empire after the Greek victory in the Battle of Plataea at the end of the Greco–Persian Wars...

. The Athenians, for reasons that scholars continue to disagree over—some believe that the Athenians were influenced by a desire to protect the Milesian democracy against the Samian oligarchs, while others believe that they were concerned for the credibility of their rule if they failed to protect a state that they themselves had disarmed—intervened on behalf of Miletus. A fleet of forty trireme
Trireme
A trireme was a type of galley, a Hellenistic-era warship that was used by the ancient maritime civilizations of the Mediterranean, especially the Phoenicians, ancient Greeks and Romans.The trireme derives its name from its three rows of oars on each side, manned with one man per oar...

s, commanded by Pericles
Pericles
Pericles was a prominent and influential statesman, orator, and general of Athens during the city's Golden Age—specifically, the time between the Persian and Peloponnesian wars...

, was dispatched to Samos; Pericles established a democracy, and then, after taking 100 hostages to the island of Lemnos
Lemnos
Lemnos is an island of Greece in the northern part of the Aegean Sea. Administratively the island forms a separate municipality within the Lemnos peripheral unit, which is part of the North Aegean Periphery. The principal town of the island and seat of the municipality is Myrina...

 and leaving a garrison at Samos, returned home. This had all been achieved with remarkable ease, and this, in comparison with the stiff resistance that the Samians put up later, suggests that they had not expected such a harsh response from the Athenians.

Rebellion

The settlement thus imposed did not last long, however. A group of oligarchs fled to the mainland, secured the support of Pissuthnes, the Persian satrap
Satrap
Satrap was the name given to the governors of the provinces of the ancient Median and Achaemenid Empires and in several of their successors, such as the Sassanid Empire and the Hellenistic empires....

 of Lydia
Lydia
Lydia was an Iron Age kingdom of western Asia Minor located generally east of ancient Ionia in the modern Turkish provinces of Manisa and inland İzmir. Its population spoke an Anatolian language known as Lydian....

, who provided them with mercenaries and also rescued their hostages from Lemnos. With their hands thus freed, the oligarchs, collaborating with allies in the city, invaded with 700 mercenaries, defeated the democrats, and handed all the Athenians in the city over to Pissuthnes. Athens now found itself facing a serious crisis in the open revolt of a powerful subject state, and the situation was made more severe by simultaneous revolts in other parts of the empire, the most critical of which occurred in Byzantium
Byzantium
Byzantium was an ancient Greek city, founded by Greek colonists from Megara in 667 BC and named after their king Byzas . The name Byzantium is a Latinization of the original name Byzantion...

; the powerful city of Mytilene
Mytilene
Mytilene is a town and a former municipality on the island of Lesbos, North Aegean, Greece. Since the 2011 local government reform it is part of the municipality Lesbos, of which it is a municipal unit. It is the capital of the island of Lesbos. Mytilene, whose name is pre-Greek, is built on the...

, meanwhile, stood ready to revolt upon receiving a promise of Spartan support. The Athenians immediately dispatched 60 ships to deal with the situation in the Aegean. 16 of these ships were sent on various independent missions, leaving only 44 to face the Samian fleet of 50 triremes and 20 transports. In a battle off the island of Tragia, the Athenians were victorious, and the Samians soon found themselves blockaded by land and sea. The Athenians constructed walls around the city of Samos, and meanwhile were reinforced by 65 more ships from Athens, Chios
Chios
Chios is the fifth largest of the Greek islands, situated in the Aegean Sea, seven kilometres off the Asia Minor coast. The island is separated from Turkey by the Chios Strait. The island is noted for its strong merchant shipping community, its unique mastic gum and its medieval villages...

, and Lesbos.

At this point, with the rebellion seemingly well in hand, Pericles received word that the Persian fleet was on its way to attack him, and, taking 60 ships with him, he sailed off to Caria
Caria
Caria was a region of western Anatolia extending along the coast from mid-Ionia south to Lycia and east to Phrygia. The Ionian and Dorian Greeks colonized the west of it and joined the Carian population in forming Greek-dominated states there...

 to meet it. In his absence the Samians made a sally and drove the Athenians off. For 14 days they ruled the sea and brought in supplies, but at the end of that period Pericles returned and reestablished the blockade. The siege lasted 9 months, at the end of which the Samians surrendered, tore down their walls, converted their government to a democracy, gave up their fleet, and agreed to pay Athens a war indemnity of 1,300 talents over a period of 26 years. The end of the revolts elsewhere in the empire followed rapidly on this success.

Sparta

Although Athens did succeed in restoring order to the empire, the situation in 440 BC was very severe, particularly because of the threat of Spartan intervention. Thucydides reports that in 433 BC, when Corinth
Corinth
Corinth is a city and former municipality in Corinthia, Peloponnese, Greece. Since the 2011 local government reform it is part of the municipality Corinth, of which it is the seat and a municipal unit...

ian and Corcyraean ambassadors were making their cases at Athens regarding Corcyra's request for assistance against Corinth, the Corinthians stated that in 440, "when the rest of the Peloponnesian powers were equally divided on the question whether they should assist [the Samians],...we told them to their face that every power has a right to punish its own allies." Modern scholars have generally regarded this as an accurate report, and have taken it to mean that Sparta was willing to go to war against Athens, but that the Corinthians, whose powerful navy would have been necessary for the Peloponnesians to participate effectively in such a war, derailed the plan with their opposition.
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