Samos (ancient world)

A mountainous island measuring twenty-seven by fourteen miles, less than two miles from Cape Mycale at the southern extremity of Ionia (western Asia Minor)

According to Strabo the earliest population belonged to the same race as the inhabitants of Caria (southwestern Asia Minor), and gave the island the name of Parthenia. It was occupied in Neolithic times and during the Bronze Age, and at about the end of the first millennium received Ionian colonists—supposedly from Epidaurus in the Argolid, under the leadership of a certain Procles. Their Samian settlement, now Pithagorion, situated beside a cove on the south side of the island, later became one of the twelve cities of Ionia.

Deriving rapidly increasing importance—in rivalry with Miletus—not only from the fertility of their land (which thus gained the admiring names of Anthemousa or Anthemis, Phyllas, Melamphylus and Dryoussa) but also from their position as the terminal of the all-weather Aegean crossing—which provided access to the trade routes across Asia Minor—the Samians constructed a fleet of warships (c 704), gained control of a strip of mainland territory, and sent an explorer Colaeus to make a pioneer voyage through the Straits of Gibraltar into the Atlantic (c 638). Samos possessed a trading quarter at Naucratis (Kom Gieif) in Egypt, and its colonies extended from the Aegean islands to Thrace, southeast Asia Minor, and southwest Italy.

After the removal of the tyrant Demoteles during the sixth century, the island was ruled by a landed aristocracy, but c 540 this in turn was overthrown by the exceptionally forceful Polycrates, who gave the city a new deep-sea harbor, designed according to advanced engineering ideas, and converted his state into a major expansionist naval power. The philosopher Pythagoras (who left it, c 531) was a native of Samos, the poets Ibycus and Anacreon made it their home, and it produced outstanding architects, sculptors, ivory workers and gem engravers.

The Samian enginner Mandrocles bridged the Thracian Bosphorus for Darius I of Persia (513). Later, however, Samos joined the Ionian revolt against the Persians; but its ships deserted the rebel cause at Lade (495), and fought for Xerxes I at Salamis. Thereafter, it joined the Delian League under Athenian control, as a privileged independent ally contributing ships, but seceded in 441/440 when the Athenians backed Miletus in a quarrel between the two cities and was suppressed by an Athenian fleet after a long siege. Nevertheless, throughout the Peloponnesian War, Samos was one of the Athenians' strongest supporters, sheltering their democrats during Athens' oligarchic revolution (411); this loyalty earned it Athenian citizenship in 405, but the island fell to Lysander the Spartan in the following year. After a further brief period of Athenian occupation (394–390) it returned to Persian rule (386), but was recaptured in 365 by the Athenians, who planted colonists.

During the Hellenistic period Samos belonged in turn to different successors of Alexander the Great, and then, in succession, to the Ptolemies (who used it as a naval base), the Seleucids (259–246), the Ptolemies again, Philip V of Macedonia, the Rhodians, and the kingdom of Pergamum (189), subsequently joining the revolt of Aristonicus (132) and campaigns of Mithridates VI of Pontus (88) both directed against Rome. The Samians suffered from the plundering of the Roman governor Verres (82), from raids by pirates (c 70–67), and from thefts by Antony (39). But their autonomy and works of art were restored by Octavian (Augustus), who spent the winter of 31/30 on the island and in 21/20 announced its `freedom.’ This privilege was terminated by Vespasian in AD 70. Nevertheless, local coinage continued until Gallienus (253–68); some of the pieces bear inscriptions boasting that the Samians were the `first of Ionia.’

The coins lay special stress on the goddess Hera and throw varied light on the appearance of her sanctuary (the Heraeum), famous throughout the Greek world, which stood four miles west of the island capital, on marshy ground at the mouth of the river Imbrasus (formerly Parthenius); the goddess was believed to have been born on the riverbank. The temple is much better understood after recent comprehensive excavations. On its site, eight successive strata of prehistoric remains (from c 2500 BC) have been distinguished. A tenth-century altar was followed by seven more down to 700, when the festal area to the south was flooded by a branch of the Imbrasus. A temple of eighth century date—the first to have been surrounded by columns—was followed, after a second and worse flood of c 660 had destroyed the building and its altar, by a larger structure, the earliest to display a double row of columns across the front. Next, in c 540/530, the creation of a new, colossal shrine measuring 290 by 150 feet, the earliest, as far as we know, to employ the Ionic architectural order, was said to have been entrusted to the architects Rhoecus and Theodorus (the hollow casting of statues in bronze was also believed to be their invention). In front of the building stood a stepped altar with a sculptured parapet adjoining the sacred lygos (`chaste’) tree, and the precinct was approached by a monumental statue-lined Sacred Way.

Thirty years later, after the temple had been burned down in a Persian raid, a replacement was projected (it is possible that this, rather than the earlier edifice, was the project with which Rhoecus was connected). It was to be 365 feet long and 179 feet wide, the largest sacred building ever seen in Greek lands, but although work continued down to Roman times, the task was never completed. A lately discovered coin of c 180 BC displays the earliest known representation of an antique formless image of Hera which stood in these successive shrines, and still survived in the time of Pausanias (second century AD). Every year, to celebrate the marriage of the goddess to Zeus, this image was ceremonially bathed and carried out of the town by an armed escort—an occasion which had enabled Polycrates, in the sixth century BC, to carry out his coup while the population were engaged in this procession.

The ancient city of Samos nearby lay beneath an acropolis (the prehistoric Astypalaea) which contained Polycrates' fortified palace. This no longer survives, though a seated statue of his father Aiaces has now been found at the main ascent. A wall of the same period enclosed the city and harbor, of which the ancient 400-yard mole still serves as the foundation of the modern pier. A water supply from the Agiades spring reached the port by way of a tunnel 1,140 yards long; this masterpiece of ancient engineering and surveying was designed for Polycrates by Eupalinus of Megara.

Beside the harbor was a Hellenistic agora, and on the hillside the remains of a small theater can be seen. The Roman city stood a little to the southwest. A circular building with a cruciform interior may be a baptistery or martyr's shrine belonging to an adjacent Christian basilica. Another basilica (cAD 500) replaced the ruinous shrine of Hera, and there are remains of a Christian funerary building with a vaulted roof; partly cut out of the rock. Unlike the ancient chief town of the island, the modern capital Vathy is on the north coast.