Pericles’ Career – 6

Pericles is accused of going to war with Samos to save the Milesians.

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Time: 444 BC
Place: Athens

Pericles is accused of going to war with Samos to save the Milesians. These states were at war about the possession of the city of Priene and the Samians, who were victorious, would not lay down their arms and allow the Athenians to settle the matter by arbitration, as they ordered them to do. For this reason Pericles proceeded to Samos, put an end to the oligarchical form of government there and sent fifty hostages and as many children to Lemnos, to insure the good behavior of the leading men. It is said that each of these hostages offered him a talent for his own freedom and that much more was offered by that party which was loath to see a democracy established in the city. Besides all this, Pissuthnes the Persian, who had a liking for the Samians, sent and offered him ten thousand pieces of gold if he would spare the city. Pericles, however, took none of these bribes but dealt with Samos as he had previously determined and returned to Athens. The Samians now at once revolted, as Pissuthnes managed to get them back their hostages and furnished them with the means of carrying on the war. Pericles now made a second expedition against them and found them in no mind to submit quietly but determined to dispute the empire of the seas with the Athenians. Pericles gained a signal victory over them in a sea-fight off the Goats’ Island, beating a fleet of seventy ships with only forty-four, twenty of which were transports.

Simultaneously with his victory and the flight of the enemy he obtained command of the harbor of Samos and besieged the Samians in their city. They, in spite of their defeat, still possessed courage enough to sally out and fight a battle under the walls; but soon a larger force arrived from Athens and the Samians were completely blockaded.

Pericles now with sixty ships sailed out of the Archipelago into the Mediterranean, according to the most current report intending to meet the Phoenician fleet which was coming to help the Samians, but, according to Stesimbrotus, with the intention of attacking Cyprus, which seems improbable. Whatever his intention may have been, his expedition was a failure, for Melissus, the son of Ithagenes, a man of culture, who was then in command of the Samian forces, conceiving a contempt for the small force of the Athenians and the want of experience of their leaders after Pericles’ departure, persuaded his countrymen to attack them. In the battle the Samians proved victorious, taking many Athenians prisoners and destroying many of their ships. By this victory they obtained command of the sea and were able to supply themselves with more warlike stores than they had possessed before. Aristotle even says that Pericles himself was before this beaten by Melissus in a sea-fight. The Samians branded the figure of an owl on the foreheads of their Athenian prisoners, to revenge themselves for the branding of their own prisoners by the Athenians with the figure of a samaina. This is a ship having a beak turned up like a swine’s snout but with a roomy hull, so as both to carry a large cargo and sail fast. This class of vessel is called samaina because it was first built at Samos by Polycrates, the despot of that island.

When Pericles heard of the disaster which had befallen his army, he returned in all haste to assist them. He beat Melissus, who came out to meet him, and, after putting the enemy to rout, at once built a wall round their city, preferring to reduce it by blockade to risking the lives of his countrymen in an assault. In the ninth month of the siege the Samians surrendered. Pericles demolished their walls, confiscated their fleet and imposed a heavy fine upon them, some part of which was paid at once by the Samians, who gave hostages for the payment of the remainder at fixed periods.

Pericles, after the reduction of Samos, returned to Athens, where he buried those who had fallen in the war in a magnificent manner and was much admired for the funeral oration which, as is customary, was spoken by him over the graves of his countrymen. Ion says that his victory over the Samians wonderfully flattered his vanity. Agamemnon, he was wont to say, took ten years to take a barbarian city but he in nine months had made himself master of the first and most powerful city in Ionia. And the comparison was not an unjust one, for truly the war was a very great undertaking and its issue quite uncertain, since, as Thucydides tells us, the Samians came very near to wresting the empire of the sea from the Athenians.

After these events, as the clouds were gathering for the Peloponnesian war, Pericles persuaded the Athenians to send assistance to the people of Corcyra, who were at war with the Corinthians and thus to attach to their own side an island with a powerful naval force, at a moment when the Peloponnesians had all but declared war against them.

When the people passed this decree, Pericles sent only ten ships under the command of Lacedaemonius, the son of Cimon, as if he designed a deliberate insult; for the house of Cimon was on peculiarly friendly terms with the Lacedaemonians. His design in sending Lacedaemonius out, against his will and with so few ships, was that if he performed nothing brilliant he might be accused, even more than he was already, of leaning to the side of the Spartans. Indeed, by all means in his power, he always threw obstacles in the way of the advancement of Cimon’s family, representing that by their very names they were aliens, one son being named Lacedaemonius, another Thessalus, another Elius. Moreover, the mother of all three was an Arcadian.

Continued.

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