This reasonable and generous proposition fully justifies the epithet of Herodotus. But very differently was it received by the Samian hearers. One of the chief men among them, Telesarchus, exclaimed, with the applause of the rest, “You rule us, low-born and scoundrel as you are! you are not worthy to rule: don’t think of that, but give us some account of the money which you have been handling.”[452]

Such an unexpected reply caused a total revolution in the mind of Mæandrius. It left him no choice but to maintain dominion at all hazards,—which he accordingly resolved to do. Retiring into the acropolis, under pretence of preparing his money-accounts for examination, he sent for Telesarchus and his chief political enemies, one by one,—intimating that they were open to inspection. As fast as they arrived they were put in chains, while Mæandrius remained in the acropolis, with his soldiers and his treasures, as the avowed successor of Polykratês. And thus the Samians, after a short hour of insane boastfulness, found themselves again enslaved. “It seemed (says Herodotus) that they were not willing to be free.”[453]

We cannot but contrast their conduct on this occasion with that of the Athenians about twelve years afterwards, on the expulsion of Hippias, which has been recounted in a previous chapter. The position of the Samians was far the more favorable of the two, for the quiet and successful working of a free government; for they had the advantage of a voluntary as well as a sincere resignation from the actual despot. Yet the thirst for reactionary investigation prevented them even from taking a reasonable estimate of their own power of enforcing it: they passed at once from extreme subjection to overbearing and ruinous rashness. Whereas the Athenians, under circumstances far less promising, avoided the fatal mistake of sacrificing the prospects of the future to recollections of the past; showed themselves both anxious to acquire the rights, and willing to perform the obligations, of a free community; listened to wise counsels, maintained unanimous action, and overcame, by heroic efforts, forces very greatly superior. If we compare the reflections of Herodotus on the one case and on the other,[454] we shall be struck with the difference which those reflections imply between the Athenians and the Samians,—a difference partly referable, doubtless, to the pure Hellenism of the former, contrasted with the half-Asiatized Hellenism of the latter,—but also traceable in a great degree to the preliminary lessons of the Solonian constitution, overlaid, but not extinguished, during the despotism of the Peisistratids which followed.

The events which succeeded in Samos are little better than a series of crimes and calamities. The prisoners, whom Mæandrius had detained in the acropolis, were slain during his dangerous illness, by his brother Lykarêtus, under the idea that this would enable him more easily to seize the sceptre. But Mæandrius recovered, and must have continued as despot for a year or two: it was, however, a weak despotism, contested more or less in the island, and very different from the iron hand of Polykratês. In this untoward condition, the Samians were surprised by the arrival of a new claimant for their sceptre and acropolis,—and, what was much more formidable, a Persian army to back him.

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]