Hostname: page-component-74656f9884-j7cmm Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2026-11-09T19:18:48.672Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

The Sixth-Century Tyranny at Samos

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

John P. Barron
Affiliation:
University College London

Extract

IN examining Herodotos' account of the Samian tyranny, historians have long been disturbed by two considerations. First, it seems strange that the period of settled tyranny should have begun no earlier than the rise of Polykrates and his two brothers c. 533 B.C., even though Samos was among the most advanced cities in Ionia. Yet it seems equally impossible to revise this accession date in an upward direction, at least by any significant margin. Furthermore, there had been at work in Samos from c. 600 or earlier many of the factors which elsewhere in Ionia did in fact lead to a comparatively stable period of tyranny at that date, for instance at Miletos and Ephesos. Secondly, though Herodotos knows of no tyrant before Polykrates, it has been observed that the policies ascribed to him as characteristic were very largely the continuation of policies initiated a generation or more previously.

Information

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1964

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable