Thucydides, Diodorus and Plutarch describe the outbreak of war between Miletus and Samos in 441/440 b.c.e., ostensibly over possession of their smaller neighbour Priene, in similar ways (Thuc. 1.115-17; Diod. Sic. 12.27-8; Plut. Per. 25-8). What began as a local conflict over land escalated when Miletus appealed to Athens as hegemon of the Delian League. The Athenians ordered arbitration to resolve the conflict, but the Samians, probably concerned that the Athenians would side with the Milesians (Diod. Sic. 12.27.1), refused, which in turn led to war between Samos and Athens. Eight months later a coup at Samos started another war. When the Samians finally surrendered, the Athenians forced them to repay the cost of the siege (IG I².293; Thuc. 1.117.3) and collected hostages (Thuc. 1.117.3).

The orthodoxy about the conflict is that Samos and Miletus fought a war over possession of Priene.Footnote ¹ Yet, despite being a member of the Ionian dodecapolis, a phoros-paying member of the Delian League, and the putative cause of the war, Priene appears neither in the Athenian decision to intervene nor in the resolution of the conflict in any of the narratives. The phrase περὶ Πριήνης appears in all three accounts, but the later descriptions reinforce how Thucydides' passage is interpreted. Thus I will argue that Thucydides' mention of Priene in introducing the war ought to indicate where the war took place, rather than the cause of the conflict.

Thucydides states that ἕκτω δὲ ἔτει Σαμίοις καὶ Μιλησίοις πόλεμος ἐγένετο περὶ Πριήνης (‘In the sixth year war sprang up between the Samians and the Milesians about Priene’, 1.115.2).Footnote ² This passage is frequently translated ‘war broke out between Samos and Miletus over the question of Priene’,Footnote ³ or ‘war broke out between the Samians and the Milesians about Priene’.Footnote ⁴ The latter translation retains some of the ambiguity embedded in the Greek περί, but still implies what the former makes explicit, that Priene was the prize in the conflict. Indeed, this is one of the uses of περί plus the genitive (LSJ⁹ s.v. A.2.I), but the interpretation is reinforced by the same leap presented by subsequent ancient testimony, as we shall see, and need not be what Thucydides described.

A scholiast on Aristophanes' Wasps wrote that πλησίον γὰρ ἦν τῆς Μιλήτου, καὶ ἐζήτουν αὐτὴν ἔχειν Μιλήσιοι (‘[Priene] was near Miletus, and the Milesians wanted to have it’, line 283).Footnote ⁵ The scholiast's claim is often accepted without question, even though it better describes Myus, which was smaller than Priene and closer to Miletus, but was only absorbed in the third century.Footnote ⁶ Moreover, Priene had a long-running land dispute with Samos, not with Miletus (for example, SIG 599). Other than the anonymous scholiast, the only evidence for conflict between Priene and Miletus is the single incident in 441/440 b.c.e. Yet, in their accounts of the conflict between Samos and Miletus, Diodorus and Plutarch assume that the conflict was about Priene, and Plutarch even claims that αἱ γὰρ πόλεις ἐπολέμουν τὸν περὶ Πριήνης πόλεμον (‘the poleis waged war over Priene’, Per. 25.1). In this case, there is no ambiguity about the meaning of περὶ Πριήνης because Plutarch's word order embeds the phrase, and therefore the polis, in the war. Diodorus is even more explicit, employing the verb ἀμφισβητέω, a legal term used to lay claim to property. Thus he says, Σάμιοι μὲν πρὸς Μιλησίους, περὶ Πριήνης ἀμφισβητήσαντες εἰς πόλεμον κατέστησαν (‘The Samians, being in a dispute over the claim to Priene, went to war against the Milesians’, 12.27.1). Thucydides' phrasing is ambiguous such that it may be read both ways. However, his word order separates Priene from the conflict in a way that the later authors do not, which suggests that Priene was peripheral to the war.Footnote ⁷

If the conflict is not over control of Priene, how should it be interpreted? Gomme is correct that ‘it was rather a quarrel of the usual type, over border lands’, but is himself ambiguous about the relationship between the conflict and Priene.Footnote ⁸ Stadter argues that ‘Samos may have taken advantage of Miletus’ weakness to grab more land at Priene's expense’,Footnote ⁹ following Meiggs, who suggests that the Milesians tried to defend Priene from the imperialistic Samians.Footnote ¹⁰ Hornblower offers that it was ‘an exceptionally long-lived quarrel, even by Greek standards’,Footnote ¹¹ referring to the ongoing land conflict between Priene and Samos. Only Shipley's formulation, where Priene, Samos and Miletus all claimed the same stretch of land, does not implicitly assume that Priene either was governed directly by Miletus or was under its protection.Footnote ¹² Samos, Miletus and Priene had land on the Mycale peninsula, but Priene was the only one located there.Footnote ¹³ Thus another translation of περὶ Πριήνης is ‘in the vicinity of Priene’— in other words, the phrase indicates the location of the conflict.

The interpretation that Priene was the source of a conflict between its two larger neighbours has a long history dating back to antiquity. Yet, authors subsequent to Thucydides who were themselves interpreting earlier evidence erroneously reinforce this paradigm.Footnote ¹⁴ The circumstances of the Athenian involvement and Thucydides' phrasing suggest that Priene was not directly involved in the war between Miletus and Samos, but was rather a geographical marker to indicate where the conflict took place.