Page:History of Greece Vol IV.djvu/261

 SPARTAN EXPEDITION AGAINST POLYKRATES. 243 Spartans, who said, or are made to say : " We have forgotten the first part of the speech, and the last part is unintelligible to us." Upon which the Samians appeared the next day, simply with an empty wallet, saying : " Our wallet has no meal in it." " Your wallet is superfluous, " (said the Spartans ;) i. e. the words would have been sufficient without it. 1 The aid which they im- plored was granted. We are told that both the Lacedaemonians and the Corin- thians, who joined them in the expedition now contemplated, had separate grounds of quarrel with the Samians, 2 which operated as a more powerful motive than the simple desire to aid the suffering exiles. But it rather seems that the subse- quent Greeks generally construed the Lacedaemonian interference against Polykrates as an example of standing Spartan hatred against despots. Indeed, the only facts which we know, to sus- tain this anti-despotic sentiment for which the Lacedaemonians had credit, are, their proceedings against Polykrates and Hip pias ; there may have been other analogous cases, but we cannot specify them with certainty. However this may be, a joint Lacedaemonian and Corinthian force accompanied the exiles back to Samos, and assailed Polykrates in the city. They did their best to capture it, for forty days, and were at one time on the point of succeeding, but were finally obliged to retire with- out any success. " The city would have been taken," says Her- odotus, " if all the Lacedaemonians had acted like Archias and Lykopas," who, pressing closely upon the retreating Samians, were shut within the town-gates, and perished. The historian had heard this exploit in personal conversation with Archias, grandson of the person above mentioned, in the deme Pitana at Sparta, whose father had been named Samius, and who respected the Samians above any other Greeks, because they had bestowed upon the two brave warriors, slain within their town, an honorable and public funeral. 3 It is rarely that Herod- otus thus specifies his informants : had he done so more frequently the value as well_as the interest of his history would have been materially increased. 1 Herodot. iii, 46. T<J tfu/la/cw TrfpiEipyaodai.
 * Hcroflot. iii, 47, 48, 52. 3 Herodot. id, 54-56