Page:History of Greece Vol IV.djvu/266

 248 HISTORY OF GREECE. pects of the future to recollections of the past ; showed them- selves 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, 1 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 con- stitution, 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 Mtean- drius had detained in the acropolis, were slain during his danger- ous illness, by his brother Lykaretus, under the idea that this would enable him more easily to seize the sceptre. But Miean- drius 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 Polykrates In this untoward condition, the Samians were surprised by tin arrival of a new claimant for their sceptre and acropolis, and, what was much more formidable, a Persian army to back him. Syloson, the brother of Polykrates, having taken part origi nally in his brother's conspiracy and usurpation, had been at first allowed to share the fruits of it, but quickly found himself ban- ished. In this exile he remained during the whole life of Poly- krates, and until the accession of Darius to the Persian throne, which followed about a year after the death of Polykrates. He happened to be at Memphis, in Egypt, during the time when Kambyses was there with his conquering army, and when Da- rius, then a Persian of little note, was serving among his guards. Syloson 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 Syloson to reply, 2 " I cannot 1 Herodot. v, 78, and Hi, 142, 143. 1 Herodot. iii, 139. 'O <Je ZvAoadiv, opeuv rbv Aapeiov fieyu e'iT) Tvq rpcu/zevof, Zt-yet, etc.