Page:History of Greece Vol VII.djvu/395

377 REVOLUTION Al SAMOS. ;tf; source of mischief now opening upon the Asiatic and in>ulaj Greeks, the moment that the empire of Athens was broke a tipj the revived pretensions of their ancient lord and master ; who:n uollung had hitherto kept in check, for the last fifty years, except Athens, first as representative and executive agent, next as suc- cessor and mistress, of the confederacy of Delos. We thus see against what evils Athens had hitherto protected them : we shall presently see, what is partially disclosed in this very treaty, the manner in which Sparta realized her promise of conferring autonomy on each separate Grecian state. The great stress of the war had now been transferred to Ionia and the Asiatic side of the JEgean sea. The enemies of Athens had anticipated that her entire empire in that quarter would fall an easy prey : yet in spite of two such serious defections as Chios and Miletus, she showed an unexpected energy in keeping hold of the remainder. Her great and capital station, from the pres ent time to the end of the war, was Samos ; and a revolution which now happened, insuring the fidelity of that island to her alliance, was a condition indispensable to her power of maintain- ing the struggle in Ionia. We have heard nothing about Samos throughout the whole war, since its reconquest by the Athenians after the revolt of 440 B.C. : but we now find it under the government of an oligarchy called the Geomori, the proprietors of land, as at Syracuse before the rule of Gelon. It cannot be doubted that these geomori were disposed to follow the example of the Chian oligarchy, and revolt from Athens, .while the people at Samos, as at Chios, were averse to such a change. Under this state of circumstances, the Chian oligarchy had themselves conspired with Sparta, to trick and constrain their Demos by surprise into revolt, through the aid of five Peloponnesian ships. The like would have happened at Samos, had the people remained quiet. But they profited by the recent warning, forestalled the designs of their oligarchy, and rose in insurrection, with the help of three Athenian triremes which then chanced to be in the port. The oligarchy were com- pletely defeated, but not without a violent and bloody struggle ; two hundred of them being slain, and four hundreil banished. This revolution secured and probably nothing less than a democratical revolution could have secured, under the existing