Page:History of Greece Vol VII.djvu/397

379 DEVOLUTION AT SAMOS. 370 only the retaliation of a similar exclusion which the oligarchy, when in power, had enforced to maintain the purity of their own geomori. Thucydides specifies only the number of the geomori them- selves, who were persons of individual importance. Id} not clearly understand what idea Mr. Mitford forms to himself of the gDvernment of Samos at this time. He seems to conceive it as demo- cratical, yet under great immediate control from Athens, and that it kept the " higher people " in a state of severe depression, from which they sought to relieve themselves by the aid of the Peloponnesian arms. But if he means by the expression, " under the immediate control of the Athenian government," ''that there was any Athenian governor or garrison at Samos, the account here given by Thucydides distinctly refutes him. The ct nflict was between two intestine parties, " the higher people and the lower people." The only Athenians who took part in it were the crews of three triremes, and even they were there by accident (ol &TV %o v Trapovrec), not as a regular garrison. Samos was under an indigenous government ; but it was a subject and tributary ally of Athens, like all the other allies, with the exception of Chios and Methymna (Thucyd. vi, 85). After this resolution, the Athenians raised it to the rank of an autonomous ally, which Mr. Mitford is pleased to call " rewarding massacre and robbery," in the lan- guage of a party orator rather than of an historian. But was the government of Samos, immediately before tins intestine contest, oligarchical or democratical 1 The language of ThucydMSs car- ries to my mind a full conviction that it was oligarchical, under an exclu- sive aristocracy, called T.he Geomori. Dr. Thirlwall, however (whose candid and equitable narrative of this event forms a striking contrast to that of Mr. Mitford), is of a different opinion. He thinks it certain that a democratical government had been established at Samos by the Athenians, when it was reconquered by them (B.C. 440) after its revolt. That the gov- ernment continued democratical during the first years of the Peloponnesian war, he conceives to be proved by the hostility of the Samian exiles at Ansea, whom he looks upon as oligarchical refugees. And though not agreeing in Mr. Mitford's view of the peculiarly depressed condition of the " higher people" at Samos at this later time, he nevertheless thinks that they were not actually in possession of the government. " Still (he saysj, as the island gradually recovered its prosperity, the privileged class seems also to have looked upward, perhaps contrived to regain a part of the sub- stance of power under different forms, and probably betrayed a strong in- clination to revive its ancient pretensions on the first opportunity. Tltat it had not yet advanced beyond this point, may be regarded as certain ; because othivicisx Samos would have been among the foremost to revolt from Athens : and on the other hand, it is no less clear, that the state of parties there was such as to excite a high degree of mutual jealousy, and great alarm in the Athenians, to whom the loss of the island at this iuneturc would have