Page:History of Greece Vol VII.djvu/398

380 J80 HISTORY OF GREECE. blood. What they had enacted as a privilege was now throwi back upon them as an insult. oeeu almost irreparable." (Hist, of Gr. cb. xxvii, vol. iii, p. 477 2d edit.) Manso (Sparta, book iv, vol. ii, p. 266) is of the same opinion. Surely, the conclusion which Dr. Thirlwall here announces as certain, cannot be held to rest on adequate premises. Admitting that there was an oligarchy in power at Samos, it is perfectly possible to explain why this oligarchy had not yet carried into act its disposition to revolt from Athens. We see that none of the allies of Athens not even Chios, the most pow- erful of all revolted without the extraneous pressure and encouragement of a foreign fleet. Alkibiades, after securing Chios, considered Miletus to be next in order of importance, and had, moreover, peculiar connections with the leading men there (viii, 17) ; so that he went next to detach that place from Athens. Miletus, being on the continent, placed him in imme- diate communication with Tissaphernes. for which reason he might natur- ally deem it of importance superior even to Samos in his plans. More- over, not only no foreign fleet had yet reached Samos, but several Athe- nian ships had arrived there : for Strombichides, having come across the ^Egean too late to save Chios, made Samos a sort of central station (viii, 16). These circumstances combined with the known reluctance of the Samian demos, or commonalty, are surely sufficient to explain why the Samian oligarchy had not yet consummated its designs to revolt. And hence the fact, that no revolt had yet taken place, cannot be held to war- rant Dr. Tliirhvall's inference, that the government was not oligarchical. "We have no information how or when the oligarchical government at Samos got up. That the Samian refugees at Anaaa, so actively hostile to Samos and Athens during the first ten years of the Peloponnesian war, were oligarchical exiles acting against a democratical government at Sa- mos (iv, 75), is not in itself improbable ; yet it is not positively stated. The government of Samos might have been, even at that time, oligarchical ; yet, if it acted in the Athenian interest, there would doubtless be a body of exiles watching for opportunities of injuring it, by aid of the enemies of Athens. Moreover, it teems to me, that if we read and put together the passages of Thucydides. viii, 21. 63, 73, it is impossible without the greatest violence to put any other sense upon them, except as meaning that the government of Samos was now in the hands of the oligarchy, or geomori, and that the Demos rose in insurrection against them, with ultimate triumph. The nat- ural sense of the words tTravdoraaif, kTraviarapai, is that of insurrection against an established government : it does not mean, " a violent attack by one party upon another ;" still less does it mean, " an attack made by a party in possession of the government ;" which nevertheless it ought to mean, if Dr. Thirlwall be correct in supposing that the Samian government was now democratical. Thus we have, in the description of the Samian revolt from Athens Thucyd. i. 115 (after Thucydidus has stated that the Athe-