Note 365 — Chapter III · Samos

For possible early tyrants in Samos see Meyer, Ges. d. Alt. II. pp. 614, 616, who names Amphikrates (Hdt. III. 59), Demoteles (Plut. Qu. Gr. 57), and Syloson (Polyaen. VI. 45). All three are extremely doubtful. Amphikrates was probably a legitimate king of the period before the abolition of monarchy: very possibly he was a contemporary of the Argive Pheidon (below, pp. 177–8). Demoteles was, according to our only authority, the monarch whose murder led to the ascendancy of the geomoroi: he is naturally assumed to have been the last sovereign of the legitimate royal house. The Syloson of Polyaenus, VI. 45, is probably a confused recollection of the brother of Polycrates. He helps the Samians during a war with the Aeolians to observe a festival of Hera held outside the city and makes himself tyrant during the celebration. The connexion with Hera points to the family of Polycrates (see below, pp. 76, 81): the Aeolian war may be a disguised version of the struggle waged by Polycrates against the Great King who was in possession of the Aeolian mainland. This struggle went back to the beginning of the reign of Polycrates, when he was associated in his tyranny with his brother Syloson: see also Babelon, Rev. Num. 1894, p. 268.