The Duration of the Samian Tyranny

Abstract

Herodotus in the course, of his description of Kambyses' conquest of Egypt gives both the earliest and the only detailed account we possess of Polykrates, the tyrant of Samos. Thucydides makes a brief reference to him, also dating him to the reign of Kambyses (ἐπὶ καμβύσου), 530–522 B.C. Other references, as will appear, are late, scattered, and incidental. In attempting to determine the length of the Samian tyranny, Herodotus will, therefore, be our most important source of evidence. Although his interest is concentrated on the career of Polykrates, he provides enough information about Samian activities in the immediately preceding period to suggest that Polykrates is, in most cases, continuing a policy already initiated a generation before him. The difficulty of compressing into the brief period of Kambyses all that is referred to the tyranny of Polykrates is notorious, as is also the difficulty of reconciling with the usually accepted dates of Polykrates the chronological references to other people connected with the Samian tyranny. There is a similar problem about the dating of two of the great Samian works which Herodotus describes, the water tunnel of Eupalinos, and the Heraion of Rhoikos. The usual assumption that the Samian tyranny began with Polykrates' seizure of power in the middle or late thirties is not, I think, adequate to explain the evidence. There are various indications that the Samian tyranny, or a régime at Samos which closely resembled the subsequent tyranny, had begun in the generation before Polykrates, and that Polykrates himself, because of his spirited resistance to Persia, has been credited with what was in reality the achievement of a continuous policy which had been begun earlier, perhaps by his father.