The Good Book_ A Secular Bible - A. C. Grayling [285]
30. Cratinus, in downright terms, calls her a harlot: ‘To find him an embodiment of lust bore that harlot past shame, Aspasia by name.’
31. It seems also that he had a son by her.
32. Aspasia, they say, became so celebrated and renowned that Cyrus, who also made war against Artaxerxes for the Persian monarchy,
33. Gave the concubine he loved most the name of Aspasia, who before that was called Milto, a Phocaean by birth.
Chapter 43
1. Pericles, however, was particularly charged with having proposed to the assembly the war against the Samians, from favour to the Milesians, upon the entreaty of Aspasia.
2. For the two states were at war for the possession of Priene; and the Samians, getting the better,
3. Refused to lay down their arms and to have the controversy betwixt them decided by arbitration by the Athenians.
4. Pericles, therefore, fitting out a fleet, went and broke up the oligarchical government at Samos,
5. And taking fifty of the principal men of the town as hostages, and as many of their children, sent them to the isle of Lemnos,
6. There to be kept, though he had offers, as some relate, of a talent apiece for himself from each one of the hostages,
7. And of many other presents from those who were anxious not to have a democracy.
8. Moreover, Pisuthnes the Persian, one of the king’s lieutenants, bearing some goodwill to the Samians,
9. Sent him ten thousand pieces of gold to excuse the city. Pericles, however, would have none of this;
10. But after he had dealt with the Samians as he saw fit, and set up a democracy among them, sailed back to Athens.
11. But they immediately revolted, Pisuthnes having privily got away their hostages for them,
12. And provided them with means for the war. Whereupon Pericles came out with a fleet a second time against them, and found them not idle nor slinking away,
13. But manfully resolved to contest the dominion of the sea.
14. The issue was, that after a sharp sea fight around the island of Tragia, Pericles obtained a decisive victory,
15. Having with forty-four ships routed seventy of the enemy’s, twenty of which were carrying soldiers.
16. Together with his victory and pursuit, having made himself master of the port, he laid siege to the Samians,
17. And blocked them up, who yet, one way or another, still ventured to make sallies, and fight under the city walls.
18. But after another greater fleet from Athens arrived, and the Samians were now shut up with a close leaguer on every side,
19. Pericles, taking with him sixty galleys, sailed out into the main sea, intending to meet a squadron of Phoenician ships coming for the Samians’ relief,
20. And to fight them at as great distance as could be from the island;
21. But this proved a miscalculation. For on his departure, Melissus, the son of Ithagenes, a philosopher,
22. Being at that time the general in Samos, despising either the small number of the ships that were left or the inexperience of the commanders,
23. Prevailed with the citizens to attack the Athenians. And the Samians having won the battle,
24. And taken several of the men prisoners, and disabled several of the ships, were masters of the sea,
25. And brought into port all necessaries they wanted for the war, which they had not before.
26. Aristotle says, too, that Pericles had been once before this worsted by this Melissus in a sea fight.
27. The Samians, that they might requite the affront which had been put on them, branded the Athenian prisoners on their foreheads with the figure of an owl.
28. For so the Athenians had marked Samians before with a Samaena, which is a sort of ship, low and flat in the prow, so as to look snub-nosed,
29. But wide and large and well-spread in the hold, by which it both carries a large cargo and sails well.
30. And it was so called, because the first of that kind was seen at Samos, having been built by order of Polycrates the tyrant.
31. These brands upon the Samians’ foreheads, they say, are the allusion in the passage of Aristophanes, where he says, ‘For,