Professor Polly Lowe

And again, we have the inscription documenting the Samian repayments to Athens.

That seems to be the case.

Again, Thucydides' account of this is very compressed.

It's among the things he doesn't really give us the full story.

But the other thing which is in the mix is that there is clearly Persian involvement here as well.

and that one thing that seems to be going on is that the Persians are backing the Samians, and that inevitably means that the Athenians are going to take the other side, because this could have been a moment when, even if there had been a piece of Kallias, maybe this was a moment the Persians saw an opportunity to get a foothold back in the Eastern Aegean.

Because if Samos had been part of the Persian Empire at one point, it's one of the Persians' first

sort of conquests in what we would think of as the Greek world.

And if the risk is that the Persians are going to get back into Samos, then that would scare the Athenians.

So that probably also explains why this provokes such a strong reaction from the Athenians.

Yes, I think that's right.

Yeah, they've been one of the first allies.

They're very strong.

It's a rich island.

They've been part of the Egyptian expedition and have been sort of happy to celebrate or at least commemorate their involvement in that.

So, you know, there's a practical strategic danger in losing Samos.

But I think sort of psychologically or morally as well, if you can't even rely on this island anymore, then...

something's something important has changed actually Thucydides doesn't at the time say this but much later on so in almost at the end of the history he has one of his characters say we thought that we were going to lose the empire in the Samian revolt that was a moment when it could all have just come crashing down if if if Samos had been successful that could have been the end of the empire so oh well like a domino effect so other cities would join in kind of thing and then more and more would would try to get rid of Athens uh

So sort of existential moment, and maybe sort of a shock to the self-image, because I think up to that point, the Athenians could perhaps still tell themselves, we're still leading this alliance.

We're still the nice guys in this organization.