A powerful Ionian island once ruled by the tyrant Polycrates—birthplace of Pythagoras, home of the Eleatic monist Melissus, and the island whose son Aristarchus first dared to set the Sun, not the Earth, at the center of the cosmos.
4 most-discussed ideas
Samos through the eras
Under the tyrant Polycrates (ruled c. 538–522 BCE), Samos rose to become one of the richest naval powers in the Aegean, adorned with the great Temple of Hera, the engineer Eupalinos's celebrated water tunnel, and a glittering court that drew poets like Anacreon and Ibycus. It was the island that produced Pythagoras, who reportedly fled Polycrates' tyranny around 530 BCE for Croton in southern Italy, carrying his teachings on number and the soul westward.
After the Persian Wars, Samos joined the Athenian-led Delian League as one of its mightiest members—until a revolt in 440 BCE was crushed by Pericles himself. In these years the philosopher Melissus of Samos, who as admiral actually defeated an Athenian fleet, carried forward the Eleatic doctrine of Parmenides, arguing that Being is one, infinite, and unchanging.
Contested among Alexander's successors and the Ptolemies, Samos nonetheless gave the world its most daring thinker: the astronomer Aristarchus of Samos (c. 310–230 BCE), who proposed that the Earth turns on its axis and revolves around the Sun—anticipating Copernicus by some eighteen centuries—and who attempted the first geometric estimate of the distances to the Sun and Moon.
Teachers who lived here
Works composed here
Ideas shaped here
Concepts most frequently discussed in the works composed at Samos. Click any to trace the idea across time and place.