Polycrates of Samos was an incredibly tough bastard. A real bastard, a fratricide, a burner alive. Enlightened monarch, broad soul, intellectual. The first pirate king in history, bibliophile, storm of the seas, role model for Caligula. The man about whom Herodotus wrote: "His fame spread throughout Hellas."
POLYCRATE GOOD
Once it happened that the inhabitants of the ancient Greek Corinth with the greatest shame lost the war to a tyrant from Asia Minor named Aliatt. It was two and a half thousand years ago, and manners then were distinguished by violent cruelty.
And the fathers of Corinth agreed, and gathered three hundred of their own children, and loaded them onto ships, sending them as a gift to the Eastern despot. On the way from Corinth to Asia Minor, the ship stopped at Samos, in the possession of the cruel and greedy, but beloved by the gods, the king of pirates - Polycrates. When he found out about the true purpose of the trip, even his fratricidal heart could not stand it. He personally ordered the capture of the ships of the Corinthians and the release of the children.
And now a crowd of three hundred boys appears before Polycrates. In the slave-owning world, it was possible to get an incredible amount of gold for them. But what is this greedy tyrant doing? He himself allocates a considerable amount and equips a new sea caravan, but only then to give the children a new home.
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They manage to find him pretty soon. The Corinthians had a kindred state - a former colony called Kerkyra, with which they recently had a quarrel. The children were met there as relatives, but they did not give them back to the parents who had sent them to emasculation, even on pain of invasion. Apparently, Polycrates paid well for this shelter.
And this is the whole Polycrates: a terrible scoundrel and a brilliant ruler, capable of tremendous generosity.
He was the tyrant of the island of Samos in the Aegean Sea, and with him an unremarkable piece of land turned into a pirate utopia. With his submission, subjects from fishermen and herders turned into an odious nation of pirates and extortionists, and this was the Golden Age of Samos. Gold really flowed here like a river. And where there is gold, there are scientists, poets, architects, diplomats and other great minds who require greenhouse conditions and court life. And Polycrates created these conditions.
In addition, Polycrates collected a great library for those times. Intellectuals from all over Greece and even Egypt flocked to her like bees to honey.
“They made a through tunnel in the mountain with a height of 150 orgies, starting at its sole, with exits on both sides …
POLYCRATE BAD
And here we have a ruler who spends his budget on free water supply, infrastructure development and a beautiful library; patronizes arts and daring sailors. Is that what a scoundrel and a scoundrel looks like?
He was not a legitimate ruler and seized power, simply cutting out the entire previous elite. It happened on a holiday dedicated to the goddess Hera. The entire aristocratic bloom of Samos visited the sanctuary and, according to custom, the oligarchs, like their guards, left all their weapons at the entrance. Polycrates, along with his brothers and close associates, took advantage of this moment and with almost six of them they cut out the old elite of the island. There was literally no one to rule in the country. Except for Polycrates, of course. By the way, he also betrayed the brothers - he killed one, expelled the other from the country.
In those days, such a murder was considered the height of baseness. The usurpation and desecration of a shrine at the same time is a villainy of legendary proportions. After her, Polycrates was no longer afraid of the pirate's career - the rest of the Greeks hated him from the very first day in power.
Cambyses II.
Many fellow citizens also hated him. They tried to overthrow him more than once, but for some reason the “hated by all” Polycrates always had many supporters. Once part of the Samians rebelled against the usurper. He managed to suppress the rebellion in the bud and immerse the disaffected on ships. His next ally, the Persian king Cambyses, just had a conflict with the Egyptians, and Polycrates sent the rebels to the aid of the Persians. The calculation was ingenious: the rebels will help the allies, most of them will perish, and the rest will be taken over by Cambyses.
However, the plan failed and the rebels managed to escape surveillance. They captured ships, returned, defeated the fleet of their native Samos and landed with a landing party. But Polycrates wouldn't be himself if he hadn't come up with a cruel and sneaky trick. When the troublemakers broke through to the city, they found that all their relatives were locked in the docks and the king's mercenaries were ready to burn the hostages alive without delay. The rebels understood that this was not a bluff - for Polycrates to burn a thousand of his own citizens alive - like going out of necessity during Dionysius. And they retreated.
The rebels went with a plea for help to the Spartans and the same Corinthians, from whom Polycrates, in an outburst of unexpected mercy, stole three hundred sons. The bet was correct: Sparta loved to overthrow the usurpers, it was her national hobby and the raison d'être, and the Corinthians themselves cherished the dream of taking the place of the main pirate power in the region.
But nothing came of the great army of Sparta and the great fleet of Corinth, because all the years of his reign, Polycrates was waiting for the yesterday's victims of the robbery to finally decide to fight back, and prepared for this. The Spartans who landed on Samos discovered that the entire island was a continuous citadel of pirates. Accustomed to bravely fighting in the field, they were almost helpless against the fortifications created by the advanced minds of Hellas.
The Samo pirates not only fought like mad, but also arranged a magnificent funeral for the fallen Spartans. In accordance with its peculiar ideas of honor, after this Sparta began to truly respect Polycrates and Samos. It seems that the Spartans needed a good fight rather than a victory, and they were left satisfied with a worthy battle, albeit with a loss.
But their joy did not last long. Apparently, Polycrates bought off the Spartans with a huge amount of money - if only they would return home. However, at home, the soldiers discovered that the money was counterfeit. The pirate king slipped them gold-plated lead coins instead of gold. And, again, you shouldn't underestimate a man who betrayed his own brothers.
And the Samos rebels, realizing that they were no longer destined to be at home, organized a pirate republic themselves - an alternative to Samos. They ravaged the silver mines of the island of Siphos, brazenly broke into Crete, where they built their own colony, but were defeated, captured and sold into slavery. Pirates were pirate and ended their days.
POLYCRATES DEAD
All the years of his reign, Polycrates was considered a darling of fate and a lucky man. Troubles bypassed him, enemies failed after failure, robbed ships were full of gold and wheat, and the slaves fled from Samos reluctantly, not to mention the free inhabitants who found it easy to reconcile with the tyrant who turned their island into a pirate utopia.
But once luck ran out, and it happened at the very peak of his reign, when it seemed to Polycrates that the gods cherish him as a favorite. And the consequences were dire.
The maritime plunder of Samos reached such a level that even great empires began to suffer from its consequences. The same Persian ruler Cambyses II, who was considered an ally of Samos, attended to the destruction of Polycrates. He commanded his satrap, Sard Oroit, to deal with the pirate king and do it so cruelly as to turn his death into a demonstrative execution. By the way, a satrap in terms of power is something like a king under the rule of an emperor. One can imagine how serious losses Persia suffered if the elimination of the enemy was entrusted to a person of such status.
Oroit spread rumors that he had fallen out of favor with Cambyses, and he intends to send troops to his lands and execute his subject. The trick succeeded, and when Oroit came to Polycrates for help, he was already aware that the satrap's life was hanging by a thread.
Sardus Oroit asked for help at sea - the Persian fleet was weak, and Samos could well defeat it. As a reward for his salvation, the satrap offered half of all the riches that he allegedly managed to take with him during his "escape". As proof, Oroit showed the pirate king's attorney real mountains of gold. For the first time in his life, Polycrates allowed himself to be tricked.
The great scoundrel and schemer Polycrates was shown as a lop-eared Thracian merchant. The merchants of the entire Mediterranean could breathe more calmly - the king of pirates died, and with him his empire, built on sea robbery.
But the joy of the Samians from the death of the tyrant was short-lived. Their affairs immediately began to decline. Samos soon ceased to be a great maritime power. And most importantly: the kind, understanding and democratic rulers who came after him turned out to be mediocrity, embezzlers and, even worse, bedding of Persia.
The citizens who came to replace Polycrates Meander exclaimed: “You are not at all worthy to be our ruler, since you are vile blood and a bastard! Well, you'd better figure out how to give an account of the money you have appropriated!"
But the merchants' happiness did not last long either. After the death of the pirate king, the robbery in the Aegean Sea only intensified. It's just that now the power over the armies of the sea raiders was in the hands of many independent pirate rulers.
Polycrates was a titan of his time - no half measures, the real ideal of Machiavellianism. If nobility, then such that rumors about him will thunder throughout Hellas. If the meanness, then such that people will gaze at the sky, asking Zeus why he did not kill Polycrates at birth. If the rule, then such that the greatest king of our time will envy a small beggar island.
Author: Vladimir Brovin