SAMOS, a name said to mean highland, and, doubtless, deserving this name for its far superior height to the islands adjacent, bore, like Lesbos, many different names in antiquity, with a population much intermixed, the result of successive colonies of Carians, Leleges, and Ionians. To the last people it chiefly owed its historic fame, having been, in very early times, an active member of the Ionian confederacy. As islanders, the Samians had much credit for their skill in boatbuilding; indeed, Thucydides (i. 13) goes so far as to say they were the first boatbuilders, a statement, evidently, to be accepted with a good deal of allowance. It seems, however, certain that a citizen of Samos, one Cælius, was the first to reach the Atlantic by passing through the Pillars of Hercules, and that Polycrates, the friend of Anacreon, did much to increase the naval fame of his island. After having made treaties with Amasis of Egypt, and Cambyses of Persia (which alone show the eminence ascribed to Samos at this early period), we know further, that, from Samos, as his head-quarters, Datis sailed for Marathon, the inference being that Samos at that time was less Greek than perhaps, it ought to have been; hence too, perhaps, somewhat later, the severe punishment inflicted on it by Pericles and Sophocles. From the commencement of the Roman wars in the East, Samos seems, generally, to have sided with Rome, becoming, ultimately, part of the province of “Asia.” Hence, too, probably the fact that Augustus (or rather as he then was, Octavianus) spent his winter there after the battle of Actium. Samos was, in early times, greatly devoted to the worship of Juno, and Herodotus states that her temple there was the largest he had seen. It was, however, never completely finished. According to Virgil, Samos was the second in the affections of Juno, and, in Strabo’s time, in spite of the plunder it had suffered in the Mithradatic war, and, subsequently, by Verres, her temple was a complete picture-gallery. Here too, as so often elsewhere, a Sacred Way led from the temple to the city. Samos was also famous for an earthenware of a “red lustrous” character. Her art, in this respect, was copied by the Romans, their common red ware being popularly called “Samian.” Of this most Museums have abundant and excellent specimens (Marryat, “Pottery and Porcelain,” 1850).