Such was the melancholy end of the enemies of Polykratês: meanwhile, that despot himself was more powerful and prosperous than ever. Samos, under him, was “the first of all cities, Hellenic or barbaric:[443]” and the great works admired by Herodotus in the island,[444]—an aqueduct for the city, tunnelled through a mountain for the length of seven furlongs,—a mole to protect the harbor, two furlongs long and twenty fathoms deep, and the vast temple of Hêrê, may probably have been enlarged and completed, if not begun, by him. Aristotle quotes the public works of Polykratês as instances of the profound policy of despots, to occupy as well as to impoverish their subjects.[445] The earliest of all Grecian thalassokrats, or sea-kings,—master of the greatest naval force in the Ægean, as well as of many among its islands,—he displayed his love of letters by friendship to Anakreon, and his piety by consecrating to the Delian Apollo[446] the neighboring island of Rhêneia. But while thus outshining all his contemporaries, victorious over Sparta and Corinth, and projecting farther aggrandizement, he was precipitated on a sudden into the abyss of ruin;[447] and that too, as if to demonstrate unequivocally the agency of the envious gods, not from the revenge of any of his numerous victims, but from the gratuitous malice of a stranger whom he had never wronged and never even seen. The Persian satrap Orœtês, on the neighboring mainland, conceived an implacable hatred against him: no one could tell why,—for he had no design of attacking the island; and the trifling reasons conjecturally assigned, only prove that the real reason, whatever it might be, was unknown. Availing himself of the notorious ambition and cupidity of Polykratês, Orœtês sent to Samos a messenger, pretending that his life was menaced by Kambysês, and that he was anxious to make his escape with his abundant treasures. He proposed to Polykratês a share in this treasure, sufficient to make him master of all Greece, as far as that object could be achieved by money, provided the Samian prince would come over to convey him away. Mæandrius, secretary of Polykratês, was sent over to Magnêsia on the Mæander, to make inquiries; he there saw the satrap with eight large coffers full of gold,—or rather apparently so, being in reality full of stones, with a layer of gold at the top,[448]—tied up ready for departure. The cupidity of Polykratês was not proof against so rich a bait: he crossed over to Magnêsia with a considerable suite, and thus came into the power of Orœtês, in spite of the warnings of his prophets and the agony of his terrified daughter, to whom his approaching fate had been revealed in a dream. The satrap slew him and crucified his body; releasing all the Samians who accompanied him, with an intimation that they ought to thank him for procuring them a free government,—but retaining both the foreigners and the slaves as prisoners.[449] The death of Orœtês himself, which ensued