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The Samians, believing that because of the departure of Pericles they had a suitable opportunity to attack the ships that had been left behind, sailed against them, and having won the battle they were puffed up with pride. [2] But when Pericles received word of the defeat of his forces, he at once turned back and gathered an imposing fleet, since he desired to destroy once and for all the fleet of the enemy. The Athenians rapidly dispatched sixty triremes and the Chians and Mytilenaeans thirty, and with this great armament Pericles renewed the siege both by land and by sea, making continuous assaults. [3] He built also siege machines, being the first of all men to do so,1 such as those called "rams" and "tortoises," Artemon of Clazomenae having built them; and by pushing the siege with energy and throwing down the walls by means of the siege machines he gained the mastery of Samos. After punishing the ringleaders of the revolt he exacted of the Samians the expenses incurred in the siege of the city, fixing the penalty at two hundred talents. [4] He also took from them their ships and razed their walls; then he restored the democracy and returned to his country.

As for the Athenians and Lacedaemonians, the thirty-year truce between them remained unshaken to this time.

These, then, were the events of this year.

1 The Assyrians had siege machinery several centuries earlier than this.

Diodorus Siculus. Diodorus of Sicily in Twelve Volumes with an English Translation by C. H. Oldfather. Vol. 4-8. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press; London: William Heinemann, Ltd. 1989.

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