Pericles

But in any case, whichever design he cherished, he seems to have made a mistake. For no sooner had he sailed off than Melissus, the son of Ithagenes, a philosopher who was then acting as general at Samos, despising either the small number of ships that were left, or the inexperience of the generals in charge of them, persuaded his fellow-citizens to make an attack upon the Athenians. In the battle that ensued the Samians were victorious, taking many of their enemy captive, and destroying many of their ships, so that they commanded the sea and laid in large store of such necessaries for the war as they did not have before.

And Aristotle says that Pericles was himself also defeated by Melissus in the sea-fight which preceded this. The Samians retaliated upon the Athenians by branding their prisoners in the forehead with owls; for the Athenians had once branded some of them with the samaena. Now the samaena is a ship of war with a boar’s head design for prow and ram, but more capacious than usual and paunchlike, so that it is a good deep-sea traveller and a swift sailor too.

It got this name because it made its first appearance in Samos, where Polycrates the tyrant had some built. To these brand-marks, they say, the verse of Aristophanes[*](From his Babylonians, not extant. Kock, Com. Att. Frag. i. p. 408. ) made riddling reference:—

1. For oh! how lettered is the folk of the Samians!