Polycrates

Polycrates, 'tyrant' of Samos from about 536 B.C. to 522. He conquered several islands of the Archipelago, and even some towns on the Asiatic mainland, waged war successfully against the inhabitants of Miletus, and defeated their allies, the Lesbians, in a great sea-fight. His intimate alliance with Amasis, king of Egypt, proves the importance in which this daring island-prince was held even by great monarchs. According to Herodotus, Amasis dreaded the misfortunes that the envious gods must be preparing for so lucky a mortal, and wrote a letter to Polycrates, earnestly advising him to throw away the possession that he deemed most valuable, and thereby avert the stroke of the spleenful gods. Polycrates, in compliance with this friendly advice, cast a signet-ring of marvellously beautiful workmanship into the sea, but next day a fisherman presented the tyrant with an unusually big fish that he had caught, and in its belly was found the identical ring. It was quite clear to Amasis now that Polycrates was a doomed man, and he immediately broke off the alliance. When Cambyses invaded Egypt (525) Polycrates sent him a contingent of forty ships, in which he placed all the Samians disaffected towards his tyranny, hoping they might never come back; but mutinying they returned to Samos, and made war against the tyrant, but without success. Hereupon they went to Sparta, and succeeded in securing the help of both Spartans and Corinthians. A triple force of Samians, Spartans, and Corinthians embarked for Samos, and besieged Samos in vain, and Polycrates became more powerful than ever; but Nemesis overtook her victim after all. Orctes, the Persian satrap of Sardis, had conceived a deadly hatred against Polycrates, and, having enticed the latter to visit him at Magnesia by appealing to his cupidity, he seized and crucified him.