Samos Island
Samos lies nearest of all the Greek islands to the continent of Asia, being separated from it by a strait less than two miles wide. It is seen at its grandest if you come by sea through the channel between Ikaria and Phourni. A great mountain chain runs along the island from west to east, rising to two main peaks. Mt Kerketeus at the western end, nearly 5000 feet high, spins up out of the sea like a fantastic top while away to the east the head of Mt Karvouni domi¬nates the fertile plains.
Ferries from Piraeus call first as a rule at Karlovasi on the north¬west coast and continue eastward to the harbour of Vathy, which serves the modern capital, now called Samos like the island. The airport is conveniently close to the most popular holiday centre at Pithagorio.
In ancient times the beauty and fertility of the island led to many flattering epithets. Homer called it hydrili, the ‘watery place’, be¬cause of its many streams and springs. It was known to other poets as anthemoessa for its flowers, phylia for its wild olive trees, pityoessa for its pines and dryoessa for its oaks. It was also called parthenia gaia, the ‘maiden land’, though this can hardly have been a tribute to Hera, whose birthplace it claims to be. Menander, originator of the Athenian new comedy, declared that Samos was so fertile that even its fowls gave milk as well as eggs. It is still beautiful, and fertile enough for its own needs, but the tourist industry has soured it a little around the edges: crowded beaches mean crowded hotels and restau¬rants. Only among its magnificent central mountains with the pines, the oaks, the streams and the flowers, does the old persona survive.
Vathy harbour too is magnificent at all times. Well sheltered, except very narrowly from the north-west, it forms an almost perfect horseshoe. A summer evening is its best time, the sun just setting beyond the entrance and maybe a new moon ready to follow it behind the dark mountains to the west. Then all round the bay the lights come on - still a restrained spectacle, with very little neon vulgarity. The old town of Vathy still rises on the southern slopes, but it has been thrust aside by the modem development which extends
around the remaining shores, and continues for miles beyond the northern mole. Samos is the most sophisticated island capital outside Crete, Rhodes and perhaps Kos, with a broad dual-carriageway road serving half a mile of the waterfront.
In Samos town there is little of interest, for the classical city was not here but almost directly opposite on the south coast. Its medi¬aeval name was Tigani, but this was changed as recently as 1955 to Pithagorio in honour of the philosopher Pythagoras. This man was one of the great practical philosophers of antiquity, and though his doctrine of the transmigration of souls may not have gone down well with western Christians (pace Polonius in Hamlet), generations have tried to learn his proof that the square on the hypotenuse of a right-angled triangle is equal to the sum of the squares on the other two sides - the basis of the system of logarithms which dominated our higher calculations until the coming of the computer.
His skills extended to music and medicine, and as an astronomer he has been credited with the first theory that the sun was the centre of the universe. The same conclusion was reached by Aristarchus, bom in Samos three hundred years later, though it was not revived until Copernicus restated it convincingly in the fifteenth century. Neither Pythagoras nor Aristarchus stayed long in Samos, the latter living and teaching mainly in Alexandria, the former moving to Croton in southern Italy, where he had an immense reputation and following, but one likes to think that it was in the clear night sky above Samos that they both first began to examine the heavenly bodies.
As a young man of eighteen, Pythagoras won the prize for wres¬tling at the Olympic Games, which must have impressed his later pupils. Mentally and physically tough, he decided early on that there was not enough room in Samos for himself and Polycrates, its auto¬cratic ruler during the second half of the sixth century BC who made it a major Mediterranean power. Herodotus gives us a vivid account of this man’s achievements, saying that he was the first Greek since Minos of Knossos to develop sea power as an instrument of policy. With his ‘fleet of a hundred and fifty oared galleys and a force of a thousand bowmen’ he won command of the eastern Aegean. Among his decisive victories was one over the Lesbian fleet, when the pris¬oners he took ‘were forced to dig, in chains, the whole of the moat which surrounds the walls of the city of Samos’.* He was also responsible, says Herodotus, for three of the greatest building and engineering feats in the Greek world. The first was the long mole which protected the harbour, the second was a tunnel through the hills north of the town, and the third was the temple of Hera, the largest known to Herodotus in Greece.
Of the city ruled by Polycrates practically nothing remains after repeated sackings and plunderings in later centuries. The modem mole is certainly founded on the one he built, and the ruins of the temple of Hera are not far away. The most extraordinary feat was the tunnel, designed by his chief engineer Evpalinos, and therefore known as the Evpalinion Origma; it was possibly dug by the same Lesbian prisoners, or others taken at sea. A mile long and measuring eight feet high by eight feet wide, its primary use was to bring water by an underground channel to the city from beyond the northern hills, but it could also be used as a way of escape in times of danger. This actually happened during an attack on the city by King Darius of Persia.
The road from Samos takes only a short time to cross the low intervening ridge and reach Pithagorio. It must be said that whatever charm survived here from mediaeval Tigani has been trampled on by the tourist trade, which has turned the colourful harbour front into one of the flashiest promenades of cafes, bars and restaurants you will find in the islands. This is a shame, because the narrow streets which descend to the harbour deserve a better issue, and so do the inhabitants, who are defenceless against the hordes who fill their
hotels and lodging houses throughout the summer - except through the charges they make.
If you decide to retreat, go back to the main road above, and take a byroad off it which is signposted to the Evpalinion Origma. This will take you not only to the southern entrance of the tunnel, but also close to the ancient Theatre. Difficult to see from below because of the embankment, it occupies a terrace on the right just before a fork in the road. No seating is left, only a rough semicircle of rock and earth facing the sea, but the roofed-in passage behind the orchestra reveals that Roman residents and tourists preferred wild beast shows to classical drama.
A hundred yards further on you reach the end of the road and a gate in a wire fence - a gate which is open on most days of the week, though at varying times. It leads to a plain square building which covers the entrance to the tunnel, a flight of steps only just shoulder-width which descend into this extraordinary subterranean passage. No wider at first than the steps, it widens after about twenty yards to the full eight feet and forms a level pathway beside the water channel for which it was built, stretching ahead farther than you can see. The pathway is dry and there are lights for quite a dis¬tance, but then notices discourage you from going farther; how can the curator check there is no one left in the tunnel when the time comes to lock up?
Beyond the tunnel entrance a rough track (no motors) leads round to the right and to a point where you can see the western abutment of the northern city walls built by Polycrates. The masonry is massive, and you can see the line of it climbing straight up the hillside. Then it turns east, and well preserved sections of it, with the bases of over thirty towers, extend for about another three miles along the crest before turning south and downhill towards the city. The eastern sec¬tion has mostly disappeared.
Enclosed in the north-eastern corner is the mediaeval Moni Spilianis (Monastery of the Cave) which you reach by taking the right-hand fork just beyond the theatre. A small, well kept but homely place, with a population mostly of cats, it has a lovely view over Pithagorio to the Turkish coast. The church is a modest one, with a double dedication to the Panagia and St Nicholas, but the chief draw for visitors (if claustrophobia is not a problem after the tunnel) is a natural underground rock chamber which includes a hermit’s cell. This is not at all like the scientifically dug tunnel of Evpalinos, but a low-lidded cave with an entrance like the jaws of a monster. Water
drips from the roof, and there are cisterns to collect it to right and left. It was used as a refuge when Turkish rulers became violent, and by (hose resisting the Germans in the last war.
Back on the main road which leads towards the airport you will see beyond the western limits of the town the ruins of a big square tower. Disappointingly this turns out to be an early nineteenth-century building, the Phrourio Logathetis, but further on the road passes close to a large excavated area with the remains of classical-looking buildings. This is not part of the original city of Polycrates, but a western extension built chiefly in the Hellenistic, Roman and early Byzantine eras. Each period is represented, the Roman by a large bath complex, the Byzantine by a Christian basilica church with an early baptistry. Extensive excavations by the British School during the last decade have added to the archaeological records of the site.
Samos had been a part of the Roman province of Asia since 129 BC, one of the last territories to be prised from the successors of Alexander. Its capital at that time still contained some of the finest treasures in the Greek world remaining after the destruction and pillage of Corinth twenty years earlier. Roman provincial governors had a quick eye for loot - they had to have, with only a year to make the most out of their office - and in 82 BC the notorious Caius Verres helped himself from Samos before going on to worse depredations in Sicily. There he was brought to book by Cicero in a famous legal prosecution; Cicero also befriended Samos when proconsul of Cilicia. Antony and Cleopatra lifted more treasures during a riotous holiday here in 39 BC. How many tourists, one wonders, think of those two as their predecessors? They would certainly have eaten better, and what would they think of the discos?
The third great achievement of Polycrates was the temple of Hera. The temple itself was only part of a sanctuary known still as the Heraion, which lies near the coast three miles beyond the airport, at the mouth of the river Imvrasos. To be the birthplace of the consort of Zeus is a grandiose claim, and everything built on this site has more than a touch of the grandiose. Quite how much of it we owe to Polycrates is not clear. There were buildings on the site in the Bronze Age, and two major temples were put up between 800 and 600 BC. A third, the one attributed to Polycrates, was begun early in the sixth century under the direction of a Samian architect, Rhoikos. This however was burnt to the ground about 525 BC, only three years before Polycrates was lured across to the mainland by a jealous Persian satrap and foully done to death. He had probably already put
in hand the rebuilding of the even larger temple whose ground plan we sec today, but it was never finished.
The scale is vast. The single incomplete column left standing gives you some idea of it, if you imagine a hundred and sixty-six others like it standing in row upon row in this huge rectangle. The style was a Samian version of the Ionic order, with larger and more elaborate column bases and capitals than the more refined Athenian taste al¬lowed. The temple was surrounded at a lower level by other buildings of various dates. There were Greek temples to Apollo and to a combi¬nation of Hermes and Aphrodite. There was a Hellenistic Stoa, two smaller Roman temples to Hera, a Roman baths and an early Chris¬tian basilica. The whole site is still being thoroughly and discreetly investigated by the German Archaeological Institute, who have been at it with necessary intervals since 1910. They emphasize how much is still to be revealed.
As you might expect, the best beaches are on the south coast, some of them at the foot of a rocky peninsula to the south-east of Vathy. One road leads to Psili Ammos, a general favourite, and the other crosses the Dendrias headland, thick with pines, to reach a deeply sheltered bay at Posidonio, well supplied with tavernas. One of the most accessible of the island’s monasteries is the Moni Zoodo-chou Pigis, whose life-giving spring emerges from another rocky headland a few miles north-east of Vathy. It was founded in 1756 - a friendly place, but not remarkable except for some fine contemporary carving in local wood.
So far we have explored only the eastern tip of Samos. A not too laborious day’s expedition farther west begins along the northern coast road, which gives you some marvellous prospects up a series of wooded valleys to the high central peaks. Between the villages of Kokari and Avlakia there are some exposed and shingly beaches. From the latter you can take a mountain road up to the Moni Vron-tanis. This is the oldest monastery in Samos, founded in 1566, and surrounded by pines and cypresses. Very high walls, whitewashed within and with wooden galleries all round, enclose a peaceful court¬yard. The church is a small and narrow Panagia, with a lovely ikon of the Virgin. Outside it there are conveniently shaded seats round a circular fountain - altogether a very sane and understandable place of God.
The next valley opens up just before the more sophisticated and flowery town of Agios Konstantinos, and a lovely road winds sharply up it through the deep shade of plane trees, with a stream
tumbling past you, to end at Mandates, an idyllic village which climbs in stages further up the hill. There are gardens bright with flowers on every hand, two or three cafes and a warm welcome to be had from the villagers.
Prosperity has reached these mountain villages indirectly from tourist development on the coast. The men work down there during the summer, supporting their families above. Good roads connect the two worlds, and a happy atmosphere results. This end of Samos is a great wine-producing area, once the mountains flatten out a bit, and the vineyards are as thick as anywhere in France, if not so well organized. Figs are abundant, but as in Lesbos the olives often drop neglected from the trees. The scenery is marked by an abundance of pencil-like cypresses, stiff dark verticals among the silvery fluttering olives.
The end of the road comes at Karlovasi; actually there are three distinct communities. Neo Karlovasi is an ugly commercial sprawl and the centre of the wine-producing trade; Meso and Palaio Kar¬lovasi are more attractive but have been much developed to take advantage of good beaches at Potami, further to the west. The road back to the south begins in between these two, a wide, well surfaced highway up the side of a valley and over the watershed at Agii Theodori. The village of Platanos lies just off it to the east near the highest point, a sensible place with a restaurant to provide a welcome half-way meal.
The return journey, in sight now of the southern sea, takes you through more pine woods - some of them sadly ruined by fire - but villages are rare. At Koumaradeoi a roughish road goes south to the Moni Megalis Panagias, built on the site of a shrine to Artemis and reputed to be the most interesting in Samos. It has been the wealthi¬est, too, and monks came from the monasteries on Mt Athos to decorate the church walls with frescos. Unfortunately visitors are not now admitted, ostensibly for fear of damage or theft. There seems to be a political struggle involved here between the civic authorities and the Orthodox Church. The church everywhere objects to the lax attitude of the present Greek government to divorce and abortion, and refuses in some parts, to co-operate in tourist activity - which is how they view inconvenient visits by foreigners.
The same situation obtains at the Monastery of the Holy Cross, Timiou Stavrou, a handsome eighteenth-century foundation a little further along the road. It must also be remembered that many of these places have just one old monk or two or three frail nuns to look after
them, and they only open their doors when the pappas from a distant town comes up in his car for a service or a visit to the sick. One should be more than ever grateful for the warm welcome which can be forthcoming in the most remote places.
At the next large village, Chora, you have a choice of two roads back to Vathy. One goes the way you came, through Pithagorio, but for variety you can take the slightly longer route through Mytilinioi -in spite of its name a dull place with one long main street. The approach from this direction gives you another lovely view over Vathy bay as you come down off the hills in the evening light.
Samos suffers from overcrowding. This is absurd, of course, when you consider the gloriously unspoilt interior of the island, but in Samos town and Pithagorio it is almost impossible between May and November to find a hotel room unless you have booked a holiday through a travel agency several months ahead. This seems to wear off on the hotel staff, the waiters and the taxi-drivers; certainly you find a warmer welcome in Lesbos and readier one in Chios. As for food and drink there is little variety or temptation. A lot of wine is produced, but by the time it is bottled you will find it no different from similar products all over Greece. If you ask for a bottle of the traditional red moschato, back will go the head, the eyes will lift and a barely audible ‘ochV will be your answer. In vain to echo Byron: ‘Fill high the bowl with Samian wine.’
The hot sandy beaches are the draw, but others have learned to enjoy a different kind of holiday here - walking among the mountain
villages. You can still take a bus or get a lift down to the sea if you feel like it, but if you are content to take what accommodation you find (and it will always be clean and welcoming) there are many natural pleasures up there, not least to drop in for a genuine Greek country meal in the evening and - who knows? - there may be a litre or two of the real Samian left in the bareli.