Book 14
1.18
The Athenians formerly sent Pericles their general, and with him Sophocles the poet, who harassed with the evils of a siege the refractory Samians. AfterwardsAfter the death of Pericles. they sent thither a colony of two thousand citizens, among whom was Neocles the father of Epicurus, and, according to report, a schoolmaster. It is said, that Epicurus was educated here and at Teos, and was admitted among the ephebi at Athens, having as his comrade in that class Menander the comic poet. Creophylus was a native of Samos,Among distinguished natives of Samos, Strabo has omitted to mention Melissus the philosopher, who commanded the fleet of the island, and was contemporary with Pericles.—Plutarch, Life of Pericles. who, it is said, once entertained Homer as his guest, and received, in return, his poem entitled The taking of Oechalia. Callimachus, on the contrary, intimates in an epigram that it was the composition of Creophylus, but ascribed to Homer on account of the story of his hospitable entertainment by Creophylus: I am the work of the Samian, who once entertained in his house, as a guest, the divine Homer. I grieve for the sufferings of Eurytus, and mourn for the yellow-haired Ioleia. I am called Homer’s writing. O Jupiter, how glorious this for Creophylus. Some say that he was Homer’s master; according to others, it was not Creophylus, but Aristeas of Proconnesus.
1.19
The island of Icaria, from which the Icarian Sea has its name, is near Samos. The island has its name from Icarus, the son of Daedalus, who, it is said, having accompanied his father in his flight, when both of them, furnished with wings, set out from Crete, fell on that island, unable to sustain his flight. He had mounted too near the sun, and the wings dropped off on the melting of the wax [with which they were fastened].
