Ηis great public works were executed, according to Aristotle, for the purpose of employing his subjects and diverting their thoughts from the recovery of their freedom. He imported Spartan and Molossian hounds, goats from Naxos and Scyros, sheep from Attica and Miletus. The splendour of his palace is attested by the design which many centuries later the emperor Caligula formed of rebuilding it. Foreign artists worked for him at high wages: from Athens he brought Demacedes, the greatest physician of the age, at a salary of two talents. Polycrates was also a patron of letters: he collected a library and lived on terms of intimate friendship with the poet Anacreon, whose verses were full of references to his patron. The philosopher Pythagoras, however, quitted Samos in order to escape his tyranny. The good fortune of Polycrates is the subject of a famous story. Amasis, moved with fear at the exceeding great prosperity of his friend, reminded him that God is jealous, and that the man who is uplifted very high must needs fall very low. Therefore he besought him, if he would avert the jealous wrath of heaven, to cast from him that which he valued most. Polycrates hearkened to him and flung into the sea an emerald signet set in gold, the work of the Samian artist Theodorus. But a few days after the signet was found in the belly of a large fish which a fisherman had presented to the king. When Amasis heard of this he knew that Polycrates was doomed, and renounced his alliance. Amasis died before his forebodings were fulfilled. When the Persians under King Cambyses were preparing to invade Egypt, Polycrates, anxious to conciliate the growing power of Persia, sent forty ships to their help (525 b.c. ). But the squadron was largely manned by malcontents whom Polycrates had hoped thus to get rid of; hardly had it reached the island of Carpathus when the crews mutinied and turned the ships’ heads back to Samos. They defeated the tyrant in an action at sea, but were themselves overthrown in a land battle and compelled to flee the island. Having taken refuge in Sparta, they prevailed on the Spartans to make war on Polycrates. A powerful Spartan armament laid siege to Samos, but was fain to retire after forty days without effecting its object. Not very long afterwards Orcetes, the Persian satrap of Sardes, by working on the avarice and ambition of Polycrates, lured him to Magnesia and put him to a shameful death (522 b.c.).

The name of Polycrates was also borne by an Athenian rhetorician of some repute, who flourished early in the 4th century b.c. He taught at Athens, and afterwards in Cyprus. He composed declamations on paradoxical themes—an Encomium on Cl·ytemnestra, an Accusation of Socrates, an Encomium on Busiris (a mythical king of Egypt, notorious for his inhumanity); also declamations on mice, pots, and counters. His Encomium on Busiris was sharply criticized by his younger contemporary Isocrates, in a work still extant, and Dionysius of Halicarnassus characterises his style as frigid, vulgar, and inelegant. Nevertheless his works are said to have been studied by Demosthenes. See Jebb’s Attic Orators, ii. p. 94; Cope on Aristotle’s Bhetoric, ii c. 24.