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τὴν ... Σάμον ... ἀπέχειν. A dramatic exaggeration (cf. vi. 112). No doubt communication had been interrupted by war and piracy (Grundy, 433 f.), but Athenians had been to Sardis less than twenty years before, and even the Dorians had attacked Samos in the days of Polycrates (iii. 47 f.). In this reductio ad absurdum the author (or his Ionian source) is deriding the timidity of the Greeks and their admiral. It was not ignorance of the distance but fear of the enemy which kept the Greek fleet at Delos.

ἀναπλῶσαι seems a necessary emendation since here the author is speaking from an Ionian point of view, and ἀνωτέρω (cf. 130. 2) means ‘further out to sea’ (from Asia) than Samos. So καταπλῶσαι (§ 2) is ‘to sail towards land’ and κατωτέρω here ‘nearer Asia’ than Delos.

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