Samos

a Greek island in the Aegean Sea. Part of the Southern Sporades, it is separated from Asia Minor by a narrow strait 2.4 km in width. The area of Samos is 476 sq km, and its highest peak, Mount Kerketeus, has an elevation of 1,434 m. The mountains are composed mainly of limestones and crystalline rocks. Bauxites are mined, and marble is quarried. Maquis and pine groves are found on the slopes. There is subtropical agriculture, and the island is a wine-making center. The principal port is Samos.

Samos was one of the centers of the Aegean culture. The earliest inhabitants of the island, the Leleges and the Carians, were pushed out by the Ionians in the beginning of the first millennium B.C. In the eighth century B.C. Samos became a polis with an economy based on trade and handicrafts. Its greatest prosperity was attained under the tyrant Polycrates in the second half of the sixth century B.C. Beginning with the third century B.C., Samos was successively part of Macedonia, Pergamum, the Roman Empire, and the Byzantine Empire; it subsequently came under the power of the Genoese, the Venetians, and, in the mid-16th century, the Turks. After the Balkan Wars of 1912–13, the island was annexed by Greece under the terms of the Bucharest Peace Treaty of 1913.

Archaeological excavation has been intermittently conducted on Samos since 1880. The remains of the ancient polis of Samos include moles, the fortifications of the acropolis, and residential districts of not earlier than the fifth century B.C. The Temple of Hera stood nearby; remains still exist of altars and temples dating from the tenth to the sixth centuries B.C. The cities of Vathi and Tigani have museums, and a museum of Greek and Roman sculpture is located near the site of the Temple of Hera.