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This was one reason why the Lacedaemonians were so willing to make the
alliance: another was, because Croesus had chosen them for his
friends in preference to all the other Greeks. They therefore held
themselves in readiness to come at his summons, and not content with so
doing, they further had a huge vase made in bronze, covered with
figures of animals all round the outside of the rim, and large enough
to contain three hundred amphorae, which they sent to Croesus as a
return for his presents to them. The vase, however, never reached
Sardis. Its miscarriage is accounted for in two quite different
ways. The Lacedaemonian story is that when it reached Samos, on its
way towards Sardis, the Samians having knowledge of it, put to sea
in their ships of war and made it their prize. But the Samians
declare that the Lacedaemonians who had the vase in charge, happening
to arrive too late, and learning that Sardis had fallen and that
Croesus was a prisoner, sold it in their island, and the purchasers
(who were, they say, private persons) made an offering of it at the
shrine of Juno: the sellers were very likely on their return to
Sparta to have said that they had been robbed of it by the Samians.
Such, then, was the fate of the vase.
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