When Pericles submitted the accounts of the campaign to the people,
there was an item of ten talents, "for a necessary purpose," which the
people passed without any questioning, or any curiosity to learn the
secret. Some historians, among whom is Theophrastus the philosopher, say
that Pericles sent ten talents annually to Sparta, by means of which he
bribed the chief magistrates to defer the war, thus not buying peace,
but time to make preparations for a better defence. He immediately
turned his attention to the insurgents in Euboea, and proceeding thither
with a fleet of fifty sail, and five thousand heavy armed troops, he
reduced their cities to submission. He banished from Chalcis the
"equestrian order," as it was called, consisting of men of wealth and
station; and he drove all the inhabitants of Hestiaea out of their
country, replacing them by Athenian settlers. He treated these people
with this pitiless severity, because they had captured an Athenian ship,
and put its crew to the sword. After this, as the Athenians and
Lacedaemonians made a truce for thirty years, Pericles decreed the
expedition against Samos, on the pretext that they had disregarded the
commands of the Athenians to cease from their war with the Milesians.

Pericles is accused of going to war with Samos to save the Milesians.
These states were at war about the possession of the city of Priene, and
the Samians, who were victorious, would not lay down their arms and
allow the Athenians to settle the matter by arbitration, as they ordered
them to do. For this reason Pericles proceeded to Samos, put an end to
the oligarchical form of government there, and sent fifty hostages and
as many children to Lemnos, to insure the good behavior of the leading
men. It is said that each of these hostages offered him a talent for his
own freedom, and that much more was offered by that party which was
loath to see a democracy established in the city. Besides all this,