Samos

Samos [Σάμος] is a Greek island in the Eastern Aegean Sea, located in a beautiful and fertile region of Ionia between the island of Chios to the North and the archipelagic complex of the Dodecanese to the South. This island is about thirty miles in length with an average breadth of eight miles.

Epicurus was either born on this island or brought over by his parents from Athens during infancy. Samos is also the birthplace of Pythagoras.

In the year 365 BCE, twenty-four years before the birth of Epicurus, the Athenian general Timotheus had attacked Samos, which was then hostile to Athens and acting in the interests of the Persians. After the conquest of the island, several of the natives who belonged to the hostile party were expelled by the general, and their lands were assigned to Athenian colonists, who, it appears, gradually encroached upon their neighbors until there were scarcely any original landholders remaining. Among the Athenians who sought to better their fortune in Samos were the parents of Epicurus.