Strabo, Geography

The voyage round the island of the Samians is six hundred stadia. In earlier times, when it was inhabited by Carians, it was called Parthenia, then Anthemus, then Melamphyllus, and then Samos, whether after some native hero or after someone who colonized it from Ithaca and Cephallenia.¹ Now in Samos there is a promontory approximately facing Drepanum in Icaria which is called Ampelus, but the entire mountain which makes the whole of the island mountainous is called by the same name. The island does not produce good wine, although good wine is produced by the islands all round, and although most of the whole of the adjacent mainland produces the best of wines, for example, Chios and Lesbos and Cos. And indeed the Ephesian and Metropolitan wines are good; and Mt. Mesogis and Mt. Tmolus and the Catacecaumene country and Cnidos and Smyrna and other less significant places produce exceptionally good wine, whether for enjoyment or medicinal purposes. Now Samos is not altogether fortunate in regard to wines, but in all other respects it is a blest country, as is clear from the fact that it became an object of contention in war, and also from the fact that those who praise it do not hesitate to apply to it the proverb that "it produces even birds' milk," as Menander somewhere says. This was also the cause of the establishment of the tyrannies there, and of their enmity against the Athenians.