Ireo

Although Samos was a center for trade and commerce for a long time prior, it was Polycrates "the Tyrant" who really put the island on the map in the mid-6th century BC. The monumentality that he embarked on at the Heraion was a show to all—trader, pirate, ally, and would-be conqueror—that Samos’s might under the watchful gaze of her patron goddess Hera was undisputable.