Samos (theme)

Theme of Samos θέμα Σάμου
Theme of the Byzantine Empire
before 899 – 1204
Map of Byzantine Greece c. 900, with the themes and major settlements.
Historical era		Middle Ages
•	Establishment as a theme	before 899
•	Conversion to regular theme	late 11th century
•	Fourth Crusade	1204
Today part of		Greece  Turkey

The Theme of Samos (Greek: θέμα Σάμου, thema Samou) was a Byzantine military-civilian province, located in the eastern Aegean Sea, established in the late 9th century. As one of the Byzantine Empire's three dedicated naval themes (Greek: θέματα ναυτικᾶ), it served chiefly to provide ships and troops for the Byzantine navy.

The dates of establishment and the territorial reach of the various Byzantine naval commands in the 7th–9th centuries are mostly unclear. After the unitary navy of the Karabisianoi was split up in the early 8th century, regional naval commands were established, of which the naval theme of the Cibyrrhaeots is the first known and most important. The 10th-century Byzantine emperor Constantine VII Porphyrogennetos (r. 913–959) records that "at the time the Empire was divided into themes", Samos became the seat of the "theme of the sailors" (Greek: θέμα τῶν πλοϊζομένων); the meaning of this passage is unclear. The historian Warren Treadgold interprets this to mean that Samos was the first seat of the Karabisianoi fleet, until their disbandment c. 727. Alternatively, it could imply a command that formed part of the Karabisianoi and was abolished with them, or a later, short-lived successor, perhaps even identical with the Cibyrrhaeots. The existence of a "strategos of Samos" in the 8th century is attested through a surviving seal of a strategos named Theodore. In the late 8th century, the southern Aegean appears to have come under the jurisdiction of the "droungarios of the Dodecanese (Dodekanesos)", whom some scholars (following Hélène Ahrweiler) identify with the post of "droungarios of Kos" and the later "droungarios of the Gulf (Kolpos)", listed in the mid-9th century Taktikon Uspensky. This command then, or at least the eastern part of it, apparently evolved into the theme of Samos.

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