Apart from a few differences, the first and principal part follows Photius, Lexicon s.v. *sami/wn o( dh=mos (sigma61 Theodoridis), and appears again in Apostolius 15.32 with some additional commentary. Erbse ascribes it to Pausanias the Atticist (sigma3). Compare also Hesychius sigma150, who comments differently on the same Aristophanes passage (see note 1 below).
[1] Aristophanes fr. 64 Kock (71 Kassel-Austin). A fuller quotation, which appears in Photius and Hesychius, clarifies the pertinence of the subsequent commentary: *sami/wn o( dh=mo/s e)stin, w(s polugra/mmatos ('It is the Samian populace, how multi-lettered!' [or 'multi-marked']). The longer quotation appears in the marginalia of Suda ms M.
[2] A stater (sigma 1008, sigma 1009) is two drachmas and was a standard coin of East Greece.
[3] Aristotle fr. 575 Rose.
[4] Andron of Ephesus FHG II p.348 fr.7 (not in FGrH); ?fourth century BC.
[5] The text is corrupt here, as it is (differently) in Photius and Apostolius. Jacoby ap. FGrH 76 [Douris of Samos] F66, following in the footsteps of Taylor and Bernhardy (and indeed others), emends to make Archinos the subject of the sentence. Likewise, latterly, Theodoridis on Photius. (This is an allusion to 403/2 BC, the year when the Athenians adopted the Ionian alphabet, using the long vowels eta and omega, in their public inscriptions. See under alpha 4360.) For another attempted solution see Armand J. d'Angour, 'Archinus, Eukleides and the reform of the Athenian alphabet', BICS 43 (1999) 109-130, at 114: he retains 'Archinos the Athenian' in the genitive, with an implicit to/te pei/santos, and understands the subject of 'persuaded' to be the previously-mentioned Kallistratos; cf. Ephorus FGrH 60 F106, 'Kallistratos, a Samian, changed the lettering during the Peloponnesian War and presented it to the Athenians in the archonship of Eukleides, as Ephorus says'. If this Kallistratos really did propose a decree in the Athenian assembly, he can only (as d'Angour notes) be a 'Samian' in origin, but his whole existence is thrown into some doubt by the proximity of Aristophanes' didaskalos of the same name, about to be mentioned.
[6] 427/6 BC.
[7] Theopompus FGrH 115 F155.
[8] For the historical context (the end of the Samian rebellion against Athens in 440/439 BCE), see Thucydides 1.116-17 (web address 1), who, however, mentions nothing about the tattooing. The story circulates among late authors, the most historiographically respectable being Plutarch, Perikles 26 (where, as also at tau 142, the tattoos inflicted are wrongly reversed). See Gomme ad 1.117, who doubts the authenticity of the story (as does Karavites 1985), but also see Stadter (1989: 250), who thinks there might be something to it. The same story is also referred to at sigma 75 and tau 142, and, among others, Aelian Varia Historia 2.9. Cf. also epsilon 3225.
[9] See note 5 above.
[10] At this point the version of Photius stops. For the rest cf. tau 142.