Paros

|----- | colspan=2 align=" center" cellpadding=" 0" bgcolor=white| |----- ! bgcolor=" #ccccff" colspan=" 2" | Statistics |----- | Periphery | Southern of Égée |----- | Chief town | Parikia |----- | Surface | 195 km ² |----- | Population | 12.853 (2004) |----- | Density of pop |58 habitants/km ² |----- | zip code | 844 00 |----- | Indicative telephone | (00) 30-22840 |----- | Internet site | http://www.paros.gr/ |}

Paros is a Greek island of the Aegean Sea, in the west of Naxos in the archipelago of the Cyclades. It is the third island of the Cyclades by its surface, and the principal maritime crossroads.

Paros would hold its name of Paros, chief of Arcadiens which settled there towards X E. Paros is the fatherland of origin of Archiloque and Polygnote.

History

Antiquity

Pline the Old one wrote in connection with Paros: “Paros with its city, with 38.000 steps of Délos, celebrates by its marble, called initially Platéa, then Minoïs”.

The first inhabitants of the island would be the Cariens which would have settled there with the Mesolithic towards 7500 ~ 6500 before our ère.
It is on the small island of Saliangos, between Paros and Antiparos which the archeologists discovered the oldest traces of habitat in the Cyclades (- 5300 ~ -4500). The islands of Paros, Antiparos and Despotiko were occupied during all the protocycladic period (3200 - 2200/2000): civilization “Cotton flannel-Lakkoudon”, civilization “Kéros-Syros”, civilization “Philakopi-Polishes I” then civilization “Philakopi-Polishes II”.
Crétois dominated the island during the Minoan era. They made a large strategic port of it. The legend tells that the king Minos sacrificed to the Graces on Paros when he learned the assassination from his son Androgée with Athens. It continued the sacrifice, but rejetta the crown which decorated its head and stopped the music of the ritual flutes. One thus explains the special character of the sacrifices to the Graces to Paros in antiquity: without crowns of flowers nor music. Androgée had had two wire, Alcée and Sthénélos, that Minos would have established on Paros with their uncles, the wire whom it would have had with the nymph Paria: Néphalion, Eurymédon, Chrysès and Philolaos. Thus mythology explains the Minoan domination on the island. When the Mycéniens seized Paros, they made disappear any Minoan trace. The legend is made of it also the echo. It is told that Héraklès approached in Paros during its forwarding against the Amazones. Two of his/her companions were killed by wire of Minos. Héraklès put the seat in front of the city. To alleviate it, the inhabitants proposed to him to take with him two their princes. It chooses the grandsons of Minos Alcée and Sthénélos. Of return of its forwarding against the Amazones, Héraklès stopped on the island of Thasos, Thraces drove out some and installed there Sthénélos like sovereign. Thus one explains the presence of Pariens on the island of Thasos, in the North of the sea Égée.
At the beginning of the first millenium, Arcadiens, carried out by Paros, colonized the island. They quickly were followed the Ionian ones ordered by Klytios and Mélas. Paros knew its golden age to the VIII E. Its famous marble made its richness then. It became an Aegean commercial great power and founded colonies. Most famous was Thasos, conquered by Télessiklis, father of the poet Archiloque. Other colonies were installed in Thrace (650-625) and Propontide.
Towards 600, Paros started to beat its own currency. The island entered then in competition with its neighbor Naxos. The wars opposing the two islands occupied the major part of the VII E. It was during one of them that the poet Archiloque lost the life. Naxos ends up carrying it. The oligarchs pariens chose the camp of the Perses at the time of the medic Guerres. Pariens provided trières to the Persian fleet of Datis. They took part in the plundering of Érétrie. They were also Persian side with Marathon. The island was vainly besieged by Miltiade in 489 av . J. - C., which involved the disgrace of this last. The second campaign, conducted by Thémistocle was an Athenian success. Paros integrated after the Bataille of Salamine the Ligue of Délos, founded by Athens. The contribution parienne rose with sixteen gold talents. After the defeat of Athens at the time of the war of the Peloponnese, Paros passed under the domination of Sparte (404). In 378, the island became member of the second Athenian alliance, but she rebelled into 357. In -338, it was invaded by the Macedonians. She knew then the domination of the Ptolémées, then of the king Mithridate. In -145, it passed under the domination of Rome

Recent periods

An archbishop's palace is attested on the island as of the IV E. It remained always a great shopping mall. The church of Panaghia Ekatontopiliani would have been built under the reign of Justinien (527-563). The majority of Pariens installed around the church worked on the grounds of this one as farmers (pariki). The borough thus took the name of Paroikia. In 675, a Slavic raid plundered the island which was given up by its inhabitants. Raids of pirates ransacked on several occasions the island in VIIe century. The Arab raid of 902 gave the blow of thanks to Paros which could reappear only at the time of the Comnène (1081-1185). The Venetian ones, carried out by the doge Domenico Micheli plundered the island in their turn.
The island was conquered with the remainder of Égée by the Venetian ones in 1207. It was attached to the Duché of Naxos of Marco Sanudo. It is then (1260) which the fort of Parikia was built starting from the vestiges of the close ancient temples. The trade of the marble began again and thrived. In 1389, Paros was given in dowry to Maria Sanudo when she married Gaspard Sommaripa. The reign of Crousinos Sommaripa (as from 1430) was a golden age for the island. The Turks, ordered by Barberousse seized some in 1537 and destroyed it. The incomes of the island were given to the Capitan Pasha (supreme leader of the Othoman navy) in 1578. In 1580, Paros, Naxos, Milo, Santorin and Syros obtained a favorable tax statute which ensured their properity. The pirates however made weigh a permanent danger. They liked the natural ports of Paros, especially Naoussa. In reprisals, Capudan Pasha plundered the island in 1666. At the end XVIIe century, six Drogman S with the service of the Turkish fleet were originating in Paros and Mavrogeni family members. In 1770, the Russians, ordered by the Orlov brothers, drove out the Othoman and settled on the island for seven years. They used bay of Naoussa for their fleet of war. However, the Othoman presence remained until the release of the island in 1825. The heroin of the War of Greek independence, Mado Mavrogeni, originating in Mykonos, opera since Paros with its ships.

The ancient port of Paros

The island of Paros had a flourishing seaport during antiquity. It based colonies such Thasos at the eighth century and that of the island of Pharos on the Dalmatian coast at the fourth century. Greek Ephorat supervised the ports of Paroikia and Naoussa between the 6 and on September 11th, 1979. In Paroikia, the team of archeologists of Ephorat found several structures under the sea in the zone of the port. Initially, several large blocks of marbles, and the parts of limestone used in architecture, were found in the port in a depth among one and six meters. Marble columns of various sizes were also discovered very meadows of the coast in the port. A small marble post thirty-six centimetres in diameter was found inserted in the rollers with a six meters depth. In the North-West of this post was two marble columns, of 1,30 m and 2,80 m diameter, upright in sand. Two large rectangular blocks of marble, of which largest measured 3,1 meters length were found lying on the bottom. Another marble column a 4,35 m length, was lying in sand beside other columns of variable sizes. It is possible that these columns and blocks formed the material of a marble building sets up on the quay of the old port very close to the sea. However, it is also possible that these blocks formed a building manufactured to export in the continent, where it would have been assembled. The blocks of marbles of the same type are found in a wreck close to Crotona, in Italy.
In bay of Paroikia, several structures were found. A large building with several rooms was found very meadows of the beach. Walls were made of chalk and gneiss. Rubensohn had provided a plan of this building and thought that it was about a Roman construction. Large a pier, surely acting as breeze blades, was discovered during work of excavations. The top of this pier is with a depth from two to three meters of surface. The structure took the form of a language and was built stones of rubble. In section, this mole took the shape of a slope with in the center a circular depression of two meters width and a meter of depth. In Naoussa, in the north of the island, three moles were localized as well as Roman ceramics of the first century before J.C., and Byzantines.

The church of Panaghia Ekatontopiliani

Church of the “Virgin to the Hundred Doors”, like wants it now the legend, it is an immense building out of stones apparent (and not limed as for all the other churches of the Cyclades) and covered of tuiles.
Its name would come rather from “Katapoliani”: apart from the city, since it was located a long time at the variation of the original borough around Kastro. Theodore Bent in 1894 still placed it “at five minutes of walk of Paroikia”. It did not have, said it, counted the doors, but it doubted that there was hundred of them. It suggested that the windows would have then perhaps to be added, since the church is surrounded by a cloister and a monastère.
In fact, the name would have been corrupted at the time of the Othoman occupation . The legend would like that the church has only 99 doors and that the hundredth appears by miracle when Constantinople would be reconquise.
A legend of course allots the foundation of the church to Sainte Helene, the mother of the Emperor Constantin. A different legend chooses the other great Byzantine figure, Justinien which would have ordered Ekatontopiliani with a pupil of Isidore, the architect of Sainte Sophie.

The excavations of professor Orlando in years 1960 put at the day a Baptistère and a Atrium proving that the first constructions went back to the 4th siècle.
The first church was then what is nowadays the Saint Nicolas's Day vault. The building was modified with Xe century, then with XVIIIe. It was damaged by an earthquake in 1733. Professor Athanasios Orlando gave him the aspect which it has today at the conclusion of his scientific work between 1959 and 1966. It is him which chose to leave stones and tiles apparentes.
The principal church is in centered plan. The central dome is supported by a drum bored of windows and four pendentive, or horns of angle, decorated seraphes. The unit is built out of porous stones coloured (mainly in green and red), which adds to the feeling of lightness that the dôme.
inspires The church has a stage, reserved to the women (gynécée).
The Architrave of the Iconostase goes back to the Life century, just like the ciborium, one of oldest known. The episcopal synthronon is made of 7 semicircular degrees out of marble recovered in the ruins of the ancient theater. Under the Synthronon runs the miraculous source which would have watered holy Théochristi, holy a parienne buried in one of the vaults latérales.
Sainte Théochristi would be an young girl of VIIIe century, originating in Mytilène. Removed at 18 years by pirates, it would have succeeded in escaping from the ship. She would have failed on Paros where she would have lived as an ascetic in the church of Ekatontopiliani. This legend could thus corroborate the fact that Paros was deserted at the time Byzantine. Théochristi would have thus lived thirty years before being discovered by a hunter which was frightened by this quasi ghostly skeleton. With its death, it became owner of the island and was buried in Ekatontopiliani.

Ekatontopiliani is an important place of pilgrimage for the Assomption, almost with equal of Tinos.

References

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