Milos or Melos (; , ; ) is a volcanic Greek island in the Aegean Sea, just north of the Sea of Crete. It is the southwestern-most of the Cyclades islands.
Sculptures from Milos include the Venus de Milo (now in the Louvre), the Poseidon of Melos (now in the NAMA), the Asclepius of Milos (now in the British Museum), and an archaic Apollo now in Athens. Milos is a popular tourist destination during the summer. The municipality of Milos also includes the uninhabited offshore islands of Antimilos and Akradies. The combined land area is and at the 2021 census the population was 5,193 inhabitants.
History
Obsidian (a glass-like volcanic rock) from Milos was a commodity as early as 15,000 years ago.N. Laskaris, A. Sampson, F. Mavridis, I. Liritzis, (September 2011) "Late Pleistocene/Early Holocene seafaring in the Aegean: New obsidian hydration dates with the SIMS-SS method" Journal of Archaeological Science, Volume 38, Issue 9, pp.2475–2479 Obsidian from Milos was traded over long distances and fashioned into extremely sharp stone tools well before farming began and later: "There is no early farming village in the Near East that doesn't get obsidian".C. Renferew The mining of obsidian did not lead to the development of permanent habitation or manufacturing on the island. Instead, those in search of obsidian arrived by boat, beaching it in a suitable cove and cutting pieces of the volcanic glass from the quarries.
The position of Milos, between mainland Greece and Crete, and its possession of obsidian, made it an important centre of early Aegean civilisation. Milos lost its arms-making importance when bronze became the preferred material for the manufacture of weapons.Chalk and Jonassohn, 65
The Bronze Age The first settlement at Phylakopi (Greek Φυλακωπή) arose in the Bronze Age, flourishing as the extraction of obsidian was in the decline. The first settlers were tuna fishermen. Lying on the north-east coast, 1896 excavations by the British School at Athens and later in 1973 by the British archaeologist Colin Renfrew, revealed a town wall and a Minoan-inspired structure, dubbed the Pillar room, which contained fragments of vivid wall paintings. The famous fresco of the flying fishFlying fish was found in the ruins of the Pillar room and was executed with delicate colouring and graphic observation of nature in the graceful movement of a fish. Stylistic similarities to Minoan frescoes are suggested, and it could perhaps have been the work of a Cretan artist.CAH pg. 448 Part of the site has been washed away by the sea.
The antiquities found at the site covered three major periods, from the Early Cycladic period to the Mycenaean period. At the site much pottery was excavated, with several changing styles and influences over the site's long occupation. In the early occupation of the site, there are many similarities and imports from other Cycladic islands and the settlement was very small. During the Middle Bronze Age however, the site expanded significantly and the expansion of Minoan Crete saw an influx of Minoan pottery into the Cyclades, particularly at Akrotiri on Thera, though much found its way to Phylakopi. The quantities found at the Cycladic sites have been taken to suggest a Minoan control over the region, though it could also be the consumptive nature of the islanders adopting Cretan fashions. There is more than just pottery at Phylakopi however, the eruption of the Thera volcano saw a reduction in Minoan presence in the Cyclades and it is at this time that Mycenaean involvement on the islands increases. At Phylakopi (and unknown in the rest of the Cyclades) a megaron structure, which is typically associated with the Mycenaean palaces, such as those at Tiryns, Pylos and Mycenae has been discovered. This has been taken to suggest that the Mycenaeans conquered the settlement and installed a seat of power for a governor. The evidence is not clear, though again it could be a legacy of the islanders adopting foreign elements into their culture. Particularly unexpected was the discovery in the 1970s of a shrine at the site, which contained many examples of Aegean figurines, including the famous "Lady of Phylakopi". The shrine is unprecedented in the Bronze Age Cyclades and has provided a valuable insight into the beliefs and rituals of the inhabitants of Phylakopi. The site was eventually abandoned and was never reoccupied.
Dorian settlement
The first Dorian settlement on Melos was established no earlier than the 1st millennium BC. Dorians are the ethnic group to which the Spartans belonged, but the Dorian settlers of Melos made themselves independent. They eventually established a city whose site lies on the eastern shore of the bay, just south-west of the present-day community of Trypiti.
From the 6th century BC up to the siege of 416 BC, Melos issued its own coinage, struck according to the Milesian weight standard: the base coin was the stater which weighed just over 14 grams.Brain Sparkes, in , p 230: "Melian coins of the late sixth and fifth centuries are of silver [...] and based on the Milesian weight standard.": "Already, in the sixth century, Melos struck coins on a different standard from that of most of the other islands of the Aegean, the stater weighing about 224 grains (grm. 14.50). Certain coins of the Santorin find (p. 122) are not of Aeginetan but of this Phoenician weight."According to the website of Robert J. O'Hara (http://rjohara.net/coins/history/), a Lydo-Milesian stater weighed 14.10 grams. Melos was the only island in the Aegean Sea to use this standard.Brain Sparkes, in , p 47 Most coins bore the image of an apple, which is a pun because the ancient Greek word for "apple" (mêlon) sounded similar to the name of the island. The coins also often bore the name of its people: ΜΑΛΙΟΝ (Malion - "of the Melians") or some abbreviation thereof.Brain Sparkes, in , p 230
By the 6th century BC, the Melians had also learned to write, and they used an archaic variant of the ancient Greek script that exhibited Cretan and Theraic influences. It was discarded after the siege of 416 BC.Brain Sparkes, in ΑΒΓΔΕϜΖΗΗΘΙΚΛΜΝΞΟΠϺϘΡΣΤΥΦΧΨΩLaconia(Sparta) – – (φσ) –Attica(Athens) – (χσ) – (φσ) –Melos – (κϻ) – (πh) (κh) (πϻ)
From at least as early as 470 BC and ending with the siege of 416 BC, the Melians exported terracotta reliefs, which were typically used as door or chest ornaments and depicted scenes from mythology.
During the second Persian invasion of Greece in 480 BC, the Melians refused to submit to Persia and contributed two warships to the Greek war effort, which were used at the Battle of Salamis.Herodotus. The Histories, 46-48: "The Seriphians, Siphnians, and Melians also took part, since they were the only islanders who had not given earth and water to the barbarian. [...] All of these came to the war providing triremes, except the Melians and Siphnians and Seriphians, who brought fifty-oared boats. The Melians (who are of Lacedaemonian stock) provided two; the Siphnians and Seriphians, who are Ionians from Athens, one each. The total number of ships, besides the fifty-oared boats, was three hundred and seventy-eight." After the battle, the Melians returned to their traditional isolationism.Brain Sparkes, in , p 49
Siege of 416 BC
During the Peloponnesian War (431–404 BC) between Athens and Sparta, the Melians made some small donations to the Spartan war effort,Geoffrey Ernest Maurice de Ste Croix (1954). "The Character of the Athenian Empire". An essay originally published in Historia 3, republished in : "Epigraphic evidence allows us to go further still: it puts the original Athenian attack on Melos in quite a different light. The inscription found near Sparta [...] records two separate donations by Melos to the Spartan war-funds, one of twenty Aeginetan minae [...] The other figure has perished. The donors are described, it will be noticed, as toi Malioi, 'the Melians'. [...] This shows that the Melian subscription was an official one. [...] there is good reason to think these gifts to Sparta were made in the spring of 427."The evidence is an inscription (IG V 1, 1) which reads: "The Melians gave to the Lacedaimonians twenty mnas of silver." See , p 13 but remained largely neutral despite sharing the Spartans' Dorian ethnicity. In 426 BC, the Athenians raided the Melian countryside, and the following year demanded tribute,Brian Sparkes, in but Melos refused. In the summer of 416 BC, Athens invaded again with 3,400 men, and demanded that Melos ally with them against Sparta, or be destroyed. The Melians rejected this, so the Athenian army laid siege to the city and eventually captured it in the winter. After the city's fall, the Athenians executed all the adult men,Thucydides. History of the Peloponnesian War, 116. The key word in the account by Thucydides is (), which generally describes people who have passed puberty and in this context refers to the men as Thucydides described a different fate for the women and children. Some translators such as Rex Warner translated this as "men of military age". Another possible translation is "men in their prime". Thucydides made no specific mention of what happened to the elderly males. and sold the women and children into slavery. They then settled 500 of their own colonists on the island.Thucydides. History of the Peloponnesian War, 5.84–116
In 405 BC, with Athens losing the war, the Spartan general Lysander expelled the Athenian settlers from Melos and repatriated the survivors of the siege.Xenophon. Hellenica, 2.2.9: "Meantime Lysander, upon reaching Aegina, restored the state to the Aeginetans, gathering together as many of them as he could, and he did the same thing for the Melians also and for all the others who had been deprived of their native states."Plutarch. Life of Lysander, 14.3: "But there were other measures of Lysander upon which all the Greeks looked with pleasure, when, for instance, the Aeginetans, after a long time, received back their own city, and when the Melians and Scionaeans were restored to their homes by him, after the Athenians had been driven out and had delivered back the cities." Sparta annexed Melos, which would mean that like other liberated islands, it received a military governor (a harmost).Brian Sparkes, in : "Melos thus passed from Athenian to Spartan control, and the Melians who returned found a government of ten established, made effective by the presence of a Spartan garrison and of a harmost or military commander." The cultural distinctiveness of Melos faded away as it was absorbed into mainstream Greek culture.Brian Sparkes, in Their coinage switched to the Rhodian standardBrian Sparkes, in , p 231 (tetradrachms weighing 15.3 g) and ceased bearing the word ΜΑΛΙΟΝ. The production of its terracotta reliefs also ceased.
The Hellenistic period In 338 BC, Philip II of Macedon defeated the Greeks at the Battle of Chaeroneia and became the overlord of Greece and the Cyclades. During this time, Melos and the nearby island Kimolos disputed each other over the ownership of the islands of Polyaigos, Heterea, and Libea (the last two are probably today's uninhabited islands of Agios Efstathios and Agios Georgios). In the past, this dispute would have been settled by war, but the two communities took their dispute to Argos on the Greek mainland. The Argives decided the islands belonged to Kimolos.Brain Sparkes, in , p 50
The Roman and Byzantine period In 197 BC, the Romans forced Philip V to withdraw from Greece, and Melos subsequently came under Roman influence.
During the early 9th century CE the Cyclades were harassed by Arab raiders, though how Milos fared at this time is unclear. Milos was mentioned in a Byzantine chrysobull of 1198, which shows it was still important to the Byzantines.
Medieval period