Melos

bay of Melos

Melos, Modern Greek Mílos, island, most southwesterly of the major islands of Greece’s Cyclades (Modern Greek: Kykládes) in the Aegean Sea. The greater portion of the 58.1-square-mile (150.6-square-km) island, of geologically recent volcanic origin, is rugged, culminating in the west in Mount Profítis Ilías (2,464 feet [751 metres]).

Its obsidian exports to Phoenicia helped to make the island an important centre of early Aegean civilization. The bay, 165–330 feet (50–100 metres) deep, is a submerged crater created out of a violent volcanic eruption that left an isthmus approximately 1.5 mile (2.4 km) wide on the south. Melos (Mílos), the capital and chief town, lies just north of the chief port, Adhámas. Southwest of the town are catacombs in which early Christians from the Greek mainland sought refuge. On the ancient acropolis of Adamanda the famous Venus (Aphrodite) of Milo was found in 1820.

The British School at Athens excavated (1896–99) the ancient acropolis of Klima (1000–800 bce) above Melos, uncovering a palace and a gymnasium and a Roman theatre of later date. The most significant civilization uncovered on Melos by the British School, however, was that of Phylakopi, a site near Apollonia, the second port of Melos, on the promontory of Pláka. Phylakopi was a flourishing settlement at the time of the late Bronze Age eruption of neighbouring Thera. Evidence discovered at Phylakopi in 1974 tended to reverse earlier assumptions that the eruption had destroyed the island: no break in continuity was established. The oldest city dates from between 2300 and 2000 bce. On the same site a second city rose (from 2000 to 1550 bce). The third city (1550–1100 bce), dating largely from the Mycenaean Age, represents the fullest flowering of Melos’s Cycladic civilization. Phylakopi was destroyed about 1100 by Dorian settlers.

The Athenian outrage of slaying the entire male population (416 bce) in reprisal for the islanders’ neutrality during the Peloponnesian War inspired the playwright Euripides to write and stage before his fellow Athenians his work Trojan Women, an anti-war play that continues as part of modern dramatic repertories. The historian Thucydides, in his “Melian Dialogue,” preserved the speeches made in negotiations between the Athenians and Melians which preceded the military action. The Spartan soldier-statesman Lysander (died 395 bce) restored the island to its Dorian possessors, but it never recovered its prosperity. Under Frankish rule the island formed part of the duchy of Náxos.

In Classical times Melos’s sulfur, alum, and obsidian mines gave it wide commercial prominence; the Melian earth was used as a pigment by painters. Bentonite, perlite, kaolin, barium, gypsum, millstones, and salt are exported, and oranges, olives, grapes, cotton, and barley are cultivated. The island is no longer famous for the ornamental vases and the goldsmiths’ art produced in the 7th century bce.