Zakynthos

Zakynthos, also called Zante, sits in the Ionian Sea as the third-largest of the Ionian Islands, covering 405.55 square kilometers with a 123-kilometer coastline. According to Greek myth, the island took its name from Zacynthus, the son of the Arcadian chief Dardanus. The Venetians, who ruled from 1484 to 1797, gave it the nickname "Fiore di Levante," or Flower of the East. Today, it draws tourists through an international airport that handles charter flights from northern Europe.

Homer mentioned Zakynthos in both the *Iliad* and the *Odyssey*, saying its first settlers were Zacynthus and his men. Before that, the island was called Hyrie. It was later conquered by King Arkesios of Kefalonia, then by Odysseus of Ithaca. Zakynthos sent ships to the Trojan War, as listed in the Homeric Catalogue of Ships, and in the *Odyssey*, 20 Zakynthian nobles appear among Penelope’s 108 suitors. Pausanias noted that the island’s acropolis was called Psophis because Zacynthus, from Psophis, was its first settler. Stephanus of Byzantium also recorded that the colony was named Zacynthus after him.

During the First Peloponnesian War, around 459–446 BC, the Athenian commander Tolmides formed an alliance with Zakynthos. In 430 BC, the Spartan admiral Cnemus led about 1,000 heavy infantry against the island. They burned much of the countryside, but the city refused to surrender, and the attack failed. Zakynthians later fought as autonomous Athenian allies in the disastrous Sicilian expedition. After the Peloponnesian War, the island fell under Spartan control. In 374 BC, the Athenian commander Timotheus landed Zakynthian exiles on the island and helped them build a fortified post. These exiles opposed Sparta, so the ruling Zakynthians asked Sparta for help, which sent 25 ships.

The alliance with Athens gave the Athenians a valuable source of tar, which protected ship planking better than pine pitch. The Athenian trireme fleet needed protection from rot, decay, and shipworms. Workers dredged tar from the bottom of a lake—now called Lake Keri—using leafy myrtle branches tied to poles. They collected it in pots, carried it to the beach, and swabbed it onto hulls, or shipped it to the Athenian naval yard at Piraeus. Besides tar and miltos, Athens imported timber for shipbuilding from various regions, since Greece’s forests were limited.

In the early 3rd century BC, Philip V of Macedon seized Zakynthos while it was part of the Aetolian League. In 211 BC, the Roman praetor Marcus Valerius Laevinus took the city but not the citadel, and later returned it to Philip V. The Roman general Marcus Fulvius Nobilior finally conquered the island for Rome in 191 BC. During the Mithridatic War, Archelaus, a general of Mithridates, attacked but was repulsed.

In 459 AD, the Vandals under Geiseric plundered the island and carried off 500 local aristocrats. Zakynthos seems to have escaped the Slavic invasions of the 6th–7th centuries, as no Slavic names survive there. During the middle Byzantine period (7th–12th centuries), it belonged to the Theme of Cephallenia, and its bishopric was a suffragan of Cephallenia, later of the Metropolis of Corinth. In 880, the Aghlabids raided the island but were defeated by the Byzantine navy under Nasar. The Pisans plundered it in 1099, and Margaritus of Brindisi captured it in 1185, after which it became part of the County Palatine of Cephalonia and Zakynthos. A Latin bishopric was established alongside the Orthodox one.

By 1460, under Mehmed II, the Ottoman Turks controlled most of the Peloponnese except for the Venetian-held towns of Argos, Nafplio, Monemvassia, Methoni, and Koroni. After the Hexamilion defense collapsed, Leonardo III Tocco agreed with Venice to accept 10,000 refugees—Greeks, Arvanites, and some Venetian officials—as his realm grew vulnerable to Ottoman attacks. The Ottoman Empire captured Zakynthos in 1478, but Venice conquered it in 1482. It remained Venetian, part of the Venetian Ionian Islands, until Venice fell in 1797. Then it passed to French rule, became part of the autonomous Septinsular Republic in 1800, returned to the French in 1807, and was seized by the British in 1809. It formed part of the United States of the Ionian Islands until the islands united with Greece in 1864.

During the Axis occupation of Greece in World War II, Mayor Loukas Karrer and Bishop Chrysostomos Dimitriou took action.