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Blue -White at Paros island.

Paros (Greek: Πάρος) is an island of Greece in the central Aegean Sea. One of the Cyclades island group, it lies to the west of Naxos, with which it is separated by a channel about 8 km (5 mi) wide. It lies approximately 100 nmi (185 km) south-east of Piraeus.
Today, Paros is one of the most popular European tourist hotspots.
The Municipality of Paros includes numerous uninhabited offshore islets totaling 196.308 km² of land. Its nearest neighbor is the Community of Antiparos, lying to its southwest.

Paros also became known for its fine white marble which gave rise to the term Parian which is used for China and fine marbles worldwide. The island has also been called Venetian: Paro.

The story that Paros was colonized by one Paros of Parrhasia, who brought with him a colony of Arcadians to the island[ is one of those etymological fictions which abound in Greek legend. Ancient names of the island are said to have been Plateia (or Pactia), Demetrias, Strongyli (meaning round due to the round shape of the island), Hyria, Hyleessa, Minoa and Cabarnis.


The Venus de Milo, a sculpture executed in Parian marble c. 100 BC, Musee du Louvre, Paris
Windmill in Parikía. The traditional Cyclades designFrom Athens the island later received a colony of Ionians under whom it attained a high degree of prosperity. It sent out colonies to Thasos and Parium on the Hellespont. In the former colony, which was planted in the 15th or 18th Olympiad, the poet Archilochus, native of Paros, is said to have taken part. As late as 385 BC the Parians, in conjunction with Dionysius of Syracuse, founded a colony on the Illyrian island of Pharos (Hvar).

Shortly before the Persian War Paros seems to have been a dependency of Naxos. In the first Greco-Persian War (490 B.C.), Paros sided with the Persians and sent a trireme to Marathon to support them. In retaliation, the capital Paros was besieged by an Athenian fleet under Miltiades, who demanded a fine of 100 talents. But the town offered a vigorous resistance, and the Athenians were obliged to sail away after a siege of 26 days, during which they had laid the island waste. It was at a temple of Demeter Thesmophoros in Paros that Miltiades received the wound of which he afterwards died.

By means of an inscription Ross was enabled to identify the site of the temple; it lies, as Herodotus suggests, on a low hill beyond the boundaries of the town.

Paros also sided with shahanshah Xerxes I of Persia against Greece in the second Greco-Persian War (480 - 479 B.C.), but after the battle of Artemisium the Parian contingent remained inactive at Kythnos watching the progress of events. For their support of the Persians, the islanders were later punished by the Athenian war leader Themistocles, who exacted a heavy fine.

Under the Delian League, the Athenian-dominated naval confederacy (477 - 404 B.C.), Paros paid the highest tribute of all the island members: 30 talents annually, according to the estimate of Olympiodorus (429 B.C.).[12] This implies that Paros was then one of the wealthiest islands in the Aegean. Little is known of the constitution of Paros, but inscriptions seem to show that it was modeled on Athenian democracy, with a boule (senate) at the head of affairs.[13] In 410 BC the Athenian general Theramenes found an oligarchy governing Paros; he deposed it and restored the democracy.[14] Paros was included in the second Athenian confederacy (the Second Athenian Empire 378 - 355 B.C.). In c.357 B.C., along with Chios, it severed its connection with Athens.

From the inscription of Adule we learn that the Cyclades, presumably including Paros, were subject to the Ptolemies, the Hellenistic dynasty that ruled Egypt (305 - 30 B.C.). Paros then became part of the Roman Empire and later of its Greek-speaking successor state, the Byzantine Empire.