Chios in 218 B.C.

Chios — Spring 218 BC · The Proud Free Island.

A great island of the eastern Aegean, lying off the Erythraean peninsula of Ionia — one of the wealthiest and proudest of the island states, a free maritime republic with a strong fleet. Chios is renowned for three things above all. The first is its wine, the Ariousian, from the north-west of the island, reckoned the finest in all Greece. The second is its mastic, the fragrant resin of the lentisk that grows only in the dry south of the island and nowhere else in such quality. The third is its claim to be the birthplace of Homer, home of the Homeridae, the guild of rhapsodes who preserved and recited the poet’s verses. Chios is remembered too as the first Greek state to buy barbarian slaves on a great scale.

Of all the islands of Ionia none is prouder or richer than Chios. It is a free state, ruled by its own council and assembly, and it keeps a fleet strong enough to make its friendship worth courting and its enmity worth avoiding. Its hills in the north-west yield the Ariousian, the most prized wine of the Greek world; its dry south yields mastic, the sweet-smelling gum of the lentisk that grows to such perfection nowhere else, gathered drop by drop and sold for its weight. And over all hangs the glory of Homer, whom the Chians claim as their own son: the Homeridae, the rhapsodes who guard and chant his verse, keep his memory alive on the island. In 218 BC Chios stands free between the great powers, living by its ships, its vines and its name.