Naxos in 218 B.C.

Naxos — Spring 218 BC · The Green Island of Dionysus.

The largest and most fertile of the Cyclades — the green island of Dionysus. Here, on the shore where Theseus abandoned her in her sleep, the god found Ariadne and made her his bride, and ever since Naxos has belonged to him. It is a prosperous farming island, rich above its neighbours in vines and famed for its wine; in its mountains lie quarries of fine white marble and of the hard emery-stone, the abrasive with which sculptors grind their work. In the hills above the quarries colossal unfinished kouroi lie half-cut from the living rock, and on the islet guarding the harbour of the city stands the great marble gate of a temple never completed. An island of vineyards and quarrymen, prosperous and self-governing among the free poleis of the islands.

Naxos is the great island of the central Aegean — half as large again as Paros, the Romans’ writers reckon, and the most fruitful of all the circle of the Cyclades. Where its neighbours are dry and thin-soiled, Naxos has well-watered valleys, broad fields and famous vineyards; men called it the Lesser Sicily for its plenty. In this age of Delian Independence it is a free polis, governing its own affairs while the fleets of Egypt, Macedon and Rhodes watch the islanders’ sea. Its wealth is the land and the rock: the wine of Dionysus, the white marble that goes out to build temples across the Aegean, and the precious emery quarried nowhere better than here. Its sanctuaries of Demeter at Gyroulas and of the gods at Hyria crown a countryside of farmers and stone-cutters.