Paros in 218 B.C.

Paros — Spring 218 BC · The Isle of the White Marble.

The island of the celebrated Parian marble — the pure, translucent white stone, the lychnites, prized by sculptors above every other in the world — and the homeland of Archilochus, the great early poet of biting iambics, honoured here in his shrine the Archilocheion. A wealthy island of quarrymen and seafarers, second in the central Cyclades only to its neighbour Naxos, and the mother-city of the rich colony of Thasos in the northern sea. Its city looks out upon the strait, its quarries are cut deep into the white mountain, and the cult of Apollo at the Delion crowns the height above the harbour. A free, self-governing polis among the islands in the age of Delian Independence.

Of all the marbles of the Greek world none is set above the Parian. From the deep galleries cut into the white mountain of this island comes the lychnites — so named because it is hewn by lamplight in the dark of the shaft — a stone of pure, fine, faintly translucent white that takes the chisel and the polish as no other will. The sculptors of every city send for it, and the seafaring Parians grow rich carrying it out across the Aegean. In this age of Delian Independence Paros is a free polis, ruling itself among the islands while the great fleets watch the sea; it remembers proudly that its own colonists founded Thasos, and honours above all its men the poet Archilochus, whose iambics still sting. The Delion of Apollo stands above the town, and the country shrines reach out even to the islet of Despotiko across the water at Mandra.