Naxos (Ionian Greek) city-state of

The end of the Dark Ages is traditionally dated to 776 BCE, the year of the first Olympic Games.

The Iliad and the Odyssey, the foundational texts of Western literature, are believed to have been composed by Homer in the seventh or eighth centuries BCE.

With the end of the Dark Ages, there emerge various kingdoms and city-states across the Greek peninsula, which spread to the shores of the Black Sea, Southern Italy ("Magna Graecia") and Asia Minor.

These states and their colonies reach great levels of prosperity that result in an unprecedented cultural boom, that of classical Greece, expressed in architecture, drama, science, mathematics and philosophy.

Chalcidians under Theocles (or Thucles) establish Naxos, the earliest Greek colony in Sicily, on the east coast, south of Tauromenium (modern Taormina), just north of the mouth of the Alcantara River, on what is now Cape Schisò, in about 734 BCE.

Although there are already native Sicels at Tauromenium, they cannot have offered much opposition.

The adoption of the name of Naxos, after the island in the Aegean Sea, may show that there are Naxians among its founders.

Archilochus, the first writer to use iambic meter, writes invective so sharp as to drive its targets to (reputedly) commit suicide.

His keen observations of nature, society, love, and war inform his poetry with a strong sense of individuality previously absent from Western writings.

Having remained a mercenary, Archilochus later returned to Paros and joined the fight against the neighboring island of Naxos, dying in about 645.

A Naxian warrior named Calondas wins notoriety as the man that killed him, though it had been a fair fight.

The Naxian's fate interested later authors such as Plutarch and Dio Chrysostom, since he was punished by exclusion from the temple of Apollo at Delphi, where he had gone to consult the oracle, the god banishing him with the memorable words: "You killed the servant of the Muses; depart from the temple."

Cleisthenes in 508 BCE institutes the world's first democratic system of government in Athens.

By 500 BCE, the Persian Empire controls the Greek city states in Asia Minor and Macedonia.

Attempts by some of the Greek city-states of Asia Minor to overthrow Persian rule fail, and Persia invades the states of mainland Greece in 492 BCE, but is forced to withdraw after a defeat at the Battle of Marathon in 490 BCE.

A second invasion by the Persians follows in 480 BCE.

Following decisive Greek victories in 480 and 479 BCE at Salamis, Plataea, and Mycale, the Persians are forced to withdraw for a second time, marking their eventual withdrawal from all of their European territories.

Led by Athens and Sparta, the Greek victories in the Greco-Persian Wars are considered a pivotal moment in world history, as the fifty years of peace that follow  are known as the Golden Age of Athens, the seminal period of ancient Greek development that lays many of the foundations of Western civilization.

Sparta, whose stated policy is to oppose and overthrow the tyrannies, draws on its enhanced prestige and popularity in the Peloponnese to take its antipathy to tyranny a stage further.

A papyrus fragment of what looks like a lost history supports Plutarch's statement that Sparta systematically deposed tyrants elsewhere in Greece: the tyrannies in Sicyon, Naxos, and perhaps even the Cypselid at Corinth (though this may be a confusion for a similarly named community called Cerinthus on Euboea).

The most famous deposition is Sparta's forcible ending of the tyranny at Athens.

Perhaps there is genuine ideological dislike of tyranny; or, Sparta may have been worried about the ambitions of Argos, with which certain tyrants, like the Athenian, had close connections.

Or it may have long-sightedly detected sympathy on the part of certain tyrants toward the growing power of Persia: it is true that Sparta made some kind of diplomatic arrangement with the threatened Lydian power of the Anatolian ruler Croesus not long before his defeat by Persia in 546.

If suspicion of Persia is behind the deposition of the tyrants, Sparta is inconsistent in carrying out its anti-Persian policy; it does not help Croesus in his final showdown with Persia.

Peisistratos has lived in exile in northern Greece for several years, laying a solid base for his return, exploiting the silver and gold mines of Mount Pangaeum and gaining the support of conservatives in Thebes, Argos, Naxos, and elsewhere.

He goes in 546 to Eretria on the island of Euboea, with the force provided by his own funds and by his friends, and from this base, …

…Peisistratos invades Attica.

At Pallene, near Mount Hymettus, he launches a surprise attack on the Athenian army in the heat of midday, while his enemies are gambling or sleeping.

After a complete victory, Peisistratus becomes master of Athens for the third time.

Peisistratos maintains a mercenary bodyguard, composed in part of Scythian archers; possibly, he disarms the citizens; and he certainly places hostages from major families in safekeeping on the island of Naxos.

Yet, he preserves the constitutional forms of government and makes them operate more efficiently.

Some aristocrats cooperate and are permitted to hold the yearly post of archon; others go into exile.

Megacles and his Alcemeonid clan are once more banished; and, though he and, after him, his son Cleisthenes will continue to plot against Peisistratus, they will not succeed during the tyrant's lifetime.

The Athenians have begun to take over the lucrative vase-painting market dominated, until now, by the Etruscans.

Exekias, a Greek vase-painter and potter, works between approximately 550 BCE - 525 BCE at Athens.

Most of his vases, however, are exported to other regions of the Mediterranean, such as Etruria, while some of his other works remained in Athens.

Exekias works mainly with a technique called black-figure.

This technique involves figures and ornaments painted in black silhouette (using clay slip) with details added by linear incisions and the occasional use of red and white paint before firing.

Exekias is considered the most original and most detail-orientated painter and potter using the black-figure technique.

The vase-painter Andokides is thought to be a student of his.

Exekias of Athens paints elegant and sometimes somber scenes on vases and terra cotta plaques.

One of Exekias’ outstanding works, produced between 550 and 540, is an amphora that shows Achilles and Ajax playing at checkers.

Náxos exports a white, deep-grained marble for statuary, contributing much to the island's prosperity in the seventh and sixth centuries BCE.

During the sixth century BCE, the tyrant Lygdamis rules Náxos in alliance with the Athenian tyrant Peisistratus, who had aided Lygdamis' rise to power.

Lygdamis contributes a force of mercenaries to aid his ally Polycrates, the powerful tyrant of Samos, in his campaigns against Miletus and Mytilene.

The Samian landed oligarchy has been overturned by the tyrant Polycrates, who with his two brothers Pantagnotus and Syloson had seized control of the city of Samos in 538 BCE during a celebration of a festival of Hera outside the city walls.

At first sharing his power with his siblings, he soon had Pantagnotus killed and exiled Syloson to assume sole control, establishing a despotism.

He allies with Amasis II, pharaoh of Egypt, as well as the tyrant of Naxos, Lygdamis.

With a navy of one hundred penteconters and an army of one thousand archers, he plunders the islands of the Aegean Sea and the cities on the Ionian coast of Asia Minor, defeating and enslaving the navies of Lesbos and Miletus.

He also conquers the small island of Rhenea, which he chains to nearby Delos as a dedication to Apollo.

He has a reputation as both a fierce warrior and an enlightened tyrant.

On Samos he builds an aqueduct, a large temple of Hera (the Heraion, to which Amasis dedicates many gifts), and a palace that will later be rebuilt by the Roman emperor Caligula.

The aqueduct, constructed by the Greek engineer Eupalinus in 530 and modeled after Sennacherib’s aqueduct at Ninevah, runs partially underground through a one mile-long (one point six-kilometer) tunnel more than eight feet (two meters) in diameter.

It is the second known tunnel in history to be excavated from both ends and the first with a methodical approach in doing so.

Being also the longest tunnel of its time, the Tunnel of Eupalinos is regarded as a major feat of ancient engineering.

Eupalinos is supposed to be the first hydraulic engineer in history whose name has been passed down.

Apart from that, though, nothing more is known about him.

Pythagoras, the son of Mnesarchus, a gem-engraver or a merchant, attempts to explain all aspects of the universe in terms of counting numbers, which he frequently represents by sets of objects arranged in geometric shapes.

He is said to have undertaken extensive travels for the purpose of collecting all available knowledge, and especially to learn information concerning the secret or mystic cults of the gods.

Many mathematical and scientific discoveries are attributed to Pythagoras, including his famous theorem, as well as discoveries in the field of music, astronomy, and medicine, but it is the religious element which makes the profoundest impression upon his contemporaries.

Pythagoras, at about age forty around 530 BCE, moves after his travels to Croton, in Italy (Magna Graecia).

Possibly, the tyranny of Polycrates has made it difficult for him to achieve his schemes in Samos.

Lygdamis of Naxos has an ambitious building program and in 530 BCE had begun work on a huge Temple of Apollo which is never to be completed.

Lygdamis' rule over Naxos ends in 524 when he is overthrown by the intervention of a Spartan army.

The Portara, the lintel of the unfinished temple, stands today as one of the chief landmarks of Naxos, which continues to prosper in the years immediately after Lygdamis' rule under a new oligarchy.