Tílos (; ) is a small
Greek
Greek may refer to:
Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe:
*Greeks, an ethnic group
*Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family
**Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor of all kno ...
island and
municipality
A municipality is usually a single administrative division having municipal corporation, corporate status and powers of self-government or jurisdiction as granted by national and regional laws to which it is subordinate.
The term ''municipality' ...
located in the
Aegean Sea
The Aegean Sea is an elongated embayment of the Mediterranean Sea between Europe and Asia. It is located between the Balkans and Anatolia, and covers an area of some . In the north, the Aegean is connected to the Marmara Sea, which in turn con ...
. It is part of the
Dodecanese
The Dodecanese (, ; , ''Dodekánisa'' , ) are a group of 15 larger and 150 smaller Greek islands in the southeastern Aegean Sea and Eastern Mediterranean, off the coast of Anatolia, of which 26 are inhabited. This island group generally define ...
group of islands, and lies midway between
Kos and
Rhodes
Rhodes (; ) is the largest of the Dodecanese islands of Greece and is their historical capital; it is the List of islands in the Mediterranean#By area, ninth largest island in the Mediterranean Sea. Administratively, the island forms a separ ...
. In 2021, the island had a population of 746 people.
[ Along with the uninhabited offshore islets of Antitilos and Gaidaros, it forms the Municipality of Tilos, which has a total land area of .] Tilos is part of the Rhodes regional unit.
Popularly, Telos was the son of Helios
In ancient Greek religion and Greek mythology, mythology, Helios (; ; Homeric Greek: ) is the god who personification, personifies the Sun. His name is also Latinized as Helius, and he is often given the epithets Hyperion ("the one above") an ...
and Halia, the sister of the Telchines
In Greek mythology, the Telchines () were the original inhabitants of the island of Rhodes and were known in Crete and Cyprus.
Family
Their parents were either Pontus (mythology), Pontus and Gaia (mythology), Gaia or Tartarus and Nemesis (mytholog ...
. He came to the island in search of herbs to heal his ill mother, and later returned to found a temple to Apollo
Apollo is one of the Twelve Olympians, Olympian deities in Ancient Greek religion, ancient Greek and Ancient Roman religion, Roman religion and Greek mythology, Greek and Roman mythology. Apollo has been recognized as a god of archery, mu ...
and Neptune
Neptune is the eighth and farthest known planet from the Sun. It is the List of Solar System objects by size, fourth-largest planet in the Solar System by diameter, the third-most-massive planet, and the densest giant planet. It is 17 t ...
. However, Telos (Telo or Tilo) does not appear in Greek mythology
Greek mythology is the body of myths originally told by the Ancient Greece, ancient Greeks, and a genre of ancient Greek folklore, today absorbed alongside Roman mythology into the broader designation of classical mythology. These stories conc ...
and the name probably has an unknown pre-Hellenic origin. Pliny the Elder
Gaius Plinius Secundus (AD 23/24 79), known in English as Pliny the Elder ( ), was a Roman Empire, Roman author, Natural history, naturalist, and naval and army commander of the early Roman Empire, and a friend of the Roman emperor, emperor Vesp ...
notes that in antiquity Telos was known as Agathussa (Αγαθούσσα) (also Agathusa and Agathousa). In the Middle Ages
In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the 5th to the late 15th centuries, similarly to the post-classical period of global history. It began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire and ...
, it was known by the Italian as ''Episcopio'', either because it was a Bishop Seat or because its position as Vantage Point.[Bertarelli, p. 135] The island has also been called in Turkish ''İlyaki'' and in modern Italian ''Piscopi''.[
]
History
During the Late Pleistocene
The Late Pleistocene is an unofficial Age (geology), age in the international geologic timescale in chronostratigraphy, also known as the Upper Pleistocene from a Stratigraphy, stratigraphic perspective. It is intended to be the fourth division ...
, suggested to be from about 45,000 years ago, the island was inhabited by a dwarf elephant
Dwarf elephants are prehistoric members of the order Proboscidea which, through the process of allopatric speciation on islands, evolved much smaller body sizes (around shoulder height) in comparison with their immediate ancestors. Dwarf elephant ...
species, '' Palaeoloxodon tiliensis'', whose remains have been found in the Charkadio cave, near the centre of the island. Based on preliminary radiocarbon dating, some authors have suggested that the elephants survived until around 1500 BC on the island, which would make them the latest elephants to have lived in Europe; however, other authors consider this unconfirmed.
Humans have been present on the island since at least the Final Neolithic around the 4th millennium BC
File:4th millennium BC montage.jpg, 400x400px, From top left clockwise: The Temple of Ġgantija, one of the oldest freestanding structures in the world; Warka Vase; Bronocice pot with one of the earliest known depictions of a wheeled vehicle; Kish ...
, based on evidence found at Charkadio cave and elsewhere on the island.
Iron Age
*In the 7th century BC, colonists from Tilos and Lindos settled in Sicily
Sicily (Italian language, Italian and ), officially the Sicilian Region (), is an island in the central Mediterranean Sea, south of the Italian Peninsula in continental Europe and is one of the 20 regions of Italy, regions of Italy. With 4. ...
and founded the city of Gelas.
Classical antiquity
*The island flourished during the classical era, minting its own coin
A coin is a small object, usually round and flat, used primarily as a medium of exchange or legal tender. They are standardized in weight, and produced in large quantities at a mint in order to facilitate trade. They are most often issued by ...
age and being famed for clothing
Clothing (also known as clothes, garments, dress, apparel, or attire) is any item worn on a human human body, body. Typically, clothing is made of fabrics or textiles, but over time it has included garments made from animal skin and other thin s ...
and perfumes
Perfume (, ) is a mixture of fragrance, fragrant essential oils or aroma compounds (fragrances), Fixative (perfumery), fixatives and solvents, usually in liquid form, used to give the human body, animals, food, objects, and living-spaces an agre ...
.
*Telos claims that poet Erinna (said to be Sappho
Sappho (; ''Sapphṓ'' ; Aeolic Greek ''Psápphō''; ) was an Ancient Greek poet from Eresos or Mytilene on the island of Lesbos. Sappho is known for her lyric poetry, written to be sung while accompanied by music. In ancient times, Sapph ...
's equal) was born on the island around 350 BC. Charles Anthon (1853) describes her thus: ''"Erinna (Ήριννα) friend & contemporary of Sappho (about 612 BC) died at 19, left behind her poems which were thought worthy to rank with those of Homer. Her poems were of the epic class; the chief of them was entitled Ήλακάτη, " The Distaff" it consisted of three hundred lines, of which only four are extant. It was written in a dialect which was a mixture of the Doric and Aeolic, and which was spoken at Rhodes, where, or in the adjacent island of Telos, Erinna was born. She is also called a Lesbian and a Mytilenean, on account of her residence in Lesbos with Sappho. There are several epigrams upon Erinna, in which her praise is celebrated, and her untimely death is lamented. Three epigrams in the Greek Anthology are ascribed to her, of which the first has the genuine air of antiquity, but the other two, addressed to Baucis, seem to be a later fabrication."''
* Herodotus
Herodotus (; BC) was a Greek historian and geographer from the Greek city of Halicarnassus (now Bodrum, Turkey), under Persian control in the 5th century BC, and a later citizen of Thurii in modern Calabria, Italy. He wrote the '' Histori ...
(484 BC – c. 425 BC) described the centuries preceding him as the golden age of Tilos.
*In the 5th century BC, Tilos was a member of the First Delian League
The Delian League was a confederacy of Polis, Greek city-states, numbering between 150 and 330, founded in 478 BC under the leadership (hegemony) of Classical Athens, Athens, whose purpose was to continue fighting the Achaemenid Empire, Persian ...
and kept its independence until the end of the Peloponnesian War
The Second Peloponnesian War (431–404 BC), often called simply the Peloponnesian War (), was an Ancient Greece, ancient Greek war fought between Classical Athens, Athens and Sparta and their respective allies for the hegemony of the Ancien ...
.
*From the turn of the 4th century BC, for the next 200 years, Tilos was subject to the Seleucid Empire
The Seleucid Empire ( ) was a Greek state in West Asia during the Hellenistic period. It was founded in 312 BC by the Macedonian general Seleucus I Nicator, following the division of the Macedonian Empire founded by Alexander the Great ...
, Caria
Caria (; from Greek language, Greek: Καρία, ''Karia''; ) was a region of western Anatolia extending along the coast from mid-Ionia (Mycale) south to Lycia and east to Phrygia. The Carians were described by Herodotus as being Anatolian main ...
and then Ptolemaic Egypt Ptolemaic is the adjective formed from the name Ptolemy, and may refer to:
Pertaining to the Ptolemaic dynasty
* Ptolemaic dynasty, the Macedonian Greek dynasty that ruled Egypt founded in 305 BC by Ptolemy I Soter
*Ptolemaic Kingdom
Pertaining ...
under the influence of Rhodes, until in 200 BC, the island was incorporated into the Rhodian confederacy.
Roman period
*The island was conquered by the Romans in 42 BC. Archaeological finds from Roman and early-Christian times demonstrate the prosperity of the island until the 551 Beirut earthquake.
Byzantine
Tilos followed Rhodes into the Byzantine Empire
The Byzantine Empire, also known as the Eastern Roman Empire, was the continuation of the Roman Empire centred on Constantinople during late antiquity and the Middle Ages. Having survived History of the Roman Empire, the events that caused the ...
, following the death of Theodosius I
Theodosius I ( ; 11 January 347 – 17 January 395), also known as Theodosius the Great, was Roman emperor from 379 to 395. He won two civil wars and was instrumental in establishing the Nicene Creed as the orthodox doctrine for Nicene C ...
, and was a member of the naval Theme of Samos between the 9th and 14th century.
Crusaders
The Knights of Saint John took control of Tilos from 1309, restoring the Byzantine castles, and building new ones in order to defend against pirate raids. It was evacuated in 1470 as the Ottomans began the Siege of Rhodes and control passed to Suleiman I in 1522 when Rhodes fell.
Ottoman
In 1523, Tilos was conquered by the Ottoman Empire
The Ottoman Empire (), also called the Turkish Empire, was an empire, imperial realm that controlled much of Southeast Europe, West Asia, and North Africa from the 14th to early 20th centuries; it also controlled parts of southeastern Centr ...
and the island was put under the privileged administrative and tax system known as " maktou." Christian pirates pillaged the island constantly.
19th-century antiquarian research
Despite its relative significance in Classical times, the island has left little in the way of its earlier material culture other than elements of its architectural remains and finds of its coinage, featuring the characteristic crab on the reverse. Openly accessible on the maritime route along the western Asia Minor littoral, the island must for centuries have seen its cemeteries, as well as its domestic, civic, and religious sites looted. Serious antiquarian research began in the second half of the 19th century, coinciding with both the Turkish and Greek authorities becoming more aware of the need to restrict unlicensed excavations, although in remoter regions this was difficult, if not impossible. The British Museum
The British Museum is a Museum, public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. Its permanent collection of eight million works is the largest in the world. It documents the story of human cu ...
has a small number of acquisitions from the island, notably from the collections of Charles Newton and Thomas Spratt. The first antiquarian visit of note was that made by Ludwig Ross
Ludwig Ross (22 July 1806 – 6 August 1859) was a German Classical archaeology, classical archaeologist. He is chiefly remembered for the rediscovery and reconstruction of the Temple of Athena Nike in 1835–1836, and for his other excavati ...
in May 1844 when he spent a few days visiting sites, including the acropolis. Remarkably, the next dedicated investigations were not to occur for some 40 years, when, in late February 1885, the English explorers Theodore and Mabel Bent excavated various graves, but removed nothing of significance. Their base was the small monastery below Megálo Chorió, serendipitously a few metres from the site of the island's new archaeological museum. Undoubtedly, to date the island's most celebrated archaeological find is the Attic red-figured bell-krater (390–360BC) attributed to the ' Telos Painter', which is now in the British Museum. The vessel was bequeathed to the museum in 1824 by Richard Payne Knight, who specified its provenance as 'Telos'. Based on this, John Beazley classified a group of stylistically similar, beautifully decorated vessels under this name, and several other examples are kept in museums around the world.
As for the early 20th century, in the summer of 1906 the island was visited by the British academics R.M. Dawkins and A.J.B. Wace during a wider tour of the region. They published their observations “in the hope that they may be of some service to other travellers”, and their article includes a bibliography and five rare photographs. The Symian antiquarians Michael and Niketas Chaviaras were active in the region around the same time and the Symi
Symi, also transliterated as Syme or Simi (), is a Greece, Greek island and Communities and Municipalities of Greece, municipality. It is mountainous and has the harbour town of Symi and its adjacent upper town Ano Symi, as well as several smaller ...
museum contains many of their finds. In 1920, Niketas Chaviaras found 23 inscriptions on Tilos.
20th Century
Ottoman rule lasted until May 12, 1912, when Italian sailors
A sailor, seaman, mariner, or seafarer is a person who works aboard a watercraft as part of its crew, and may work in any one of a number of different fields that are related to the operation and maintenance of a ship. While the term ''sailor'' ...
landed in the bay of Eristos during the Italo-Turkish War
The Italo-Turkish (, "Tripolitanian War", , "War of Libya"), also known as the Turco-Italian War, was fought between the Kingdom of Italy and the Ottoman Empire from 29 September 1911 to 18 October 1912. As a result of this conflict, Italy captur ...
. Tilos then became part the Italian possession of the Isole Italiane dell'Egeo
The Italian Islands of the Aegean (; ; ) were an archipelago of fourteen islands (the Dodecanese, except Kastellorizo) in the southeastern Aegean Sea, that—together with the surrounding islets—were ruled by the Kingdom of Italy from 1912 to ...
.[ After the Italian Armistice of September 8, 1943, Tilos was occupied by German troops, and in 1948 it joined ]Greece
Greece, officially the Hellenic Republic, is a country in Southeast Europe. Located on the southern tip of the Balkan peninsula, it shares land borders with Albania to the northwest, North Macedonia and Bulgaria to the north, and Turkey to th ...
together with all the Dodecanese islands. Since 1948, the population of the island has declined rapidly, as many Tilians migrated to the United States
The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 U.S. state, states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 ...
or Australia
Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country comprising mainland Australia, the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania and list of islands of Australia, numerous smaller isl ...
.
In June 2008, Anastassios Aliferis, the Socialist mayor of the island performed the first same-sex marriage
Same-sex marriage, also known as gay marriage, is the marriage of two people of the same legal Legal sex and gender, sex. marriage between same-sex couples is legally performed and recognized in 38 countries, with a total population of 1.5 ...
s in Greece, citing a legal loophole and defying claims of illegality by a Greek prosecutor.
In late 2018 Tilos will become the first island in the Mediterranean to run exclusively on wind and solar power.
Geography
Tílos has an inverted 'S' shape, is about long, north-west to south-east, with a maximum width of and an area of about . The island has a mountainous limestone
Limestone is a type of carbonate rock, carbonate sedimentary rock which is the main source of the material Lime (material), lime. It is composed mostly of the minerals calcite and aragonite, which are different Polymorphism (materials science) ...
interior, volcanic lowlands, pumice
Pumice (), called pumicite in its powdered or dust form, is a volcanic rock that consists of extremely vesicular rough-textured volcanic glass, which may or may not contain crystals. It is typically light-colored. Scoria is another vesicula ...
beds and red lava sand, like its north western neighbour Nisyros. It is well supplied by springs, and is potentially very fertile and productive. Its coasts are generally rocky or pebbled, but there are also a number of sandy beaches.
Climate
Tilos has a mediterranean climate
A Mediterranean climate ( ), also called a dry summer climate, described by Köppen and Trewartha as ''Cs'', is a temperate climate type that occurs in the lower mid-latitudes (normally 30 to 44 north and south latitude). Such climates typic ...
, typical for the region.
Landmarks
At the north-west end of the island, the Monastery of Áyios Pandeleímon, (also the island's patron saint), sits on the slopes of Mount Profítis Ilías (654 m). The monastery features fresh cold water springs as well as an enormous loquat tree (called Musmulla in Greek). The mountain borders a fertile plain running across the island's width, with the settlements of Áyios Andónis to the north and Éristos to the south. To the north-east of the plain is the island's capital, Megálo Chorió, built in the early 19th century at the foot of the ancient city of Telos. The archaic ruins stretch up to the site of the acropolis of the ancient city, dedicated to Pythios Apollo and Poliada Athina, and the Venetian Kástro, built over it. Charkadio Cave is around two kilometres south of the village of Megalo Chorio
Above the cave stand the ruins of the medieval Fortress of Mesariá. At southern end of the island, bordered by more fertile meadows, is Livádhia, the major harbour and economic centre of the island. The island's old capital, Mikró Chorió, first settled in the 15th century by the Knights of the Order of St John, overlooks the bay. It has been completely abandoned since 1960, its inhabitants having moved down to the harbour in the 1930s. A number of other settlements such as Lethrá, Gherá, and Panó Méri have similarly been abandoned. Mount Áyios Nikoláos (367 m) stands to the south of the bay.
Castles
Kástros (castles) have protected the island's inhabitants from pirate
Piracy is an act of robbery or criminal violence by ship or boat-borne attackers upon another ship or a coastal area, typically with the goal of stealing cargo and valuable goods, or taking hostages. Those who conduct acts of piracy are call ...
raids since the Dark Ages.
*Megálo Chorió
*Mesariá
*Mikró Chorió
*Agrosikiá
*Stavroú Lámbrou
Power grid
Tilos has an undersea cable connecting it to Kos via Nisiros. This struggled to cope with the large summer population, and frequently failed. This has been reinforced with solar power, wind turbines and a battery farm, making Tilos self-sufficient with fully renewable electricity.
Notes
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References
External links
Official website
Tilos Park
{{Authority control
Municipalities of the South Aegean
Populated places in Rhodes (regional unit)
Islands of Greece
Ports and harbours of Greece
Dodecanese
Landforms of Rhodes (regional unit)
Islands of the South Aegean
Members of the Delian League
Greek city-states
Populated places in the ancient Aegean islands