Cyclades Islands,The Kyklades
The Kyklades
The best impression of the Kyklades as a whole would probably be from an aircraft on its way from Athens to Rhodes, but it is hard to better the view from the top of Mount Kynthos on Delos, ringed as it is by this constellation of inviting yet mysterious grey-brown humps rising out of the blue Aegean. The word Kyklades comes from the Greek kyklos, meaning a ring or circle, and in classical times Delos - the birthplace of Apollo - was regarded as the nucleus of the ring. Geographically this is not far out, though if you follow the chain of islands from Andros in the north to Santorin far away to the south it looks more like an oval than a true circle, and Syros (the modern administrative capital) lies closer to its centre line.
Except for Andros, which is more an extension of its northern neighbour Euboea, and Santorin, which is an exotic geological freak, these islands have much in common physically. There are no big pine forests and very few deciduous trees; the land is mostly dry and barren, and they seem bare to the natural elements which surround them - the wind and the sea. These are what have shaped their character and contribute to their charm. The air above is exhilarat-ingly fresh, the sea around transparently clear.
The history of the Kyklades has had a common pattern. Today there arc few remains of centuries under Cretan, Mycenaean, Athe¬nian, Macedonian and Roman supremacy. Nor has the long period of Byzantine rule left many traces except in a few monasteries like the Panachrantou on Andros, the Kechrovouniou on Tinos, the Cho~ zoviotissa on Amorgos and the Taxiarchon on Seriphos. These sur¬vived barbarian attacks because as a rule they occupied remote or strongly defensive positions.
It was the fateful year 1204, when Venice managed to divert the leaders of the Fourth Crusade to attack and destroy their commercial rival Byzantium, that changed life in the Aegean generally and most particularly in the Kyklades. By the treaty of partition which fol¬lowed, they were awarded to Venice, but Venice had no wish to subdue and administer these outlandish places herself. Instead she let it be known that adventurous members of Venetian families were
welcome to found what amounted to small personal kingdoms, pro¬vided they remained friendly to the Republic and gave it trading facilities.
Many of them were already on the scene, having joined the Crusade as younger sons in search of fortune. In particular the Doge Enrico Dandolo had an enterprising nephew, Marco Sanudo, who lost no time in establishing himself as lord of Naxos. Within ten years he was master of all the present Kyklades, plus Astypalaia, and had proclaimed himself Duke of Naxos and the Archipelago. He was joined by members of other Venetian families, whom he promised to instal in minor fiefdoms within the Duchy. His cousin Marino Dan¬dolo was allowed to capture and rule Andros; the Barozzi took over Santorin; Astypalaia fell to the Quirini family, Tinos, Amorgos, Seriphos and Kea to the powerful Ghisi. Most of the other islands came under the direct control of Marco Sanudo and his descendants, who acknowledged not Venice but the French-bom Princes of Achaea (and through them the Angevin Kings of Naples) as their suzerains.
From then on the different islands had different fates, as pirate attacks, inter-family quarrels and intervention by western or eastern powers unseated or restored their rulers and depleted their popula¬tions. Nevertheless, thanks to the diplomatic protection of Venice, the Duchy of Naxos survived at least in name for another hundred years after Byzantium and most of the rest of the Aegean fell to the Turks in the fifteenth century. Yet by 1566 the Sultan was master of the whole Aegean, and in 1580 the Kyklades were formally annexed to the Turkish Empire. This period of Turkish rule, which lasted until the successful War of Independence in the nineteenth century, was on the whole a happier one than the islands had enjoyed under their Italian overlords, who had treated their people like serfs. Safe in their castles the nobles did nothing to protect their subjects from pirate attacks which laid waste their shores and decimated their popula¬tions, whereas the Turkish fleets kept the seas free for their own commerce. The Greek Orthodox church was allowed to re-establish its authority, although a large Catholic community survived in Naxos and Syros.
Two features strike the visitor today as characteristic of the Kyk¬lades - the harbours and the inland capitals, or Choras. The natural and often land-locked harbours with their ring of buildings are simple and charming in the smaller islands like Ios, Seriphos and Amorgos, more pretentious and commercial in the larger ones like Syros and
Tinos. The Chora embodies the Kykladic spirit more than anything -the dazzling white houses and churches crowding and clinging to the nearest convenient hillside, the narrow lanes twisting and climbing by alleys or steps, the paving stones edged with whitewash and spattered with donkey droppings. Sadly the white-sailed windmills have vanished from the ridges above, and only a few of the terraced cornfields are still sown to provide fodder for animals. Flour today comes ready milled from the mainland, though the island bakers do wonders with it.
Life in the Kyklades now is a mixture of mediaeval and modern. Theodore Bent, who travelled here at the end of the nineteenth cen¬tury, gave a unique account of the still mediaeval conditions a hun¬dred years ago. The Cyclades was published in 1884 and remains the best book ever written about these islands. The life he saw has not altogether vanished, nor has the poverty which went with it. Tourism has brought prosperity to the fringes, and some money is beginning to seep through to the inland villages, but the life of the islanders is hard and their ways simple.