From: Nikos Kefalliniadis: Sangri and its Monuments. In: Naxiaka. Review of the Federation of Naxian Associations vol. 8/9, May–August 1986. Naxos: 1986

„Avlonitsa. Here, where now various ruins are found, there once stood the ancient Demos of Aulon. This is attested, among other things, by this ancient decree of the Demos of the Aulonians, which was found earlier engraved on a slab in a field of the region:

“It was resolved by the Aulonians, since two hundred and eighty persons from the demos had been captured by the Aetolians… Charopos son of Amphikleides, Xenodokos son of Aristoxenos, Demon Marios, Aristokles… Phidias son of Gnosias… ransomed them from the Aetolians…”

According to this, the Demos composes this honorary decree in order to honor four of its young men, who through their bravery freed 280 Aulonians, whom Aetolian pirates had captured during a raid on ancient Avlonitsa.

At the root of a rock, in the area of Avlonitsa, there is carved this love inscription, accompanied by a symbolic plough:

“DOROTHEA… KARION IS THE LOVER”

which means that:

“Karion is the lover of Dorothea.”

The drawing of the plough here is symbolic and recalls the metaphorical meaning of the word plough associated with the epithet “katapygon”:

“The contact of the ploughshare and the bride—writes Professor of Folklore A. Romaios, examining the various customs and symbolic acts concerning the plough in our land—clearly signifies her ploughing and guarantees fertility. Plutarch also connects the plough with Demeter, who legitimized the ancestral institution of marriage.”

In any case, this is the oldest representation of the Hesiodic plough on our island (6th century B.C.).

Another inscription found in the area of Sangri attests to the worship of Demeter and Kore in the same place:

“To Demeter, Kore, Zeus Eubouleus, and Baubo”

This inscription led the late university professor N. Kontoleon to the uncovering of the ancient telesterion of Demeter and Kore in the area of Gyroulas.

The successor of Kontoleon, university professor V. Lambrinoudakis, a devoted friend of Naxos, who continued and completed the excavation and study of the temple of Demeter together with German collaborators and the archaeologist–architect Korres, (…) writes:

“From the same period (530 B.C., to which also the temple of Palatia in Chora is dated) comes another exceptionally important marble building, excavated by Kontoleon at Gyroulas, near Sangri. Here too it is a temple, of a mystery character, dedicated to Demeter.

Here only the façade of this square building has columns. Another row inside supported the roof of the large spacious and enclosed hall, which was intended for the performance of mysteries analogous to those we know better from Eleusis.”

From: Christos Sideris: Naxiaca of Aglaosthenes. The history of Naxos from the Paleolithic to the Roman period. Athens: Amoni Editions 2015

“By the middle of the 6th century B.C., the island was governed by noble families whose ancestors had been founders of the Ionian colony, probably descendants of Promethos, son of King Codrus of Athens. These aristocrats, due to the prosperity of the island and the wealth they possessed, were called the oligarchy of the “fat ones.”

These nobles lived in the city of Naxos and owned the best lands and many slaves. Outside the city they had formed burial mounds and engaged in ancestor worship, symbolically reproducing their hereditary right to rule the island. One of them served as priest of Dionysus and therefore as ruler.

In the countryside, however, clans of landowners without hereditary political rights had accumulated wealth but not political power. The hereditary right to rule was not something the “fat ones” were willing to relinquish.

The established order was overturned by the emerging class of merchants and by a number of landless citizens who were increasingly accumulating on the island. Each social class, with its own agenda, rose up.

Rise of Lygdamis

One of the wealthy landowners of the countryside, Lygdamis, whether because he believed that the Naxian aristocracy had become corrupt and was engaged in competitive displays of dedications (attempting to outdo one another by rebuilding temples or offering more impressive votive offerings), or simply because he wished to seize power for himself, made his move, relying on the discontent of the Naxian citizens. (…)

Aristotle’s Account

Aristotle recounts the seizure of power by Lygdamis in his own way: In the polity of Naxos, the free men lived mainly in the city of Naxos, while very few chose the countryside, In one of these villages, called Pistadai, lived Telestagoras, a man of great wealth and a reputation for being a kind-hearted person. His fellow citizens, because of his kindness, honored him daily by leaving gifts on the threshold of his house. So the young men of Naxos would go to the market and, wanting to take advantage of their position, haggle fiercely; the merchants would reply that they’d rather give the goods to Telestagoras than sell them at such a low price. One day, some young men from the capital went down to the market and saw a beautiful, large fish on the fisherman’s stall; they began to haggle, trying to drive the price down excessively. The fisherman told them the well-known phrase, that he’d rather give the fish to Telestagora than sell it to them for so little. The young men became angry, and since they were already drunk, they went to Telestagoras to complain. He received them kindly, but they insulted not only him but also his daughters of marriageable age.

The people of Naxos in the province were extremely sensitive about such matters. As soon as the insult became known, the villagers took up arms and attacked the young men. In fact, there was a provincial landowner, Lyggadamis, who was the leader of his clan and who eventually became tyrant of Naxos by exploiting the unrest that followed. (…)

Lygdamis logically implemented some of the popular measures that Peisistratos had also implemented in Athens, such as: redistribution of the land of the exiled “fat ones” in favor of the poor farmers, cheap loans to farmers and artisans, the tithe tax targeting large estates etc..

It is characteristic that one of the largest projects attributed to Peisistratos is the aqueduct (as well as the aqueduct of Samos with the famous Eupalinos Tunnel), and during the same period, the aqueduct of Naxos was also completed, an exceptionally large water supply and irrigation project carried water from the area of Flerios to (…) the city of Naxos. (…)

With the assistance of the Spartan fleet, the oligarchs (perhaps in 515 B.C. ) or even earlier, regained power. The blow to the ranks of the democrats must have been enormous. The exiled patricians returned to claim their estates; hundreds, perhaps, of farmers once again became landless or were forced to work on the large estates under slave-like conditions. A period of unrest and political uncertainty followed until the democrats seized power, after years of struggle, once again exiling the oligarchic leaders to Miletus, an exile that was usually accompanied by the confiscation of land and redistribution in favor of the landless.“

The Siege of Naxos. From Wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Naxos_(499_BC), retrieved on June 23rd 2026

„The siege of Naxos (499 BC) was a failed attempt by the Milesian tyrant Aristagoras, operating with support from, and in the name of the Persian Empire of Darius the Great, to conquer the island of Naxos.[1] It was the opening act of the Greco-Persian Wars, which would ultimately last for 50 years.

Aristagoras had been approached by exiled Naxian aristocrats, who were seeking to return to their island. Seeing an opportunity to bolster his position in Miletus, Aristagoras sought the help of his overlord, the Persian king Darius the Great, and the local satrap, Artaphernes to conquer Naxos. Consenting to the expedition, the Persians assembled a force of 200 triremes under the command of Megabates.

The expedition quickly descended into a debacle. Aristagoras and Megabates quarreled on the journey to Naxos, and someone (possibly Megabates) informed the Naxians of the imminent arrival of the force. When they arrived, the Persians and Ionians were thus faced with a city well prepared to undergo siege. The expeditionary force duly settled down to besiege the defenders, but after four months without success, ran out of money and were forced to return to Asia Minor.

In the aftermath of this disastrous expedition, and sensing his imminent removal as tyrant, Aristagoras chose to incite the whole of Ionia into rebellion against Darius the Great. The revolt then spread to Caria and Cyprus. Three years of Persian campaigning across Asia Minor followed, with no decisive effect, before the Persians regrouped and made straight for the epicentre of the rebellion at Miletus. At the Battle of Lade, the Persians decisively defeated the Ionian fleet and effectively ended the rebellion. Although Asia Minor had been brought back into the Persian fold, Darius vowed to punish Athens and Eretria, who had supported the revolt. In 492 BC therefore the first Persian invasion of Greece would begin as a consequence of the failed attack on Naxos, and the Ionian Revolt. (…)

Prelude
The Persian fleet was duly assembled in the spring of 499 BC, and sailed to Ionia.
Artaphernes put his (and Darius’s) cousin Megabates in charge of the expedition, and dispatched him to Miletus with the Persian army. They were joined there by Aristagoras and the Milesian forces, and then embarked and set sail. In order to avoid warning the Naxians, the fleet initially sailed north, towards the Hellespont, but when they arrived at Chios they doubled back and headed south for Naxos.

Herodotus recounts that Megabates made inspections of the ships (probably whilst beached for the night), and came across one ship from Myndus which had not posted any sentries. Megabates ordered his guard to find the captain of the ship, Scylax, and then had the captain thrust into one of the ship’s oar holes with his head outside and his body inside the ship. News reached Aristagoras of the treatment of his friend and he went to Megabates and asked him to reconsider his decision. When Megabates refused to grant Aristagoras’s wishes, Aristagoras simply cut the captain loose himself. Predictably, Megabates was furious with Aristagoras, who in turn retorted “But you, what have you to do with these matters? Did not Artaphernes send you to obey me and to sail wherever I bid you? Why are you so meddlesome?”. According to Herodotus, Megabates was so enraged by this that he sent messengers to the Naxians to warn them of the approach of the Persian force.

Modern historians, doubting that a Persian commander would have sabotaged his own invasion, have suggested several other possible scenarios. It is, however, impossible to know exactly how the Naxians became aware of the invasion, but undoubtedly they were aware, and began to make preparations. Herodotus tells us that the Naxians had previously had no inkling of the expedition, but that when news arrived they brought everything in from the fields, gathered enough food with which to survive a siege and reinforced their walls.

Opposing forces
Herodotus does not provide complete numbers for either side, but gives some idea of the strength of the two forces. Clearly, since they were fighting on home territory, the Naxian forces could theoretically have included the whole population. Herodotus says in his narrative that the “Naxians have eight thousand men that bear shields”, which suggests that there were 8,000 men capable of equipping themselves as hoplites. These men would have formed a strong backbone to the Naxian resistance.

The Persian force was primarily based around 200 triremes. It is not clear whether there were additional transport ships. The standard complement of a trireme was 200 men, including 14 marines. In the second Persian invasion of Greece, each Persian ship had carried thirty extra marines, and this was probably also true in the first invasion when the whole invasion force was apparently carried in triremes. Furthermore, the Chian ships at the Battle of Lade also carried 40 marines each. This suggests that a trireme could probably carry a maximum of 40–45 soldiers—triremes seem to have been easily destabilised by extra weight. If the Persian force at Naxos was similarly made up, then it would have contained somewhere in the region of 8,000 to 9,000 soldiers (in addition to many unarmed rowers).

Siege
When the Ionians and Persians arrived at Naxos, they were faced by a well-fortified and supplied city. Herodotus does not explicitly say, but this was presumably the eponymous capital of Naxos. He provides few details of the military actions that ensued, although there is a suggestion that there was an initial assault on the city, which was repelled. The Ionians and Persians thus settled down to besiege the city. However, after four months, the Persians had run out of money, with Aristagoras also spending a great deal. Thoroughly demoralised, the expedition prepared to return to Asia Minor empty handed. Before leaving, they built a stronghold for the exiled Naxian aristocrats on the island. This was a typical strategy in the Greek world for those exiled by internal strife, giving them a base from which to quickly return, as events permitted.”

Polycrite, from Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polycrite, retrieved on 23rd of
June 2026

“In Greek legendary history, Polycrite (Πολυκρίτη) was a maiden of Naxos who, as her home city was besieged by the armies of Miletus and Erythraea, came to be loved by the Erythraean general Diognetus, and devised a stratagem which led to the victory of the Naxians. There existed two versions of her story, which are as follows.

According to Plutarch (who follows the Naxian authors) and Polyaenus, Polycrite was taken captive by Diognetus as he ravaged Naxos; he fell in love with Polycrite and made her his legal wife. As the Milesian army was celebrating a religious festival, Polycrite asked Diognetus if she could send some bakery to her brothers in the besieged city. He permitted and even encouraged her to do so; she then enclosed a tablet with a note in a loaf of bread, instructing her brothers to take advantage of the fact that the Milesians were going to get drunk during the celebrations, and to attack at night. The brothers in turn delivered the message to the Naxian generals, who followed the advice of Polycrite and thus won a victory over the Milesians. Polycrite asked for mercy on Diognetus, saving him and his possessions. As the citizens welcomed her at the gate of the city, she was so overwhelmed with joy that she could not bear it and fell down dead. She was buried on the spot, and her tomb became known as the “Tomb of Envy”, as though Fate became envious of her and would not let her enjoy the honors.

In another version, which was recorded by Parthenius of Nicaea and, according to Plutarch’s remark, was also followed by Aristotle, Polycrite had been accidentally left at a temple of Artemis outside the city when the city itself was blockaded by the Milesians. There she was spotted by Diognetus who became enamoured of her. Out of piety he dared not take her by force in the temple and thus sent messages asking her to become his lover. At first she would reject those but then responded that she would consent on condition that he swear by the name of Artemis to fulfill any wish of hers in return. When he did so, she told him to betray his Milesian allies and support the Naxians instead. He was hesitant at first but then, impressed by the girl’s patriotism, agreed. In the meantime, the Milesian army was celebrating the Thargelia, which was going to be a distraction. Diognetus and Polycrite decided to make use of this and sent a loaf of bread to Polycrite’s brothers in the city; in the loaf was put a tablet with instructions for them. When Polycles, a brother of Polycrite, received the message, he was unsure whether they could trust Diognetus, but eventually a decision was made in favor of action. The following night, the Naxians broke through the blockading wall with assistance of Diognetus who held up a signal light and left a gate open for them. In the battle that ensued, the Naxians were victorious but Diognetus was killed. Polycrite was much honored for saving her home city, and the people brought her so many gifts that she was suffocated under their weight and died. Her and Diognetus’ bodies were placed on one and the same funeral pyre, and a hundred sheep were sacrificed at her funeral ceremony.

References
Plutarch, On the Virtues of Women, 17
Polyaenus, Stratagems of War, 8. 36
Parthenius, Love Romances, 9 (with reference to Andriscus’ Naxiaca and Theophrastus’ Political History)”