According to traditional etymology, Naupactus derived its name from the circumstance that here the Heraclidae built the fleet with which they invaded the Peloponnesus. The place is first mentioned in actual history as having been taken from the Locri Ozolae by the Athenians, who settled it with Messenian helots at the close of the third Messenian war (455 b.c. ), and who made it their chief military and naval station in western Greece during the war of the Peloponnesus. After Aegospotami it was successively held by the Locrians, Achaeans, and Aetolians, and finally, after a siege of two months, it fell into the hands of the Romans, 191 b.c. It was still a flourishing place in the time of Pausanias, but according to Procopius it was destroyed by an earthquake in the reign of Justinian. In the Middle Ages it fell into the hands of the Venetians, who fortified it so strongly that in 1477 it successfully resisted a four months’ siege by a Turkish army thirty thousand strong; in 1499, however, it was taken by Bajazet II. The mouth of the Gulf of Lepanto was the scene of the great sea fight in which the naval power of Turkey was for the time being destroyed by the united papal, Spanish, and Venetian forces (October 7, 1571). See John of Austria. In 1678 it was recaptured by the Venetians, but was again restored in 1699 by the treaty of Carlowitz to the Turks; in the war of independence it finally became Greek once more (March 1829).