Antimilo, 5⅛ miles north west of Milo, is a mere uninhabited mass of trachyte, and is often called Lrio-milo or Desert Melos. Cimolos, or Argerdiera, less than 1 mile to the north east, was famous in antiquity for its figs and fuller’s earth (Kι∕zωλα yη ∖ and contained a considerable city, the remains of which still cover the cliff of St Andrews. Polinos, Pol·ybos or Polivo, and Kaimeni, or “Burned Island,” the lie Brulée or Isola Bruciata of the French and Italians, lies rather more than a mile south-east of Cimolos. It was in antiquity the subject of dispute between the Melians and Cimolians. It has long been almost uninhabited.

In ancient times the city of Melos, built terrace fashion round a hill in the north-east of the main island, was a place of considerable size; “the western wall, of Cyclopeaħ masonry, is traceable all the way down from the summit to the sea,” and among the ruins are a temple in the Corinthian style and a beautiful little theatre cleared in 1836 by order of the king of Bavaria. Painted vases (the ancient Melians were great makers of this kind of ware), bronzes, gold ornaments, and similar specimens of art workmanship have been recovered from the debris; and in 1820 the “Venus of Milo,” now in the Louvre, the noblest extant representation of Aphrodite, was found in the neighbourhood of the theatre. The top of the hill is now occupied by Castro, the principal village in the island. At some distance to the south-east, at the place called Tripiti (i.e., τρυπητή, “the perforated ”), lies a remarkable cluster of catacombs containing frescos, &c., of evidently Christian origin. Palaea Chora, about 5 miles farther south-east, is now an almost deserted village, but down to the beginning of the last century it had about 5000 inhabitants, and it continued for a time to be considered the capital of the island.

The first occupants of Melos were probably Phoenicians, but the island was Hellenized at an early date by Minyans and Dorians from Laconia. Though its inhabitants sent a contingent to the Greek fleet at Salamis, they held aloof from the Attic league, and sought to remain neutral during the Peloponnesian War. But in 416 b.c. the Athenians, having attacked the island and compelled the Melians to surrender at discretion, slew all the men capable of bearing arms, made slaves of the women and children, and introduced a body of five hundred Athenian colonists. Lysander restored the island to its old Dorian possessors, but it never recovered its former prosperity. There were many Jewish settlers in Melos in the beginning of theChristian era, and Christianity was early introduced. During the “Frankish” period the island formed part of the duchy of Naxos, except for the few years (1341-83) when it was a separate lordship under Marco Sanudo and his daughter.

See Leycester, “The Volcanic Group of Milo, Anti-Milo, <fcc.," in Jour. Boy. Geog. Soc., 1852; Tourncfort, Voyage ; Leake, Northern Greece, vol. lii.; Prokosch von Osten, Denkwürdigkeiten, <kc.∙, and Bursian, Geog. von Griechenland, vol. ii.