History

Zakynthos from the Prehistoric until the Hellenistic Era:

Zakynthos is mentioned in various texts by different names. In some of them it is called lakynthos, elsewhere Diakynthos or Zakita. Homer, Herodotus, Thucydides, and Plenius also speak about Zakynthos. Homer mentions Zakyntho, the son of the king of Troy Dardanos as its first settler, whom it took its name from. Herodotus believes that at first it was inhabited by Arcadians, while Thucydides writes that the first ones to settle in the island were the Achaeans. According to Plenius, the island was also inhabited before 3000 B.C. and it was called Hyrea, named after the Arcadian hero Hyrieas.
Older indications of life traced in Zakynthos are dated back from the Neolithic era.
According to history, Zakynthos came from Psofida, a city of Arcadia in Peloponnese, and he was settled in the island around 1500 B.C. He built a city that named Psofida, in honor of its native town.
That town was the first Zakynthian town.
As it is read in the Homeric epics, at the end of the Mycenaean era Zakynthos, as well as Kephalonia, Ithaca and the opposite situated Akarnania, were inhabited by the tribe of Kephalenians, the people of the great Greek hero Odysseus.
In the Iliad, in the list of ships, where the cities that participated in the Trojan expedition and their sovereigns are enumerated, the Kephalenians who took part in the expedition against Troy with twelve ships, under the leadership of Odysseus, are also included.
It is estimated that after 1100 B.C., a tribe that spoke a western dialect and had previously settled in Achaia, the Achaeans, settled Zakynthos.
According to the word of Homer, when Odysseus returned to Ithaca, after the end of the Trojan War, he confronted the Suitors of Penelope- twenty of them were Zakynthians- that wished to marry Penelope and be enthroned. Later, on the occasion that their compatriots had been killed by Odysseus, the Zakynthians and the inhabitants of the rest Ionian Islands, managed to be detached from the hegemony of Odysseus and gained their independence.
Imitating the example of the city-state of Athens, they established a democratic regime in their island, which they maintained for seven centuries.
During the historical years, Zakynthos prospered. Its fruitful soil and the sources of bitumen that existed on the island contributed in its progress as well as its important strategic post (it was the bridge that linked the East with the West).
It developed the trade and founded numerous colonies, as Kydonia in Crete and Zakanthi in the Iberian Peninsula. During the classic years, the export trade of the island was supported by the extraction of bitumen.
The strategic place of Zakynthos not only did ensure its progress and its cultural blossoming, but it made it the epicenter of conflicts that were many times upsetting the peaceful life of its residents.
In 456 B.C. the Athenian fleet, under the leadership of general Tolmidis, occupied Zakynthos thus ensuring the alliance between the island and Athens, by the side of which fought in the Peloponnesian war. By the end of the war and the defeat of the Athenians and their allies by the Spartans, Zakynthos came to the dominion of Sparta and its democratic regime changed into an oligarchic one.
After the foundation of the 2nd Athenian Alliance the son of Conon, Timotheos, in charge of the Athenian fleet, helped the democratic Zakynthians to regain authority and to found a city by the name “the municipality of Zakynthians in Nillo”, despite the intense reactions of the Spartans.
Philippe B, after his ascension to the Macedonian throne and the rearrangement of his army, carried out a series of wars whence he became the ruler of Greek cities, ruler of the Thessalians and member of the Delphic Amphiktyony. In 337 B.C., one year after his victory in the battle of Chaeronia (338 B.C.) where the Athenians and their allies were totally defeated, Philippos called for a congress in Korinthos where all the Greek city-states of the continental Greece and the Ionian and Aegean islands participated. During the congress, the terms of a “common peace” pact were drawn up, according to which the allied league that thence resulted brought the name “the Greeks”.
In this “league”, in which through a certain number of representatives all the Greek city-states were participating with the exception of Sparta, three representatives represented the Zakynthians and the Kefallines.
After the death of Alexandros C the Great, the disintegration of his state supervened. His vast empire was divided into kingdoms reigned by his successors that fought against one another in long-lasting wars.
In the 3rd century B.C., two Confederations dominated in central Greece: the Aetolic and the Achaic. It is reported that Zakynthos was an ally state of the Aetolic Confederation.
In 220 B.C. a war broke out between the Achaic and the Aetolic Confederations.
In 217 B.C., the king of Macedonia Philippos E that had been by the side of the Achaic Confederation occupied Zakynthos, which shortly, in 212 B.C., passed in the hands of Romans that had in the meanwhile contracted an alliance with the Aetolians.
This was the first intervention of the Romans in the political affairs of Greece.
In 207 B.C., when the Romans retreated from Greece following a decision of the Roman Senate, Zakynthos was granted by Philippos the E to the king of Athamanes Amynandros.
In 192 B.C. a war broke out between Antiochos C, the king of the Selefkides’ state and the Romans. The Zakynthians and the Aetolians were the allies of Antiochos, while the Achaic Confederation, Philippos E, the people of Rhodes and others, sided with the Romans.
The defeat of Athamanes by Philippos offered the Achaeans the chance to become the rulers of Zakynthos. As soon as its provost marshal learned about king Amynandros’ rout, instead of handing the island over to the Romans, he preferred to sell it to the Achaic Confederation.
However, the Romans that were interested in Zakynthos because of its strategic position, forced the Achaeans to give it over to them.
In 191 B.C., the Roman general Gaius Livius Salinator, who was in charge of the Roman fleet, arrived in the island which he ransacked.

Zakynthos in the Roman Era:

In 188 B.C., the bases that the Romans had in the Ionian Sea, were comprising Zakynthos and Kephalonia. The Romans included it in the province of Achaia and later in the province of Illyria, while afterwards it constituted the Kephalonia administrative department along with the rest of the Ionian Islands.
During the reign of the emperor Octavian it was included among the free city-states, an institution that Rome had established for many Creek cities. It had an independent Parliament, its own laws and on its currency its own symbol was depicted, privileges the Zakynthians lost later on, during the dynasty of Antonini. During its peak period it was the venue of many Roman intellectuals, while, at the same time, it suffered from many piratical raids.
During the Mithridatic wars that took place at intervals from 89 B.C. until 63 B.C. between the Romans and the king of Pontos and the Chimerian Bosporus Mythridates the 6th, although Zakynthos tried to remain uninvolved, Archelaos, the general of Mythridates, arrived with a fleet to the island in 87 B.C. and he ransacked it. The Romans and the Zakynthians that had resorted to the fortress of the city managed to ward off the intruders.
During the conflict between Antonios and Gaius Julius Caesar Octavian, Zakynthos was found in the epicenter of the conflict and came under the possession of Octavian.
Christianity was propagated rather early in Zakynthos. According to tradition, Maria Magdalene that arrived in the island in 34 A.D. along with Maria of Klopa first taught the Christian religion.

Zakynthos in the Byzantine Era:

In 340 A.D., after the death of Konstantinos the Great and the sharing of the Roman state to his successors, Zakynthos came under the possession of the Province of Gallies with Mediolana as its seat. In 356 A.D. the island came under the possession of the province of Illyria, the southern department of which, in 395 A.D., after the death of Theodosius the A’, was included in the Eastern Roman state, and the Ionian islands formed its western border.
Since the 3rd century A.D. many waves of unknown at the time populations had already begun to move to the Roman borders. They intruded and ransacked regions of the vast Roman Empire thus causing the fall of the western Roman state in 476 A.D. The Greek territory was not excluded from these raids.
In 395 A.D. Zakynthos suffered because of the raids of the Huns and the Visigoths, who ransacked and set fire on the island. A few years later, in 467 A.D., the Vandals from Africa with their king Gizerichos invaded Zakynthos. After slaughtering and ransacking they left taking 500 Zakynthians with them whom they killed while they were sailing in the Adriatic Sea.
In 467 A.D., after the raids of Gizerichos in regions of the Eastern Roman state, the emperor Leon the A’ declared war against the Vandals and he sent a powerful army and fleet to the regions they controlled. The Byzantines, although they managed to reach up to the boundary of the state of Gizerihos, they failed in occupying his capital, Carthage.
Thus, in 474 A.D. the Vandals returned with their fleet to Zakynthos and ransacked it once more.
However, in 534 A.D. what the army of Leon A’ did not achieve was finally achieved by the general of Justinian, Velissarios who managed to occupy Carthage and to push back the Vandals to the mainland of Africa.
In 549 A.D. Totilas, the leader of the Visigoths looted Zakynthos while in 591 A.D. the island suffered because of a plague that burst out in the territories of the Byzantine Empire.
In 695 A.D. the Byzantine Empire was divided into sections. Initially, Zakynthos fell under the section of Greece and when the section of Kefallinia was established in 809 A.D. Zakynthos became a part of it.
During the Crusades it was ransacked many times by the hordes of the crusaders that were heading to Jerusalem.

The Domination of the Franks:

In 1185, Zakynthos was occupied and looted by the Normans. Then, the king of Sicily, Guiliermo B’, gave it over to a powerful pirate of the time, yet of unknown origin, that he was called Margarito, in exchange for the services the latter offered to the Normans.
Ten years later, in 1195, Maios or Mathew Orsini, of the family of the Palatines Counts of Rome, succeeded Margarito in the hegemony of Zakynthos, Kephalonia and Ithaca.
Orsini, who wanted to ensure his domination on the Ionian Islands, first acknowledged the suzerainty of Venice and the Pope and then that of the Principality of Achaia.
In 1335, after the death of John B’ Orsini, Zakynthos came into the hands of Andegaves of Naples -who were overruling Achaia until then- and they kept it until 1357, when it was handed over to the Prince Leonard A’ Tocco, from Florence.
In 1479, at the end of the first Venetian-Turkish war that began in 1463, and the declaration of peace, the Turks turned against those who had helped the Venetians during that war. They first targeted on the state of Tocco since Leonard C Tocco had helped the Venetians by offering a galley to them. Moreover, his duchy, where the refugees and the enemies of the Ottomans used to shelter, had often served as a base of operations and raids against the Turks.
Leonard Tocco, when he realized that despite his appeals the Venetians did not rush into helping him, left Kephalonia where he had been staying till then and he resorted to Naples thus putting an inglorious end to the occupation of Zakynthos by the Tocco dynasty, that lasted more than a century.
When the Turkish fleet arrived to Zakynthos, after having occupied and looted Lefkada, Ithaca and Kephalonia, met a sturdy resistance by its people and some Venetian soldiers and army men that had come and settled in the island from Peloponnese, a short while ago.
Finally, after negotiations, Zakynthos surrendered to the Turkish army after having been previously evacuated by its people who immigrated to more safe regions.
Two years later, in 1481, Leonardo Tocco’s brother, Antonio, regained the island for one year only, until 1482.
Then, in 1483, the Venetians that were higly interested in their presence in the Ionian Sea, occupied Zakynthos with the help of their fleet and kept it by paying 500 golden ducats a year to the Sultan, after an agreement they signed with the Turks.

The Venetian Domination:

Zakynthos, during the period of the Venetian domination (1484-1797) was administratively organized and economically prospered, while its population reached the 25.000.
The Venetians managed to give life to the island through taxes exemptions and the concession of fiefs to those who had offered military services.
The city of Zakynthos spread beyond the castle, while its boundary reached up to the sea. In a rather short period of time, because of the architecture of its buildings, the good town planning, its natural beauty, its great culture and its picturesque arcades, Zakynthos was named “Firenze of Greece”, the Florence of Greece.
When the Venetians arrived to the Ionian Islands, the repeated naval raids of the pirates of the Ionian Sea and the Turks had almost depopulated many islands.
In 1485, the Venetians attended to the settlement of 400 soldiers in Zakynthos, who came from various regions of the Greek territory. Greek refugees that resorted to the island coming from Greek regions occupied by the Turks were also added to them. The settlement of all these men on one hand strengthened the local population, and on the other, the mixture of the natives with the immigrants that were emanating from different places and were coming of various social classes and of different intellectual levels, formed the Eptanesian society that was distinguished for its idiosyncrasy.
At the same time, the society of the island absorbed the Frankish elements brought in the Ionian Islands by the dynasties of Tocchi, Andegaves and Orsini, whose descendants were integrated in the local population.
Since the Ionian Islands constituted the bridge that linked the West with the East, the Eptanesians, and of course the Zakynthians, got acquainted with the European spirit and the values of the western culture. They absorbed a lot of elements at the same time, however, they accomplished to keep their Hellenism and their local traditions, the language and their religion alive.
The Serene Democracy of Venice, in order to maintain its extensive possessions, applied the federal governing. The city of Venice was the capital of the federal state.
Ensuring economic privileges for itself it was ruling its possessions in the various regions along with the local aristocracy. Thus, during the Venetian domination, Zakynthos like the rest of the Ionian Islands was under an aristocratic regime.
It enjoyed preferential administrative status quo, which provided relative autonomy, while simultaneously it was ensuring a military protection.
The Representative of Venice in Zakynthos was the “Provleptis” (Governor) and his advisers. The names of all noble families were registered in “Libro d’ Oro” or “Golden Bible”, while these nobles formed the General Council, which appointed the ambassadors that each island sent to Venice to present its people demands. From the General Council 150 noble men were elected that formed the “Council of the 150″, which was competent to elect the authorities of the region.
The inhabitants of the island were separated into 3 classes: the noblemen (nobili) that were registered in “Libro d’ Oro “, the bourgeois (civili) constituted by the tradesmen and the artisans and the people (popolo), the villagers and the workers known as “popolari”.
The bourgeois, as well as the popolari, did not participate in the Council of the Noblemen. This was the cause of many conflicts with the noblemen until 1683 when it was decided that the bourgeois would become acceptable but only to replace all those noble families that would have ceased to exist.
When the Venetians took over the governorship of Zakynthos, they repaired the castle of Tocchi and they divided the island into 3 sections: the fortress with the acropolis that was called citadella, the “vourgos”, and the countryside.
The fortress, where the dwellings of the superior Venetian officers and the cathedral of the Catholics were, was fortified and guarded by 38 men. The “vourgos” which began from the foothills of the castle, was a kind of suburb and it was unfortified.
In the 16th century, the city expanded and reached the beach, which was settled. Then the castle became deserted. The city was divided into quarters (according to the 1583 census there were 21 quarters at that time). St. Marco’s square was the center where the Bodega of Comoutos used to be, a venue of the noblemen. The third section of the island was inhabited by the majority of its people who lived in the villages, called “kazades” (in 1583, there were 47 kazades).
The problem of piracy during the 16th century was particularly intense in the Mediterranean as it was rather organized, a fact that entailed the economic decline and the creation of a climate of insecurity in the islands. The pirates (Muslims and Christians) took liberties by the continuous wars and the intense competition that existed between the Venetians and the Turks for the control of the naval routes. The successive raids that entailed massacres, looting and kidnappings had turned the Islands of the Ionian and the Aegean Seas as well as many seaside areas, into desolated ones.
In 1499, the life of the Zakynthians was interrupted by the second war that burst out between the Venetians and the Turks. The island served as a replenishment station for the Venetian, the Spanish and the French fleet. By the end of the war in 1503, the Venetians managed to keep Zakynthos only by signing that they would continue paying 500 golden ducats per year to the sultan, as a homage tax.
In 1513 earthquakes on the island destroyed the the castle and the houses built near the sea.
In 1537, the most important and well known among the Muslim pirates (many of them were coming from North Africa’s regions (Algeria, Tunisia or Morocco), the notorious Hirentin Barbarossa, aggressed Zakynthos and other Ionian Islands and captured thousands of Christians. During the same year another war burst out between Venetia and Turkey that ended with the peace agreement in 1540, that provided for the renewal of the Venice’s obligation to pay 500 golden ducats a year to the sultan for the possession of Zakynthos.
The Venetians, after the end of the hostilities, rushed into fortifying their military bases in the Ionian Sea, among which Zakynthos was included.
In 1570 there was another fighting between the Turks and the Venetians, which led to the well-known battleship of Nafpaktos that took place on October 7, 1571. The Zakynthians took part in the Venetian coalition (that was called “Holy Coalition”) with 4 warships and many volunteers.
Despite the great significance of the Christian allied forces’ victory, the failure of the allies in the army operations that followed, entailed the signing of a peace agreement in 1573, between the two warring parties, according to which the tax the Venetians would have to pay to the Sultan for Zakynthos would rise to 1,000 ducats a year.
In 1628, the «Popolari’s loafing», namely the rising of the lower class that lasted until 1632 and was finally suppressed, changed the life on the island and it was the first serious social rebellion that was recorded in the Modern Greek history. The cause of it was the class struggle and the cruelty with which the noblemen of the Libro d’ Oro were treating the popolari. On that riot, popolari burnt the Libro d’ Oro and demanded equality and political rights.
During the fifth war (that was called Cretan), which burst out between the Turks and the Venetians for the occupation of Crete, the Venetians got weaken since they lost the ramparted positions they held in Crete and they were forced to capitulate with the Turks. According to the terms of the treaty that was signed, the Venetians gave Crete to the Turks on the condition that they would pay no more taxes for Zakynthos. Then, many Cretans (among them many noblemen and numerous bourgeois) left the island and settled to Zakynthos thus renewing the local population and conveying their advanced civilization to them.
In 1684, there was another war between the Turkey and the Christian West that formed the coalition of Linz in which almost all of the European forces participated, although the burden of the alliance was mainly borne by Austria, Germany, Poland and Venice.
This multilateral fighting includes also the Venetian-Turkish war of 1684-1699 that took place in the Greek territory and to which Zakynthos participated with three galleys and warriors under the general leadership of Fragiskos Morozini.
When the conflicts ended with the victory of the Christian coalition, the treaty that was signed with Turkey in Karlowitz, in 1699, among others included a term, which provided that Venice would no longer pay a tax for Zakynthos.
From the end of the 17th to the end of the 18th century, earthquakes and epidemics hit Zakynthos hard and resulted in its population decrease. Because of the plague that burst out in 1690, more than 258 people died on the island, while in 1688 there was a famine, in 1713 a smallpox epidemic, and a dreadful epidermic of both plague and famine hit Zakynthos again in 1728. The city and six more villages were also destroyed because of the earthquake in 1790.
In 1714, the Turks declared a new war against Venice in which the Zakynthians rushed into helping the Venetians with money, ships and warriors. With the peace agreement that was signed in 1718 between the implicated parties in the village of Passarowitz of Serbia, the Venetians secured the possession of the islands in the Ionian Sea.
Nevertheless, the continuing wars and mostly the outcome of the Cretan war, a destructive one for the Venetians, that resulted in the loss not only of Crete but of other possessions of theirs in Peloponnese, Mainland, the Ionian and the Aegean Sea too, entailed the gradual decline of Venice, which therefore ceased to be an important military and political factor in Greece.
At the same time, apart from Austria, a new powerful country, Russia, also a Turkey’s adversary, appeared. In 1770, Russia instigated a revolution of the Greek people in Peloponnese, in which the Zakynthians also participated despite the relative forbiddance of the Venetians.
When the movement failed, refugees from Peloponnese -8,000 approximately- resorted to Zakynthos to avoid the Turks’ reprisal.
By the end of the 18th century, Venice was no longer the powerful ruler of the sea that through its possessions controlled the Ionian and the Aegean Seas. In 1797, Napoleon declared the war against it.
The council of the Venetians patricians, in order to avoid the conflict with the Frenchmen accepted his terms and thus the abolition of the aristocratic regime. In the same year, the Campoformio Treaty that was signed between France and Austria connoted the final catalysis of the Serene Democracy of Venice and at the same time, the end of the Venetian domination in Zakynthos, which then passed in the hands of the Frenchmen.

The Occupation by the Frenchmen and the Russians:

After the Venetian troops’ withdrawal, there was a long period during which the island had various “protectors”. On July 4th of 1797, French republicans landed on the island and were enthusiastically welcomed by the people, who had in the meanwhile accepted the declarations of the French revolution for liberty, equality and fraternity. They demanded that the French abolish the Nobility titles so that the island would be under a democratic governing that would exclude the participation of the noblemen but their enthusiasm began falling off when they soon became aware of the contemptuous attitude the Frenchmen showed towards their religion, their customs and local traditions. The more the discontent of the Zakynthians was growing against their new “protectors”, the more the propaganda against the “atheists” French people -a qualification that the political opponents had given to them- was rising.
In July 1978, when the Russians entered into a treaty of peace with the Turks, the commander of the Russian fleet addressed a declaration to the people of the Ionian Islands through which he was stating that the Czar and the sultan, induced by divine zeal, were promising the Ionian Islands people to expel the “atheists” conquerors, so when the ships of the Russian-Turkish’s fleet arrived to Zakynthos, on October 24, 1798, crowds of peasants with Russian flags in hands went to the city and prevented the republicans from resisting, thus obliging the French to surrender the following day.
On March 21, 1800, the Russians came to an agreement with the Turks for the establishment of the Eptanesian state with the name “State of the Seven United Islands”
This was the way in which the first independent Greek state was established in the modern history of Greece, a state that was ruled under a particular form of government. Although it was administratively subjected to the Russian emperor, every three years it was obliged to pay a tribute to the sultan in recognition of the Turkish suzerainty.
The Russian-Turkish alliance ceased with the declaration of the Russian-Turkish war in the beginning of 1807. That was when the destiny of the Eptanesian State was judged on the diplomatic level.
With the Tilsit Treaty, the Eptanesian State was given away to the French Imperial force that kept it till October 4, 1809, when the Englishmen set foot on the island for the first time.

The Occupation by the English:

Once again like many times in the past, the Ionian Islands, because of their position, became the apple of discord among the Great Forces of that time.
After Napoleon’s defeat, the Englishmen succeeded in making the Ionian Islands a free and independent state that was called “United States of the Ionian Islands”, which was under the direct and exclusive protection of Great Britain.
This state’s governing would be run by English High Commissioner. The General Thomas Maitland, who arrived to Corfu in February 1816, was the first to be appointed High Commissioner.
Maitland, despite his political skills, ruled in a despotic way, imposing a non-free constitution. His tyrannical governing caused many reactions on behalf of the people of the Ionian Islands and, of course, the Zakynthians.
Nevertheless, during his time, the Englishmen took care of the public administration’s modernization and the city’s water supply system, they reorganized the public health and they carried out works with reference to the road construction.
In the meanwhile, the “Society of Friends”, the secret team that organized the Greek Revolution against the Turks, had been established in Odessa, in 1814. Four years later, its seat was transferred to Zakynthos. When the Englishmen realized the movements of the Zakynthians-members of the Society of Friends, they started prosecutions.
Maitland, showing an anti-Greek attitude, tried in every possible way to keep the Greek fleet away from Zakynthos during the operations against the Turks.
Also, through prosecutions, arrests and executions, he tried to prevent the Zakynthians from helping their patriots, the rebelled Greeks. Nevertheless, the Zakynthians did not quail, but they actively participated in the struggle of their enslaved fellow patriots against the Turks, for their independence and freedom. The 1821 Revolution of the enslaved Greece triggered off the reaction of the Zakynthians and the people of the other Ionian Islands so that they also demanded from the English to proceed with some constitutional amendments.
Thus, the freedom of the Press was established in Eptanissa in 1848, while in 1850 the first free elections were held, through which the Ionian Islands people’s representatives in the Parliament were elected. Among them there were forty Zakynthians. The elections and the formation of the parliamentary body was the first step to the union of the islands with the free Greece.
In 1858 arrived in Zakynthos the well-known philhellene W.E. Gladstone as Queen Victoria’s deputy, to investigate and solve the Eptanesian problem. The solution and the much-desired union with Greece came few years later, after the departure of Otto and the enthronement of George A, also a Great Britain’s likeable. Thus, in 1864, the Englishmen, through a treaty conveyed Eptanissa to Greece. Finally Zakynthos was free.

Zakynthos from 1864 until today:

After the union of Eptanissa with the free Greek state, the Zakynthians followed the same route with the rest of Greek people, delectating their freedom, the majestic beauty of their island and their great culture, during the next decades. Nevertheless, after the war of 1940, the Italian and the German occupations and the liberation, the island of Zakynthos would suffer once more: in 1953 a destructive earthquake hit the island, an earthquake that flattened the villages and zakynthos town and destroyed everything on the island.
The demolition was terrible, but despite the tremendous disaster, the Zakynthians soon managed to recover from the tragedy and stand on their feet. They started rebuilding their city trying to revive, as much as possible, the local character and style.
Today Zakynthos is one of the most popular destinations in Greece. Its beautiful natural environment, long sandy beaches, sunny weather, great sights, cosmopolitan lifestyle, crystal clear waters and significant tradition made the island an ideal place for holidays, attracting thousands of tourists from all around the world. After all, Zakynthos is still the “flower of the East”, as many travellers and poets have named it.

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