Mytilene

Mytilene (El)
Administration
Country	Greece
Mayor	Nasos Giakalis ( PASOK )
Periphery	North Aegean
Nome	Lesbos
Postcode	811 00
Calling code	22510
Registration	MY
Geography
Contact	39 06 'North 26 33 'east / 39.1, 26.55
Altitude	8 m
Area	10 700 ha = 107 km 2
Demography
Population	36 196 hab. (2001)
Density	338.3 inhabitants / km 2
Location
Mytilene
Internet
City website	http://www.mytilene.gr

Mytilene (in modern Greek / in ancient Greek / Turkish is the main city of Lesbos , a Greek island in the Aegean. It is built on the southern tip of the island, just off the Turkish coast.

Antiquity: Greeks

Mytilene is, since antiquity, the main city of Lesbos. It is populated by Aeolians from Thessaly and Boeotia. Before the late eighth ^century BC. BC, it participates actively in the Greek colonization , particularly towards the Troad , the Hellespont and Thrace , and it also sends settlers to Naucratis . Hometown of Alcaeus , then it is one of the major centers of lyric poetry.

In ^the sixth century BC. AD it came under domination Persian. During the revolt of Ionia , citizens stoned the tyrant Koes and participate in the revolt against the Persians in 493 , the island city were looted and systematically raked by the Persians. Released after the Median wars , it adheres to the Delian League. Unlike other allies of Athens, it does not pay tribute ( phoros ), but his own team triremes and sends its own troops to fight alongside the Athenians . Thus, the Mytilniens consider themselves independent . City aristocratic revolt in 428 BC. AD against Athenian imperialism - Thucydides devotes this episode of the Peloponnesian War the first fifty paragraphs of Book III. Secession is spreading rapidly throughout the island, after a year of siege, the city must surrender to the Athenians who, after having imposed the death sentence the whole population, reported that first decree before his execution for an alliance and installing cleruchs.

During the Peloponnesian War , the Spartan fleet of Callicratidas blocks the Athenian fleet of Conon the port, then the oligarchic government takes control of the city until 390 when the Athenian fleet Thrasybulus submits the island. The city joined the Confederacy, Athens (349 BC.).

Around 334 BC. AD, after the arrest of his friend, the tyrant of Hermias Atarneus , the philosopher Aristotle of Stagira leaves Assos take refuge in ownership of Mytilene in the Peripatetic philosopher Theophrastus of Eresos. At the beginning of the expedition of Alexander the Great , Memnon of Rhodes dies under the walls of the besieged city to cut the supply of Macedonian troops and the city conquered by the Persians was taken over by Admiral Macedonian Amphotros ( 332 BC. J .- C.). After 321 BC. BC, the philosopher Epicurus a time lived and began to teach there.

Antiquity: the Romans

During the first war of the King's Bridge Mithridates VI Eupator, Mytilene surrendered to his craft who captured the Roman consul Manlius Aquilius Nepos , in 81 BC. BC, Lucius Licinius Lucullus carries the city by storm on this occasion, Julius Caesar wins his spurs ( Suetonius ). The city, devastated by the Romans, was rebuilt by Pompey, who makes him his liberty in Rome, Pompey built the first permanent theater (brick) on the model of Hellenistic theater in town. Then the emperor Trajan , who loved the city, embellished. Sraboni said that the city is "the greatest of his time" Cicero and Vitruvius retain its splendor and beauty.

In 52 AD, Paul of Tarsus, spent a night in the city on the way back from Greece to Syria.

Part of the pastoral romance Daphnis and Chloe by Longus takes place in the countryside around the city.

Middle Ages: the Byzantines and the Latins

In the ninth century AD, the Empress Irene the Athenian exile on the island, dies ( 803 ) abbot of a monastery in the city that receives many exiles from which Byzantine emperors Constantine Monomachus in 1035. The inhabitants left the island to escape the raids of Saracens.

The island is occupied several times by the Seljuk emir of Tzachi of Izmir ( 1085 ).

The journey of the Spanish rabbi Benjamin of Tudela (ca. 1161 ) through Mytilene. In 1198 , the merchants of Venice are given permission to negotiate in the imperial city harbor and the island soon passes under the economic control of the Republic of Venice.

In the thirteenth century , the emperor of Nicaea Theodore Lascaris (or his successor John III Doukas Vatatzes ) takes the Latins occupied the island since the fall of Constantinople and by the end of the century, the island was devastated by the mercenaries Catalan.

In 1335 , the Turks back to help the Greeks (siege) Island, owned by Dominique Cattaneo of Genoa. It was in 1354 that the emperor John V Palaeologus sold the island to his son, the Genoese adventurer Francisco Gattilusio renovates ( 1373 ) the fortress of the city, most of the island.

Modern Era: the Ottoman

Sultan Mehmet II occupies ( 1462 ) Island, the last possession of the Genoese family that receives the name of Metelin.

Map of the Russian naval attack of 1771

In the eighteenth ^century , houses Metelin Ottoman shipyards. During the Revolution Orloff , episode of Russo-Turkish War of 1768-1774 , the port was bombarded by the fleet of Alexei Orlov (2-4 November 1771 ).

In 1821 , the Greek War of Independence does not interfere with its prosperity, supported by many privileges, it remains under the authority of the sultan and is the basis for the Ottoman fleet. It was the scene of the first naval action of the war, the burning of a Turkish ship with a firebrand in Bay Eressos.

Contemporary Period: Modern Greece

November 2, 1912 , the armored cruiser Greek Georgios Averoff provides landing in the harbor of a thousand men who pushes the Ottoman garrison in the island. After the Balkan Wars ( 1916 ) the city and the island joined the independent kingdom of Greece.

May 4, 1941 , the island is occupied by a German infantry division.

Personalities

• Pittacus (c. 650-570 BC.) son of Hyrradios, one of the Seven Sages of ancient Greece, tyrant of the city (589-579).
• The aristocratic poet Alcaeus (c. 650-580), author of lyric songs.
• The logographer Hellanikos (c. 480-c. 395 BC.) author of several regional histories which Atthis.
• The poet and historian Theophanes (80-30 BC.), historian and friend of Pompey.
• The novelist Longus the Sophist, author of the pastoral romance Daphnis and Chloe (second or third century AD).

• The brothers privateers Khayr al-Din Barbarossa (1466-1546) and Arudj Arudj or Baba (1464-1518), son of Yakub Reis , Christian renegades born in Mytilene, control trade in the Mediterranean and create a state Barbary in Algiers.
• The naive painter Theophilos Hadjimichalis (c. 1870-1934) was born near Varia Mytilene.
• The critic and art publisher Teriade , whose real name Stratis Eleftheriades (1897-1983).

References

• Greece portal

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