NAX'OS (Lat., from Gk. NAtos). The largest, most beautiful. and most fertile of the Cyclades.
It is situated in the .Egean, midway bet ween the coasts of Greece and Asia Minor. Extreme length, about 20 miles: breadth, 15 miles. Population, in 1896, 15,608. The principal products and articles of export are wine, corn, oil, cotton, fruits, and emery. The wine of Naxos (the best variety of which is still called in the islands of the -Egean Bacchus trine) was famous in ancient as it is in modern thnes, and on this account the island was celebrated in the legends of Dionysus ainl Ariadne. The island also contains good quarries of marble of a rather coarser grain than that of Pants. They were worked in the sixth century n.c., as is proved by thie'. unfinished statues found in them, among which is a famous colossus, some 34 feet in length. The most flourishing period in the his tory of the island seems to have been in the sixth century n.c. under the rule of the tyrant
Lygdamis. in B.C. 491) it was ravaged by Per sians, and later joined the Delian League, from which (n.c. 469) it was the first to revolt. The island now became a dependency of Athens. After the conquest of Constantinople by the Latins, it became in 1207 the seat of a duke dom, founded by the Venetians, and in 1566 was seized by the Turks. It now forms a portion of the Kingdom of Greece (q.v.). Naxos, the capital, with a population of 2000. is situated on the northwest coast, contains Greek and Catholic churches, and a castle built by the Venetians, and is the seat of a Greek and a Latin bishop. Consult: Ross, kcisrn (tut den Inscln des -legiiisehen Mccres, i. (Halle, 1840) ; Tozer, Islands of the _Egran (nxford, 1890) ; Curtius, Naxos (Berlin, 1846) ; Duget, De Insula Naxo (Paris, 1867).