PY'LIIS, or PYLOS (Lat., from Gk. IlAos). An ancient town of Messenia, in the Peloponnesus, on the promontory of Coryphasium at the north ern entrance to the Bay of Pylus (Navarino). Strabo says that it was originally inland at the foot of Mount _Egaleum, and that Coryphasium was only settled by part of the population on the destruction of the old city. However this may be, after the conquest of Messenia by the Spar tans, the place seems to have been abandoned, until in me. 425 it was occupied by the Athenian general Demosthenes. who fortified the high and precipitous promontory. and successfully re pelled assaults of the Spartans by sea and laud. The Athenian fleet, which arrived after the first assault. forced an entrance into the bay at both ends of the long island of Sphacteria, defeated the Spartan fleet, and block aded 420 Spartans on the island, where they were subsequently forced to surrender to an Athenian force under Demosthenes and Cleon. The
Athenians held 1'ylu• for fifteen years, when it was recaptured by the Spartans, and again fell into obscurity. though after the restoration of the Messenians it became the port of the country. At. the end of the thirteenth century it was fortified with a strong Venetian castle, and an other was built at the southern entrance to the bay, near the town of Navarino. now called Pylos. The medheval name is probably due to the settlement here in 1381 of Navarrese mer cenaries, though some derive it from Avarino and trace it to an Avar settlement 800 years earlier. In the bay was fought, on October 20, 1527, the great naval battle of Navarino, iii which the Turkish-Egyptian tleet was destroyed by the united English, French, and Russian fleets under Admiral Codrington.