PÁROS

päˈrôs, pârˈŏs, island (1991 pop. 9,591), c.81 sq mi (210 sq km), SE Greece, in the Aegean Sea; one of the Cyclades. The main town is Páros. The land slopes to the coast from Mt. Hagios Ilias (c.2,500 ft/760 m high). Wine, tobacco, figs, and grains are produced on the island. The beautiful white, semitransparent Parian marble, used by sculptors and architects as early as the 6th cent. b.c., is quarried on the mountain. Páros was settled by Ionians and became a maritime power and a center of Aegean trade. In the 7th cent. b.c. it established colonies in Thásos and on the Sea of Marmara. During the Persian Wars, Athens accused Páros of aiding the Persians and captured the island in 479 b.c. Páros was held by the Ottoman Turks from 1537 to 1832, when it joined Greece. Two marble fragments of a great historical inscription, called the Parian Chronicle, have been found on the island. The chronicle was set up after 263 b.c., its terminal date. The larger fragment (covering 1581–354 b.c.) is one of the Arundel Marbles, housed at Oxford, England; the smaller (covering 356–299 b.c.) is in a museum on Páros.

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