Naxos tours take small groups around Naxos with a skipper or a local expert. The island lies in the central Cyclades. Its past runs from the name Dia to the Delian League and Byzantine frescoes. The myth of Ariadne also belongs to the island. Four short answers cover the Temple of Dionysus, the village of Koronos, Iakovos Kambanellis and Nicodemus the Hagiorite. More Aegean trips appear under Greece island hopping tours and Milos tours. Trips in other regions of Greece are gathered under Greece tours.
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What are Naxos tours?
Naxos tours are skippered, small-group or expert-led trips on a Cyclades island that was once also named Dia. Dia means heavenly or divine. The name passed to Naxos because people widely took it for the wedding island of Dionysus.
Naxos tours unfold on an island that Dionysus guarded as its protector. Dionysus was the Greek god of wine and festivities and of the basic energy of life. The scholar Károly Kerényi notes that Dia was a name given to small craggy islands. Craggy means rough and rocky. Such islets lay near bigger islands like Crete and Naxos.
In about 469 BC, Naxos sought to quit the Delian League, a pact of Greek states. It was the first Greek city-state to make that attempt. Athens quickly crushed the plan and seized the island’s warships. After that, Athens demanded every future payment from Naxos in gold, not military aid.
Naxos tours run on an island that once lay in the Byzantine thema of the Aegean Sea. A thema was a province of the Byzantine Empire. This one was set up in the mid-9th century. Frescoes from the 10th century on Naxos show traces of Muslim artistic influence. Fresco painting puts colour onto fresh, damp plaster.
- Cattle: The geographer al-Idrisi, writing in the 12th century, noted wide cattle raising on Naxos.
- Refugees: People fleeing Antalya and Alanya, on the Anatolian coast, settled on Naxos in the 13th century.
- Turkish name: Under Ottoman rule, the island went by the Turkish name Nakşa.
For Naxos tours, the island’s early commentators in English include Joseph Pitton de Tournefort. His A Voyage Into the Levant came out in 1718. The Levant means the lands of the eastern Mediterranean. Theodore Bent wrote of the island in his 1885 book on the Cyclades.
Which story does Ariadne give Naxos tours?
Naxos tours run on the island where Dionysus found and wedded Ariadne, as Hesiod and others tell it. Hesiod was an early Greek poet. Ancient word experts read her name as very holy, built from old Cretan word parts.
Those word parts are ari, a prefix that adds force, and adnós, meaning holy. The linguist Robert S. P. Beekes holds that the name comes from before Greek, from Minoan Crete. Minoan refers to the early civilisation of Crete. His clue is the letter pair dn, rare in Indo-European languages. Greek and English belong to that Indo-European family.
In the myth behind Naxos tours, King Minos put Ariadne in charge of the labyrinth. A labyrinth is a maze of twisting passages. In the Athenian version, 7 maidens and 7 young men went to the Minotaur as victims. She handed Theseus a sword, plus thread wound in a ball, to retrace his path.
Naxos tours unfold on an island tied to Ariadne’s death in more than one version. In Homer’s Odyssey, Artemis killed Ariadne in Dia, on the word of Dionysus. Dia is commonly identified with Naxos. A Naxian story spoke of a nurse named Korkyne, who came with Ariadne. Its tellers showed the nurse’s tomb on the island.
- Festival: On Naxos, the Ariadneia festival marked the island as her place of death through sacrifice and mourning.
- Rome: Hyginus, a Roman author, matched Ariadne with Libera, bride of the god Liber.
- Opera: Richard Strauss told the Naxos part of her myth in the opera Ariadne auf Naxos, from 1912.
In the scholarship behind Naxos tours, Kerényi saw Ariadne as a Great Goddess of Crete. He held that she was first the Mistress of the Labyrinth. Professor Barry Powell linked her with the Snake Goddess known from Minoan Crete.
What do travellers ask about Naxos tours, and what are the answers?
Naxos tours run on an island whose Temple of Dionysus ranked among the god’s main temples. Koronos, a mountain village, lies in the island’s north-east. Iakovos Kambanellis was born in Hora on Naxos in 1921. Nicodemus the Hagiorite returned to Naxos in 1770.
Before Naxos tours, what was the Temple of Dionysus?
The site served a fertility cult as early as 1400 BC. A fertility cult is worship that seeks rich harvests and healthy births. Excavation, or digging to uncover remains, has gone on there since 1986. Naxos was a cult centre of Dionysus. A cult centre is a main place of worship for a god.
On Naxos tours, what is Koronos?
Koronos lies on the north-east slopes of the Koronion Oros. The Greek word oros simply means mountain. Only one other mountain on Naxos rises higher. Among the island’s villages, Koronos has the second highest altitude, at 630 metres above sea level. Altitude means height above the sea.
For Naxos tours, who was Iakovos Kambanellis?
Kambanellis ranks among the leading Greek playwrights of the 20th century. A playwright is an author of stage plays. He is also called the father of modern Greek theatre. As a lyricist, he wrote the words for more than 100 songs. A lyricist is the writer of a song’s words.
Why is Nicodemus the Hagiorite linked with Naxos tours?
His title, the Hagiorite, means of the Holy Mountain. Nicodemus, who lived from 1749 to 1809, was a Greek monk. The Eastern Orthodox Church honours him as a saint. With Macarius of Corinth, he worked on The Philokalia, a collection of monastic spiritual writings. A monk lives a religious life apart from the world.
Featured photo: Olaf Tausch, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons (File:Portara Naxos 26.jpg).