The Cyclades: Discovering the Greek Islands of the Aegean

by John Freely

The Cyclades are the quintessential Greek isles, renowned for the beauty of their seascapes, their historical monuments, and a unique way of life deeply rooted in the remote past of the Aegean. Over the course of more than 7,000 years the Cyclades have seen a succession of civilizations, the earliest of them perpetuated in legends such as that of Atlantis, which has been identified with volcanic Santorini. The islands are arrayed around their sacred centre on Delos, where Leto was said to have given birth to the divine twins Apollo and Artemis, children of Zeus. Dionysus was born on olive-embowered Naxos, where he fell in love with Ariadne, and myths relate that Poseidon was the protector of Tinos, whose mid-summer festival of the Virgin is celebrated with the folk-dances and songs for which the Cyclades are famous. In this comprehensive guide to the Cyclades, John Freely describes the immemorial past and timeless present of these enchanting islands, which still await discovery.

Genres: Greece

264 pages, Paperback

First published June 4, 2006

About the author

John Freely was born in 1926 in Brooklyn, New York to Irish immigrant parents, and spent half of his early childhood in Ireland. He dropped out of high school when he was 17 to join the U. S. Navy, serving for two years, including combat duty with a commando unit in the Pacific, India, Burma and China during the last year of World War II. After the war, he went to college on the G. I. Bill and eventually received a Ph.D. in physics from New York University, followed by a year of post-doctoral study at Oxford in the history of science. He worked as a research physicist for nine years, including five years at Princeton University. In 1960 he went to İstanbul to teach physics at the Robert College, now the Boğaziçi University, and taught there until 1976. He then went on to teach and write in Athens (1976-79), Boston (1979-87), London (1987-88), İstanbul (1988-91) and Venice (1991-93). In 1993 he returned to Boğaziçi University, where he taught a course on the history of science. His first book, co-authored by the late Hilary Sumner-Boyd, was Strolling Through İstanbul (1972). Since then he has published more than forty books.

Reviews

[Pete daPixie · Rating 3 out of 5]

John Freely is American, the author of around forty books on popular travel and the history of Greece and Turkey. Now in his late eighties, he is still at it. 'The Cyclades-Discovering the Greek Islands of the Aegean' was published as recently as 2006 and since then he has written on the Ionian Islands, published in 2008.
The historical, cultural and geographic detail in this book covers more than seven thousand years of settlement in the Cyclades, from Neolithic, Minoan, Persian, Classic Greek, Roman, Byzantine, Venetian and Ottoman rules as well as Italian and German occupations in WWII and right through to the late twentieth century tourist boom.
The author covers each island in the group in fifteen chapters, and it appears there is hardly a village or town or archaeological site or beach that he has missed. Perhaps this is one of the books faults. Some of this detail can become somewhat repetitious, as each islands capital is called Chora, with the attendant fortified construction called Kastro. However, this is much more than just a travel guide. For instance in his history of the island of Melos he writes, "Melos prospered more than most of the Cyclades, since it was the home of many of the mariners employed by the corsairs, most of them French, who at the time were the scourge of the Aegean. One of these corsairs, a Greek named Captain Ioannis Kapsis, made himself master of Melos in 1677, but three years later he was captured by the Turks and executed in Istanbul. Turkish retribution then made life intolerable for the Melians, causing a large number of them, together with refugees from Samos, to sail off to England under the leadership of the Archbishop of Melos, Georgirenes. When the islanders arrived in London they were welcomed by the Duke of York, the future King James II, who allowed them to buy homes in what is now Soho's Greek Street, which takes its name from them. Soon afterwards they bought a plot on Hog Lane, afterwards to be called Crown Street, where they built the first Greek Orthodox church in England."
Throughout Freely refers back to the likes of Apollonius of Rhodes and his 'Voyage of Argo', as well as Herodotus and Homer or James Bent's 'Aegean Islands' from 1885.
My 'old man' sailed and battled in the Aegean in WWII, I have for too long held a fancy to visit. The final paragraph of this book sums it up. "These are the Cyclades, the islands at the centre of the Aegean world, the lost empire of the sea that awaits discovery at the end of the mule track."