Chalcis is the chief town on the Greek island of Euboea in the Aegean Sea. In antiquity, Chalcis was rivals with Eretria, and it founded 30 townships on the peninsula of Chalcidice and several important cities in Magna Graecia, including Naxos (Giardini Naxos, Sicily), Rhegion (Reggio, Calabria), and Cumae (Cuma, Campania). Following the Lelantine War, Chalcis conquered Eretria and became the most powerful city on Euboea, but its prosperity was broken by a war with Athens in the early 6th century BC. It subsequently became a member of the Delian League, and it became home to Europe's oldest Jewish community before becoming a Macedonian fortress used by Antiochus III of Syria and Mithridates VI of Pontus for their invasions of Greece in 192 BC and 88 BC, respectively. Chalcis was known as "Euripos" under Roman and Byzantine rule, and it survived an Arab naval raid and siege in 883 AD. In 1209, the Republic of Venice conquered Chalcis following the Fourth Crusade, and it was renamed to "Negroponte". In 1470, the Ottoman Empire conquered Negroponte after a long siege, and a strong Venetian attack in 1688 was repelled. It would become a part of the modern Greek state after the Greek War of Independence in the 1820s, and it came to have a population of 102,223 in 2011.
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