Paros is a Greek island in the Cyclades island group of the central Aegean Sea. In Greek mythology, Paros of Parrhasia colonized the island with Arcadians, and it later received from Athens a colony of Ionians who then settled Thasos and Parium on the Hellespont of Anatolia. Paros was the sister island of Naxos and was a dependancy of the latter until the Greco-Persian Wars; in 490 BC, Paros sided with the Persian Empire. The Parians contributed a trireme to the Persian fleet at the Battle of Marathon, and they also repelled an Athenian siege under Miltiades, who was mortally wounded. Paros again supported Persia in 480 BC, and, after the Greek victory, Themistocles exacted a heavy fine from the island as punishment for its treachery. Under the Delian League, marble-rich Paros paid the highest tribute of any of its members, and it was ruled by a boule senate. During the Peloponnesian War, led by Silanos, Paros engaged in a war with the pro-Spartan Naxians under Myrrine, but, after the Battle of Paros (during which Silanos and his fleet perished), Naxos fell under Spartan control. In 410 BC, the Athenian general Theramenes deposed the island's oligarchy and replaced it with a democracy. In 357 BC, along with Chios, it severed its connection with Athens, and it later became part of the Ptolemaic Kingdom, the Roman Empire, and the Byzantine Empire. Following the Fourth Crusade, Paros fell under the rule of the crusader Duchy of the Archipelago, and it was conquered by the Ottoman Turks in 1537 and remained under Turkish rule until the end of the Greek War of Independence in 1832. In 2011, Paros had a population of 13,715 people.
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