Paxi
Paxos (Greek Παξός ) is a Greek island in the archipelago and community Paxi, which belongs to the group of the Ionian Islands. Paxos is the smallest of the main islands of the archipelago.
Paxos is about 10 kilometers long and only at a few points wider than two kilometers. The highest elevation of about 19 square kilometer island is 248 meters high. On Paxos there are no permanent water-bearing streams and barely sources.
A few kilometers east on the mainland is the small harbor town of Parga.
Approximately two and a half miles south of the main island is Andipaxos, a small island that is constantly inhabited only by about 40 residents.
The main source of income of the inhabitants of the island were formerly in cultivation, although very small, but very aromatic olive and in the recovery of a high quality olive oil. Today, tourism plays a major role in working life of the population. On the other hand, hardly Andipaxos olives are cultivated, whereas two-thirds of the island are covered with vines, which also provide high quality wines in addition to average table wines increasingly.
About half of the approximately 3,000 inhabitants of Paxos lives in the main village of Gaios, in the southeast of the island. Well protected by the two offshore islets Panagia and Agios Nikolaos harbor applied to the ferries from Italy, Corfu and Igoumenitsa. In the north or north-east lie the resorts of Lakka and Longos. Scattered inside the island there are several smaller hamlets and settlements; Magazia is the most important among them.
The east of the island is rather flat and rich in beautiful beaches, the west coast falls into sudden steep drop-outs and cliffs from the sea. There are also some caves and towering, the coast slightly upstream monoliths such as the Ortholithos.
Mythology and History
According to legend, Poseidon with his trident the island from the southern tip of Corfu separated to create a protected love-nest for himself and his beloved Amphitrite. Therefore, the trident is also the emblem of the island.
From early history nothing is known, but Paxos was colonized in the wake of the Greek hikes at least temporarily. Very likely was Paxos, as well as some other Ionian Islands also, in the first centuries of the last millennium before the Christian era, a Phoenician colony, there is evidence suggesting that the name Paxos goes back to the Phoenician word paks, which means trapezoidal and the island shape from describes the sea as seen. Subsequently Paxos shares the fate of the large neighboring island of Corfu.
In the waters around Paxos some significant battles took place, the battle between Corinth and Kerkyra in 432 BC, up to this date largest naval battle in the ancient world. The occupation of Corfu and its neighboring islands by Illyrian pirates in 229 BC led to the first direct intervention of Rome in Greek affairs. 31 BC to Mark Antony and Cleopatra, have stopped on the run, after the lost Battle of Actium few days in Gaios.
The next thousand years are largely in the dark of the story, it seems that the settlement continuity never to be demolished. Liutprand of Cremona chose Paxos as home to write in a quiet atmosphere on his histories. 1386 fell Paxos to Venice. During the clashes of the West against the expansion of the Ottoman Empire also Paxos had been hard hit. 1537 plundered Turkish troops, who were under the command of Khair ad-Din Barbarossa, the island. The population was massacred or enslaved, only few managed to escape to neighboring islands. 1571, the island was again hit and sacked by a Turkish fleet. 1797 ended the rule of Venice.
From 1797 Paxos shared the fate of the other Ionian Islands. After a brief French occupation it was conquered in 1799 by Russians and Ottomans. Tsar Paul I made from the islands, the Republic of the Seven United Islands. During the Napoleonic Wars, the islands only by the French (1806 ) were - who founded the short-lived Republic of Ionian here - and later by the British ( 1809/1810 ) occupied. This they converted 1815 United State of the Seven Ionian Islands in an independent state under British protection order. The inhabitants of Paxos took very intense part in the Greek War of Independence. Particularly venerated on Paxos Georgios Anemoyiannis who fell as captain of a small battleship before Naupaktos at the age of 23 years. 1864 came Paxos with the other Ionian Islands at the request of the population, and following a vote of the Ionian Parliament in Greece.
The hypothetical ancient paxonische Parliament
In a scientific article distributed computing Leslie Lamport has a parliament on an island in the Aegean Sea Paxos names invented (! ); this attempt to enrich a dry scientific articles with humor is a failure today by himself ( dismal failure) viewed.
His article posits that recent archaeological research have promoted information about the ancient Parliament in Paxos days. Parliamentarians in ancient Paxos would their activity only sporadically. A geschaffes of mathematicians of the time and proved mathematically rules would have solved the problem as yet reliable votes on laws would have been possible.
This algorithm Lamport developed for votes in distributed computer systems; he is now called Paxos algorithm.