Paros

An island of southeast Greece in the Aegean Sea. One of the Cyclades, it was settled by Ionians and later founded colonies of its own in the seventh century B.C. The island was held by the Ottoman Turks from 1537 to 1832, when it became part of Greece. A fine white, semitranslucent marble quarried on the island was used by sculptors as early as the sixth century B.C. The marble tablet known as the Parian Chronicle (found in 1627) outlines in two fragments the history of Greece from 1581 to 299 B.C.