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Chios

Ionian island whose hundred ships fought on at Lade, 494 BCE

Chios is a large island off the Ionian coast, famous for its wine. It joined the Ionian Revolt, and at Lade in 494 its hundred ships fought on after the Samians and Lesbians fled. The Persians then took the island, and in 479 the Chians joined the Greek alliance after Mycale.

In the game: Chios is named in the Sardis level's Lade texts, where the Chians fight on, and in the chatter about its wine.

A hundred ships at Lade

Ancient account

The Chians brought a hundred ships to Lade, each with forty picked citizens as marines. Herodotus says that when others fled they fought on, breaking through the enemy line again and again, until they had lost most of their ships and the rest escaped home.

Herodotus 6.8, 6.15-16

After the revolt

Ancient account

Histiaeus fell on the Chians who had come home from Lade and killed many. The next year the Persian fleet took Chios, Lesbos and Tenedos and swept the islands, men holding hands across each island to hunt the people out.

Herodotus 6.26-27, 6.31

The tyrant Strattis

Ancient account

In 480 Chios was ruled for Persia by the tyrant Strattis. Herodotus says six Chians who had plotted to kill him fled to the Greek fleet and begged it to sail to Ionia; one of them was named Herodotus.

Herodotus 8.132

Joining the Greeks

Ancient account

After Mycale, the Greeks met at Samos and debated moving the Ionians to Greece. The Athenians refused, and the Samians, Chians, Lesbians and other islanders were taken into the alliance on oath.

Herodotus 9.106

The wine of Chios

In the record

Chian wine was among the most prized in the Greek world, and its amphorae, often marked with a sphinx, are found from the Black Sea to Egypt. Chian coins of the period show a seated sphinx beside an amphora.

Head, Historia Numorum, Ionia: Chios