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MELOS (Italian Milo), one of the smallest Greek islands, would scarcely be known at all except to specialists in geography or ancient history, had not a happy accident brought to light on one of its hillsides that most beautiful piece of sculpture which ever since its discovery has been known as the Venus of Milo.

Melon means apple, and the island of Melos (the “apple island”) belongs to the Cyclades, being the most southern and western member of that group. It lies almost straight west from the southern tip of the Peloponnesus and in a direction south to south-west from Athens.

Melos was inhabited in ancient times by Dorians who sympathized with Sparta against Athens, but when the Athenians conquered it after a most stubborn resistance they slaughtered the entire Dorian male population and replaced them by Athenian colonists. Since then the island remained absolutely faithful to Athens, in fact it was the last possession which still belonged to Athens when the Ionian confederacy broke up, and the friendly relations between Melos and her metropolis continued even after Greece had become a Roman province.