Naupactus - History

History

In Greek legend, Naupactos is the place where the Heraclidae built a fleet to invade the Peloponnese.

In historical times it belonged to the Ozolian Locrians; but about 455 BC, in spite of a partial resettlement with Locrians of Opus, it fell to the Athenians, who peopled it with Messenian refugees and made it their chief naval station in western Greece during the Peloponnesian war. Two major battles were fought here. In 404 it was restored to the Locrians, who subsequently lost it to the Achaeans, but recovered it through Epaminondas.

Philip II of Macedon gave Naupactus to the Aetolians, who held it till 191 BC, when after an obstinate siege it was surrendered to the Romans. It was still flourishing about 170, but in Justinian I's reign was destroyed by an earthquake. It was again destroyed by earthquakes in 553 and in the 8th century and so on. From the late 9th century, it was capital of the Byzantine thema of Nicopolis.

In the late Middle Ages it was part of the Despotate of Epirus and for a short period part of the Despotates of Angelokastron (1358–1374) and of Arta (1374–1401) Afterwards it was taken by Venice, who fortified it so strongly that in 1477 it successfully resisted a four-month long siege by a Turkish army of thirty thousand; in 1499, however, it was rumoured to have been sold by the Venetians to the Ottoman Sultan Beyazid II. Under the Ottomans, Naupactos was known as İnebahtı and was the seat of a Turkish sanjak. The mouth of the Gulf of Lepanto was the scene of the great sea battle in which the naval power of the Ottoman Empire was nearly completely destroyed by the united Papal, Spanish, Habsburg and Venetian forces (Battle of Lepanto, October 7, 1571). In 1687 it was recaptured by the Venetians, but was again restored in 1699, by the Treaty of Karlowitz to the Ottomans. It became part of the Kingdom of Greece in March 1829.

Naupactos suffered damage from the 2007 Greek forest fires.