Tenedos

An island in the Aegean Sea near the entrance to the Dardanelles.

The island is now called Bozcaada; with an area of 15 square miles (39 square kilometers) it is a relatively small island approximately 16 miles (26 kilometers) south of the Dardanelles and in close proximity to the city of Troy.

When the Greek fleet was sailing to Troy, they stopped at Tenedos; while feasting, one of the Greek soldiers, Philoktetes (Philoktetes), was bitten by a venomous snake; Philoktetes was taken to the island of Lemnos and left until his wound could heal while the others went on to attack Troy.

When the Greeks plundered Tenedos, a woman named Hekamede (Hecamede) was taken by Akhilleus (Achilles) as a slave and given to the old warrior, Nestor.

During the Trojan War, Poseidon (lord of the Sea) hid his chariot in a cave between the islands of Tenedos and Imbros.

After ten years of bitter fighting, Troy was still un-assailed and the Greeks were in turmoil; the god, Apollon (Apollo) was punishing the Greeks for their ill treatment of his priest, Khryses (Chryses), and when Khryses prayed to Apollon he referred to the god as the lord of Tenedos.

After the Greeks had reduced Troy to ashes, they made preparations to return the their homes; the Greek commander, Agamemnon, stayed at Troy and tried, unsuccessfully, to appease the goddess Athene (Athena) with sacrifices for the desecration of her temple but others left Troy as quickly as possible and made their sacrifices on Tenedos.

In historical times, while putting down the revolt of the Greek colonies in Ionia, the Persian king, Darius, sent his fleet to Tenedos and used a method called “netting” to capture and enslave the inhabitants; netting was a successful maneuver that the Persians used exclusively on islands; the Persian soldiers would join hands and march from one side of an island to the other and snare all the inhabitants regardless of where they were hiding.

Fifteen years later, when the Persians were preparing to invade Greece (circa 480 BCE), the people of Tenedos, having only one city on the island, were not threatened by the Persian king Kyrus (Cyrus) because he did not see them as an asset or an enemy.

Approximate east longitude 26.04 and north latitude 39.50.

• Kypria, fragment 1
• Histories, book 1, chapter 151; book 6, chapter 31
• Odyssey, book 3, line 159
• Iliad, book 1, lines 38 and 452; book 11 line 624; book 13, line 33