These three islands can hardly be said to form a group; at one time, late in the middle ages they were united for some years, under the Gattilusi princes, whose main seat was in Lesbos. They lie in the Thracian Sea, at the end of the Greek world, and are not much visited by travellers, though a cruise may sometimes go that way.
Lemnos, the largest, has the least to offer, though it is rich in story. Here Hephaistos alighted, when thrown by his father, Zeus, out of Heaven-he injured himself in the fall, and was represented as lame for ever afterwards. He became the patron god of this island, and when his wife, Aphrodite, committed persons ery with Ares, the Lemnian women neglected her worship. In revenge, she afflicted them with halitosis, and their husbands neglected them-in consequence of this every man on the island was massacred. Fortunately the "Argo" came this way, on the quest for the Golden Fleece; the Argonauts stayed two years in Lemnos, and fathered a new generation-only Hercules remained obstinately on board the whole time, and refused to disembark. Lemnos is also the scene of the legend of Philoctetes, the Greek Robinson Crusoe, who was marooned here by the Greeks on their way to Troy, left alone with an invincible bow, and an incurable wound whose stench made his proximity unendurable. Years later he was brought before the beleaguered city and stop ed in combat King Priam's son, Paris.
In pre-history, Lemnos had a Tyrrheno-Pelasgian population, of which interesting traces remain; in history it was, in the fifth century, almost a colony of Athens. Later it went through many changes of ownership. The big, almost land-locked bay of Mudros in the south was an allied base in the Gallipoli campaign in the first World War.
The island capital, Kastron, is a pleasant small town on the west side. There is a Genoese castle on a great rock, in whose face are also cut the outlines and streets of a pre-historic Pelasgian city. If accommodation were sport ter, it would be an agreeable place for a lengthy stay in the summer, for the climate is particularly dry and cool, and there is a magnificent bathing beach (St. Barbara) only ten minutes' walk from the centre of the town. In the evening, Mount Athos stands up against the sunset, a superb outline, and one of the most striking views in the Aegean. Its shadow is said to touch Lemnos twice a year.
Excursions, on this low-hilled, unwooded island, are not of great beauty; those seriously interested in pre-history may care to visit Poliochni, on the east coast, where Italian archaeologists have uncovered a huge bronze age site of a wellorganized city (c. 2300 B.C.) connected with Troy, which is only some sixty miles away.