According to one tradition, the name Athos comes from the Giant Athos, who, during the Battle of Gods and Giants, flung a great rock at Poseidon, which landed where the peninsula is today. Another tradition relates that Poseidon flung a huge rock at Athos, which crushed him at the place where the mountain stands today.

Homer mentions Athos in the Iliad (Rhapsody 219). Herodotos lists the following ancient cities in the area of Athos: Sane, Holophyxos, Akrothoon, Thyssos, and Kleonai. Strabon also mentions the city of Charadria, while Pliny, several centuries later, refers to the cities of Ouranoupolis, Palaiotrion, Thysson, Kleonas, and Apollonia.

It is not easy to determine the sites of these cities. Most scholars place Sane on the site of Trypiti, hard by the canal of Xerxes; Dion at Platys Yalos near Ierissos in the Bay of Ierissos; Holophyxos on the east coast of the peninsula; Akrothoon near the Athos headland; Thyssos in the area of Docheiariou and Konstamonitou Monasteries, and Kleonai near Xiropotamou. Charadria was probably near Vatopedi.

These cities were chiefly inhabited by Thracians and Pelasgians. All were subjugated by Philip II of Macedon. Later on, in 168 bc, they were taken over by the Romans, like the rest of Macedonia. Most of the cities mentioned above were destroyed before the Romans arrived, but some of them must still have been inhabited in the centuries which followed, because they have yielded finds from the Early Christian period.

At the end of the 9^th century, there were many hermits and small monastic communities on Athos, chiefly in the area of the isthmus. Two notable recluses were Peter the Athonite and Euthymios of Thessalonike. According to a sigillion of Basil I, now lost, Kolobou Monastery was founded in this period (872) near Ierissos.

In 911, the seat of the Protos—“the ‘kathedra of the elders’”—was transferred from near the Canal of Xerxes to a new site, Mese (‘middle’), as Karyes was called then. The transfer was probably due to an increase in the number of monks and to the fact that monasticism had by now spread over the entire Athos peninsula. Mese was the residence of the Protos, who was elected by the monks of all the monasteries and was the spiritual leader. He wielded ecclesiastical power, took part in the patriarchal councils, and had the right to ordain priests and to appoint and dismiss abbots.

All the same, the state of monasticism in the first half of the 9^th century was not good. Most of the monks were still hermits, living in improvised huts, eating the fruits of wild trees, and suffering the effects of frequent pirate raids. This situation changed with the arrival of St Athansios the Athonite.

The Monastery of Simonos Petra as seen by Vassilios Barski during his visit to Athos in 1744

In the 11th and 12th centuries, Athos became one of the most important monastic centres in the Byzantine Empire. Many monasteries were founded and the Byzantine emperors issued chrysobulls and sigillia granting them numerous privileges and vast tracts of farmland. At the time when the monastic communities in Asia Minor were being wiped out by Seljuk Turk raids, on Athos the coenobia were flourishing and their landed property was constantly increasing, as was their influence. The tradition of the ascetic hermits also remained very much alive. After the armies of the Fourth Crusade had seized Constantinople, the Latins settled in Greece, bringing down such tribulations on the Athonite monasteries that the monks were forced to seek the protection of Pope Innocent III. But even after Michael VIII Palaiologos had liberated Constantinople, the Athonites continued to suffer, because they opposed the Byzantine emperorsÀ efforts to pursue the union of the Roman Catholic and Orthodox Churches.

In the 14^th century, Mount Athos faced great perils, but nonetheless prospered and flourished. Early in the century, the mercenaries of the Catalan Grand Company raided the Holy Mountain for two years (1307–9), sacking many monasteries, plundering the treasures of Christendom, and terrorising the monks. Of the 300 monasteries on Athos at the beginning of the 14^th century, only 35 were left by the end. In the middle of the century, however, Macedonia came into the hands of the Serbian ruler Stefan Dushan, who visited Mount Athos and gave many of the monasteries his financial support. New monasteries were founded, churches and refectories were frescoed, and the quality of monastic life improved, owing to the emergence of the Hesychast movement.

The monks of Mount Athos accepted Hesychasm. According to Gregory of Sinai, the founder of hesychia, monks could see the ‘uncreated light of God’, the light that shone about Christ at his Transfiguration on Mount Tabor, if they were virtuous and devoted themselves exclusively to prayer, seated from morn to eve in the same place, concentrating and repeating silently the prayer ‘Lord Jesus Christ have mercy on me’. The hope that they could thus come close to God was perhaps a reaction to the ever increasing external dangers and the collapse of the Byzantine Empire. The issue of Hesychasm divided Byzantine society. Some zealously embraced it, others violently rejected it, mainly because of the excesses of some zealots. Hesychasm was also supported by the Byzantine aristocrats and ultimately prevailed at three councils (in 1341, 1347, 1351). Gregorios Palamas, formerly a monk on Mount Athos, then Archbishop of Thessalonike and a supporter of Hesychasm, was elevated to sainthood, as were many other Hesychast leaders. The efforts made by Barlaam the monk and Emperor Andronikos III to combat the Hesychast movement and limit its spread were unsuccessful, on Mount Athos at least.

Gregorios Palamas

The Ottoman Turks first appeared on Mount Athos at the end of the 14^th century, and it became part of the Ottoman Empire early in the 15^th. The monks managed to secure their privileges, their administrative autonomy, and their landed property from Sultan Murad II and his successors, but they were obliged to pay an annual poll tax (haraci), as well as very high extra taxes.

Despite the Sultans’ occasional formal guarantees, the Ottomans still made two attempts to seize the Athonite monasteries’ immovable property, the first by Murad in 1432–3 and the second by Selim II in 1568. On both occasions, the monks managed to redeem their land by handing over large sums of money.

The uncertainty of the times, together with the high taxes, reduced the number of monks, and a number of monasteries were abandoned, the monks preferring to live in kellia and sketae. The remaining monasteries were obliged to convert from the coenobitic to the idiorrhythmic system. An attempt by the Oecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople to reconvert them to the coenobitic system at the end of the 16^th century met with no lasting success. In the 16^th century and the first half of the 17^th, the monasteries were quite unable to maintain their monks and pay off their debts. By the second half of the 17^th century, however, the abbots were turning to the rulers of Russia, Wallachia, and Moldavia, who began to make generous donations to the Athonite monasteries.

With the end of the War of Independence, peace and calm returned to Athos, and the number of monks began to increase. Many of them were not Greeks, in fact, but Bulgarians, Serbs, Russians, Romanians, and other nationalities. Some Slavonic countries, Russia first and foremost, saw this as an opportunity to extend their influence into the area, donating large sums of money to rebuild old monasteries and establish new sketae. Zographou Monastery thus came under Bulgarian influence, Chelandari under Serbian influence, and St Panteleimon under Russian influence. The Bulgarians also founded the coenobitic Bogoroditsa Skete, the Russians the coenobitic Skete of St Andrew, and the Romanians the coenobitic Skete of St John the Baptist.

Ottoman rule ended in 1912, when the First Balkan War broke out. A Greek naval squadron landed at Daphne and occupied the area. The international conferences which followed the Balkan Wars were unable to clarify the status of Mount Athos. The Treaty of Lausanne eventually recognized Athos as being under Greek sovereignty, but as ‘a self-governing part of the Greek state’.

When the Germans occupied Greece during the Second World War, the Epistassia, the four-member executive committee appointed annually by the Holy Community, asked Hitler to place Mount Athos under his personal protection, and he agreed. So the German and Bulgarian conquerors did not interfere with Mount Athos. After the Germans had withdrawn, Athos was briefly under the sway of the partisans, before the Greek authorities took over.