The Turks took the four islands of Cephalonia, Ithake, Zante, and Santa Maura from the Tocchi in 1479, and the attempt of Antonio Tocco to recover his brother’s dominions ended in his murder at the hands of the Ionians. By arrangement with the Sultan the Venetians, who had expelled Antonio’s forces, handed Cephalonia over to the Turks in 1485, but kept Zante, which thus, from 1482 onwards, was governed by them, on payment of an annual tribute of 500 ducats to the Turkish treasury[214]. This tribute ceased in 1699, when the treaty of Carlovitz formally ceded the island, free of payment, to the Republic. The Venetians invited colonists to emigrate thither, in order to fill up the gaps in the population; for the Turks had carried off many of the inhabitants to Constantinople, for the purpose of breeding mulatto slaves for the seraglio by intermarriage with negroes. As there were many homeless exiles at the time, in consequence of the Turkish conquests in the Levant, there was no lack of response to this invitation, and Zante soon became a flourishing community. Its wealth was further increased, in the sixteenth century, by the introduction of the currant from the neighbourhood of Corinth, so that at that period it merited its poetic title of “the flower of the Levant.” Cephalonia did not long remain in Turkish hands. After two futile attempts to take it the Venetians succeeded, in 1500, with the aid of the famous Spanish commander, Gonsalvo de Cordoba, in capturing the island, and at the peace of 1502-3 the Republic was finally confirmed in its possession, which was never afterwards disturbed. Ithake seems to have followed the fate of its larger neighbour. Santa Maura[215], however, though taken two years after Cephalonia, was almost at once restored to the Turks, and did not become Venetian till its capture by Morosini in 1684, which was ratified by the treaty of Carlovitz fifteen years later. It had long been a thorn in the side of the Venetians, as it was, under the Turkish rule, a dangerous nest of pirates, against whom the Corfiotes more than once fitted out punitive expeditions. When Santa Maura was reluctantly given back to the Sultan in 1503, part of the population emigrated to Ithake, then almost desolate[216], and at the same time Cephalonia received an influx of Greeks from the Venetian possessions on the mainland which the Turks had just taken. Kythera, or Cerigo, which is not geographically an Ionian island at all, and is no longer connected with the other six, was the property of the great Venetian family of Venier, which traced its name and origin from Venus, the goddess of Kythera, from 1207, with certain interruptions and modifications, down to the fall of the Republic. These Venetian Marquesses of Cerigo were ousted by the Greeks under Licario after the restoration of Byzantine rule in the South of the Peloponnese in 1262. The Emperor bestowed the island upon Paul Monoyannes, a member of one of