The island in ancient times contained an Ionian population, perhaps with an admixture of Thracian blood. Though originally dependent on Eretria, by the 7th century B.C. it had become sufficiently prosperous to send out several colonies to Chalcidice (Acanthus, Stageirus, Argilus, Sane). In 480 it supplied ships to Xerxes and was subsequently harried by the Greek fleet. Though enrolled in the Delian League it remained disaffected towards Athens, and in 447 had to be coerced by the settlement of a cleruchy. In 411 Andros proclaimed its freedom and in 408 withstood an Athenian attack. As a member of the second Delian League it was again controlled by a garrison and an archon. In the Hellenistic period Andros was contended for as a frontier-post by the two naval powers of the Aegean Sea, Macedonia and Egypt. In 333 it received a Macedonian garrison from Antipater; in 308 it was freed by Ptolemy I. In the Chremonidean War (266-263) it passed again to Macedonia after a battle fought off its shores. In 200 it was captured by a combined Roman, Pergamene and Rhodian fleet, and remained a possession of Pergamum until the dissolution of that kingdom in 133 B.C. Before falling under Turkish rule, Andros was from A.D. 1207 till 1566 governed by the families Zeno and Sommariva under Venetian protection.
ANDROTION (c. 350 B.C.), Greek orator, and one of the leading politicians of his time, was a pupil of Isocrates and a contemporary of Demosthenes. He is known to us chiefly from the speech of Demosthenes, in which he was accused of illegality in proposing the usual honour of a crown to the Council of Five Hundred at the expiration of its term of office. Androtion filled several important posts, and during the Social War was appointed extraordinary commissioner to recover certain arrears of taxes. Both Demosthenes and Aristotle (_Rhet._ iii. 4) speak favourably of his powers as an orator. He is said to have gone into exile at Megara, and to have composed an _Atthis_, or annalistic account of Attica from the earliest times to his own days (Pausanias vi. 7; x. 8). It is disputed whether the annalist and orator are identical, but an Androtion who wrote on agriculture is certainly a different person. Professor Gaetano de Sanctis (in _L'Attide di Androzione e un papiro di Oxyrhynchos_, Turin, 1908) attributes to Androtion, the atthidographer, a 4th-century historical fragment, discovered by B.P. Grenfell and A.S. Hunt (_Oxyrhynchus Papyri_, vol. v.). Strong arguments against this view are set forth by E.M. Walker in the _Classical Review_, May 1908.