Although the ancient writers attest that Zakynthos was inhabited during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries BC,Thucydides mentions that the first settlers were Achaians from the Peloponnese,we have only mythological sources to account for the island's prehistoric years. Even these, however, may well contain grains of historical truth. One of these traditional accounts, mentioned also by Homer, tells of Zakynthos, son of Dardanos, the ancestor of the kings of Troy (whose parents were Zeus and Atlas' daughter Elektra) arriving with men and ships from the Arcadian town of Psophida, building and fortifying an acropolis which he called Psophida, and giving his name to the island.
Pliny quotes another tradition, according to which the island was originally called Iria, after earlier settlers led by the Arcadian hero Irieas. The general conclusion seems to be that the first inhabitants of Zakynthos came from the Peloponnese, even though one school of thought believes Pliny's Iria to be the Iria in Boeotia.
There have been various theories concerning the origin of the name Zakynthos, besides that given by Homer. The scholar Wood derives it from the words za, which is ancient Greek for town, and kynthos, meaning hill, and justifies his opinion by the hilly topography of the island. Another scholar believes, albeit mistakenly,that the name originated with the hyacinth flower which has been known to grow on the island for as long as there are records. Other researchers have found variants of the name Zakynthos, such as Diakynthos, lakynthos, Diakythos, Zakyta and, written in Latin characters, Jacinthum, Jantes, Lesante, Giante, Creti, Ganti, Sante and others, which latter names appear to be corruptions or misrenderings.
A mythological tale tries to account for the cults of Apollo and Artemis on Zakynthos. It tells of how Artemis, goddess of wild life and virgin huntress, loved roaming the rich forests of Zakynthos, while her brother Apollo, god of light and music but also of archery, was equally charmed by the island and sat among the laurel trees with his followers, playing the lyre. The worship of these two gods on Zakynthos as also of Dionysus and Aphrodite, took the form of grand festivals and contests in their honour.
When the Arcadian settlers arrived on the island, they built fortifications and prospered sufficiently to be able to send out colonists of their own. Their ships took them to the shores of Spain, where they founded a daughter city which they called Zakantha. This became a flourishing commercial and cultural town which prospered for more than a thousand years. In 218 BC it was besieged by Hannibal and a force of 15,000 soldiers. The inhabitants bravely withstood the siege for eight months and managed to inflict considerable damage on Hannibal's forces. In the end, hunger forced them to make a desperate break-out. Hannibal proceeded to level the whole of Zakantha to the ground, leaving only the temple of Artemis, who was warshipped in the colony as she had been in the mother-city.
Other settlers from Zakynthos founded the town of Kidonies on Crete, a colony on Paros island and, jointly with the Phocaeans, the town of Phokida (or Parnassia) on the Pyrrenean headland in Spain. Later on in the prehistoric period, Zakynthos was successively ruled by Arkeisios, king of Kefalonia, by Laertis, and Laertis' son Odysseus, Homer's king of Ithaca. Odysseus' people from Ithaki, Kephalonia, Lefkada and Akarnania sent a total of twelve ships to the war with Troy, and Homer in the Iliad is not sparing with his praises of their courage. He refers to them under the general name of 'Kefalines'. After the end of the Trojan War and when Odysseus had finally returned to Ithaca, Homer tells of the destruction by Odysseus of his wife Penelope's importunate suitors. The account in the Odyssey mentions the killing of twenty young men from Zakynthos. It seems that Homer's tale of the suitors reflects what was in fact a revolt of the islands, which resulted in the end of Odysseus' rule over them. Neoptolemus (who at Troy had killed king Priam), was the intermediary who organised the signing of a treaty giving the islands their independence in return for an annual tribute tax. The Neoptolemus treaty was the first such in Greek history which established the independence of a country and provided for its democratic rule.