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The island owes its name to Kefalos, the first king of the region during the Palaeolithic era. According to the locals, this king founded the four main cities of the island, which were Sami, Pachli, Krani and Pronoi and named them after his sons. This explains why the island was called Tetrapolis (i.e. four towns) during this period. In antiquity, Kefalonia participated in the Persian and Peloponnesian War alongside both Athens and Sparta. The Romans occupied the island in 187 BC after months of fighting against the resistance of the island's inhabitants. At that time the Ancient Acropolis of Sami was destroyed. The Romans used the island as a strategic point that would help them conquer the mainland. During this period, Kefalonia suffered a lot and often from invasions and pirate raids. The threat of pirates continued to increase during the Byzantine period while in the 11th century, the island came under the rule of the Venetians and the Spaniards. The capital moved to Argostoli and still is to this day. The Venetian rule ended in 1797 with the arrival of the French. After the Treaty of Paris, in 1809, the Ionian Islands came under the rule of the English and the Ionian State was founded. Despite the fact that Cephalonia, like the other Ionian Islands, remained under British rule and escaped the Turkish yoke, its inhabitants helped financially the Greek Revolution for independence from the Ottomans who dominated the rest of Greece. Cephalonia was finally united with the rest of independent Greece in 1864, at the same time as the rest of the Ionian Islands.
