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Delos

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 August 2012

Extract

The island of Delos is rather less than four miles long from north to south, with a greatest breadth of about a mile and a half. In its midst the granite platform of Cynthus rises to a height of some 350 feet above the sea-level. From the summit of Cynthus, looking westward, there is a view of rare beauty and surpassing interest. The narrow plain which extends along the western shore of the island was once covered by the ancient town of Delos. Near its middle point, a little to our right, and not far from the principal harbour, stood the temple of Apollo, with a cluster of sacred buildings surrounding it, in the brightness of Parian marble. The larger island of Rheneia, separated from Delos by a channel with an average breadth of half a mile, lies parallel with it on the west, but projects beyond it on the north,—veiling it from those who approach in a straight course from Syra. The two islets in this strait between Delos and Rheneia are now called Rheumatiari (ῥευματιάρια), ‘the channel isles’; the largest and southernmost once bore the name of Hecate, being the place where the women of Delos made their offerings of cakes to that goddess.

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Copyright © The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies 1880

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References

page 8 note 1 ἱστίη ὦ νήσων: Hymn. Del. 325.

page 9 note 1 Orac. Sibyll. iii. 363, ed. C. Alexandre. Samos lost its privileges as a free state in the reign of Vespasian; and the decay of its ancient prosperity seems to have commenced about the end of the first century A.D. Tertullian paraphrases this verse (de pallio 2, inter insulas nulla iam Delos, harena Samos), which must therefore be older than about 200 A.D.

page 10 note 1 Two marbles, now at Oxford, bear inscriptions of which the origin has hitherto been doubtful: one (Corp. Insc. Gr. 2860), a list of gifts to Apollo, was attributed by Böckh to Ephesus; the other (C. I. G. 2953 b), containing the accounts of a temple called the Artemision, was ascribed by Böckh to Ephesus, by Corsini to Homolle, Smyrna. M. has shown that the first certainly, the second presumably, belongs to Delos (Bulletin de Corr. hellén. vol. ii. p. 321 f).Google Scholar

page 11 note 1 They are principally these:— Expédition scientifique de Morée, edited by Blouet, M. (Paris, 1838)Google Scholar; vol. iii. contains 23 plates relating to Delos, with a brief prefatory notice of the state in which the island was found.—Recherches sur Délos, by Lebégue, M. J. Albert (Paris, 1876).—Bulletin de Correspondance helléniqueGoogle Scholar: the following articles by M. Th. Homolle, giving details of his excavations at Delos, and of inscriptions or sculptures found there: —vol. i. (1877), pp. 219, 279; vol. ii. (1878), p. 1, 397; vol. iii. (1879), pp. 1, 99, 116, 290, 360, 473, 515; vol. iv. (1880), pp. 29, 182, 320 345, 471: by M. O. Riemann;—vol. i. p. 81: by M. Ernest Renan;—vol. iv. p. 69.—Monuments grecs, No. 7 (1878), Les Fouilles de Délos, by Homolle, M. Th. (pp. 25—63).—La Chronologi athénienne à DélosGoogle Scholar, by Dumont, M. Albert (Rev. archéol. 1873, xxvi. 257)Google Scholar.—Articles on the grotto of Cynthus, by Burnouf, M. Émile (Rev. archéol. Aug. 8, 1873)Google Scholar, and Adler, Hr. (Archaeolog. Zeitung, ed.Curtius, and Schöne, , vol. viii. p. 59, May, 1875)Google Scholar.

page 12 note 1 Od. vi. 162.

page 12 note 2 Lebégue, M. (p. 225) has collected the ancient sources for the myth. Virgil (Aen. iii. 80) marks the essential point,—that Anius is ‘rex idem hominum Phoebique sacerdos.’Google Scholar

page 13 note 1 Tzetzes, ad Lycophr. 370Google Scholar (Cycl. fragmenta, ed. Didot, p. 593). We are reminded of the name Oeneus derived from οἴνη, the vine-plant, his son being called φύτιος (Hecataeus in Müller, , Frag. Hist. Gr. i. 26)Google Scholar. Can οἰνοτρόφοι have been corrupted to οἰνοτρόποι, and the fable invented to explain the latter?

page 13 note 2 Ῥοιώ (ῥοιά, pomegranate) is the Danae of the story, and her father Στάφυλος is the Acrisius (Tzetzes, l.c.).

page 13 note 3 The name of Astartê is given to Delos only by Latin mythographers of the decadence (Lebégue, p. 21); but the associations which suggested it may have been very ancient.

page 14 note 1 Olen had composed hymns to this goddess (Paus. ix. 27, 2), in whom the character of an Hyperborean Artemis seems blended with that of a Cretan Aphrodite.

page 14 note 2 Theognis, , v. 7; Callim. Hymn. Del. (τροχόεσσα) 261Google Scholar; In Apoll. 59 (περιηγής): cp. Her. ii. 170.

page 14 note 3 Callim. l.c. 206; Paus. ii. 5. 2. Tournefort heard a local legend that the spring in the N.E. of Delos was fed by the Jordan. But the same thing was said also of a spring in Mykonos (Lebégue, p. 116).

page 14 note 4 Thuc. iii. 104; Lebégue, p. 75. Carians preceded Ionians in other places which afterwards became seats of Apollo's worship—as at Tralles, Colophon, Claros, and Miletus.

page 15 note 1 Pind. frag. 58 (from a παιὰν προσοδιακός, a paean to be sung during the procession to Apollo's Delian temple). Her. (vi. 98) had been told at Delos of an earthquake said to have occurred there in 490 B.C. Thuc. (ii. 8) mentions another ‘shortly before’ 431 B.C. Each is the first and only earthquake. The statements cannot, and need not, be reconciled. By ascribing their own tremors to their island the Delians maintained its divine prestige, and marked their recurring sense of a crisis.

page 15 note 2 Hom. Hymn. Apoll. 121.

page 16 note 1 Callim. Hymn. Del. 285 ff.

page 16 note 2 Eustath., ad Od. xii. 252Google Scholar, who says that the Delian women offered dainties to Brizo: Hesych. At Delphi, as M. Lebégue notes (p. 117), divination by dreams is found in early rivalry with the oracle of Apollo (cp. Eur. I. T. 1250 f.): at Delos there is no trace of such a conflict.

page 17 note 1 v. 30,

page 18 note 1 vv. 143—161. The Δηλιάδες ‘know how to imitate the voices of all men, and the sounds of their castanets’ (κρεμβαλιαστύν—i.e. the measures of their dances): ‘each man would say that he was speaking himself, so wondrous is the weaving of their lay’: ib. 162–165. This has been referred to ventriloquism (?). At any rate, it suggests the variety of the elements which composed the Pan-Ionic gathering.

page 18 note 2 Thus Lysias, , Or. xxxiii. § 2, is accurate in speaking of γνώμης ἐπίδειξιν: cp. the note in my ‘Selections from the Attic Orators,’ p. 188.Google Scholar

page 19 note 1 Speaking of the reign of Gyges, whose accession he would place about 716 B.C., Professor E. Curtius says, ‘the federal festival on Delos, which had formerly united the Ionians on either side of the sea, had long lost all its significance’ (vol. ii. 104, tr. Ward). For Thucydides, the festival already belongs to a past age, of which ‘Homer’ is the chief witness (iii. 104).

page 19 note 2 Euseb., Chron. ii. (sub ann. 500 after Abraham)Google Scholar; other accounts make him merely erect a statue. See Lebégue, p. 223.

page 19 note 3 Her. i. 64.

page 19 note 4 Thuc. iii. 104.

page 20 note 1 Her. vi. 97.

page 20 note 2 Thuc. i. 96.

page 20 note 3 Corpus Inscr. Att. i. No. 283. The inscription gives the accounts of the officials who administered the sacred revenues in Ol. 86, 3, 4.

page 21 note 1 Thuc. iii. 104.

page 21 note 2 Plutarch, , Apophth. Lacon., i. (p. 230 D)Google Scholar; The last word seems corrupt. I would read, οὔτε κείσεται;

page 23 note 1 Thuc. vii. 77.

page 23 note 2 Plutarch, , Nicias, 3.Google Scholar

page 23 note 3 Bulletin de Correspondance hellénique, vol. iii. p. 12.

page 23 note 4 Hellen. ii. 3, §§ 9, 10.

page 23 note 5 xii. 73.

page 24 note 1 Corp. Inscr. Graec. 158, 159. The library of Trinity College, Cambridge, contains the original Marmor Sandvicense, so called because it was brought to England, and presented to the college, by John, Lord Sandwich, in 1739. Under that name it was first described by Dr. John Taylor (Cambridge, 1743): see also Rose, , Inscr. Graec. (1825), p. 313Google Scholar. The opening words are Then follow (1) receipts from communities (chiefly insular) and individuals; (2) expenses connected with the worship of the Delian Apollo; (3) arrears due from the public and private debtors. The whole statement covers the four years ending with the archonship of Socratides (374 B.C.).

page 25 note 1 Schäfer, , Demosth. u. seine Zeit, vol. ii. pp. 346 f.Google Scholar: the fragments of the Δηλιακός of Hypereides in Sauppe, , Frag. Or. Att. p. 285Google Scholar.

page 25 note 2 Le Bas, , Voy. archéol., Inscr. att. no. 245, l. 31.Google Scholar

page 25 note 3 Homolle, M., Bulletin de Corr. hellén, vol. ii. p. 582Google Scholar. The doubt, which appears to me well-founded, is expressed by M. Lebégue, p. 301, note.

page 26 note 1 Corp. Inscr. Graec. 3067.

page 26 note 2 Bulletin de Corr. hellén. vol. iii. p. 379: a dedication by parents in honour of their daughter,

page 26 note 3 About fifty decrees of προξενία have been found, of which some thirty are complete: see Homolle, M., Monuments grecs, No. 7, p. 38Google Scholar; Bulletin de Corr. h. vol. i. p. 279, where some specimens are given in full.

page 26 note 4 A temple-inventory mentions an offering on which the decree in his favour was engraved—Mon. grecs, l.c. p. 49.

page 27 note 1 See the inscription in the Bulletin de C. h. vol. iv. p. 327. Philocles

page 27 note 2 Bulletin de C. h. vol. iv. p. 345.

page 27 note 3 Ib. p. 349.

page 27 note 4 Bulletin de C. h. vol. iii. pp. 360 ff.

page 27 note 5 Bulletin de C. h. vol. ii. p. 400; vol. iii. p. 469. These inscriptions may be referred to 200–150 B.C.; whether they were earlier or later than 166 B.C. can scarcely be determined. The latter has, Πολυάνθης ἐπόει (sic). The same sculptor's name occurs in an inscription of Melos, published by Tissot, M. (Bulletin, vol. ii. p. 522)Google Scholar, where we read, Πολυάνθης ἐποίησεν.

page 27 note 6 Bulletin, vol. ii. p. 470. His son, too, is styled Plut, . Cleom. 36Google Scholar.

page 28 note 1 Monuments grecs, No. 7, p. 45.

page 28 note 2 Paus. viii. 32, 2.

page 28 note 3 Corp. Inscr. Graec. 2273. The funeral inscriptions of Rheneia (ib. 2319 b, 41), and a Delian dedication (ib. 2290) further attest the presence of the Tyrians in Delos.

page 28 note 4 Liv. xlii. 12: Tribus nunc locis cum Perseo foedus incisum litteris esse; uno Thebis; altero ad Delum, augustissimo et celeberrimo templo; tertio Delphis.

page 28 note 5 Polyb. xxvi. fr. 5, 1, 2: a place which makes against the proposed emendation Delium in Liv. l.c.

page 28 note 6 Lesbos, : Expédition de Morée, vol. iii. Inscriptions of the Aegean isles; Delos, No. 2, p. 24Google Scholar:—Tenos, Ceos, Teos, Corp. Inscr. G. 2334, 2272, 3067:— Syros, Crete, inscriptions found by Homolle, M., Bulletin de Corr. h. vol. iii. p. 292.Google Scholar

page 29 note 1 Bulletin de C. h. vol. iv. p. 471.

page 29 note 2 Corp. Inscr. Graec. 2234, 2273, 2283 c.

page 29 note 3 Bulletin de C. h. vol. iv. pp. 320 f.

page 29 note 4 Strabo notices the size of the ἑστιατόρια at the Tenian temple of Poseidon as a proof that the festivals there must have been largely attended (x. v. 11).

page 31 note 1 Monuments grecs, No. 7, pp. 40 f.

page 31 note 2 Bulletin de C. h. vol. ii. pp. 341 f.

page 31 note 3 Cp. Lucian, , πλοῖον 5Google Scholar, where (windlasses) καὶ περιαγωγεῖς (capstans) are among the objects which the visitor admires on the deck.

page 32 note 1 Corp. Inscr. Graec. 2266; Lebégue, , p. 303.Google Scholar

page 32 note 2 Liv. xxxiii. 30; Polyb. xxx. 18.

page 32 note 3 The question has been discussed by Hertzberg, , Gesch. Griechenlands, vol. i. p. 84, who in his note (60, ib.) collects the authoritiesGoogle Scholar.

page 32 note 4 Revue archéol. 1873, xxvi. pp. 257 f.

page 32 note 5 In his work on the Chronological Sequence of the Coins of Ephesus (1880), Mr. Barclay V. Head has proved a fact which is of interest for the commercial history of Rhodes. He has shown that the pan-Asiatic coinage of the cistophori was introduced by Eumenes II. of Pergamus, with the consent of the Romans, about 167 B.C., when Rhodes shared in the reverses of Macedonia. Hitherto the Rhodian coinage had been the general medium of commerce in the Eastern Mediterranean: the new cistophori were designed to supplant it.

page 33 note 1 Bulletin de C. h. vol. iii. p. 371. (?)—‘Italicei et Graecei qui negotiantur.’ We may complete the lacuna after κα with the letters πηλεύοντες: unless it was κατοικοῦντες.

page 33 note 2 Pliny, xxxiv. 4, xiii. 2: Dioscorides, ii. 101: Athenaeus, iv. 173 A (who explains the nickname, ). The preparation of sacrificial feasts had always been an engrossing occupation for the islanders: (l. c.). Besides the general appellative, ἐλεοδύται, they had, says Athenaeus, many special soubriquets — such as etc. Cp. Cic. Acad. 2, 26. Nothing is certain about the Δηλιάς of the comic poet Nicochares (in Aristot. Poet. 2, Castelvetro would read Δειλιάδα, poltroniad): but Philostephanus wrote a comedy called Δήλιος (Athen. vii. 293 A), and the Δηλιάδες of Cratinus is often cited (Meineke, , Frag. I. p. 11)Google Scholar. The Δηλία of Antiphanes is known only by name (ib, p. 364).

page 33 note 3 Monuments grecs, No. 7, p. 41.

page 34 note 1 Lebégue, p. 158:

page 34 note 2 Corp. Inscr. Graec. 2293–2298.

page 34 note 3 Lebégue, p. 116, Inscr. No. 21.

page 34 note 4 Paus. iii. 23.

page 34 note 5 Corp. Inscr. Graec. 2279, 2277; Lebégue, p. 318.

page 35 note 1 Ant. Jud. xiv. 10, 8.

page 35 note 2 is named as ἐπιμελητής (Athenian governor) of Delos in the archonship of Zenon: Corp. Inscr. Gr. 2287. Two archons of the name occur at this period—in 54 B.C. and 41 B.C. (Dumont, La Chronol. athén. à Délos). Homolle, M. recognises the earlier Zenon here (Bulletin de C. h. iii. 372)Google Scholar: M. Lebégue (p. 321), the later.

page 35 note 3 Photius (cod. 97) quotes Phlegon of Tralles for the statement that the pirate Athenodorus made a successful descent upon Delos, and carried many of the inhabitants into slavery.

page 35 note 4 In Verrem, De praetura urbana, 17, 18.

page 35 note 5 Ovid, , Heroid. Ep. xxi. 82Google Scholar, Candida Delos: Anthol. Gr., ed. Jacobs, , ii. 149Google Scholar, No. 421, v. 5, ἡ τότε λευκὴ Δῆλος.

page 35 note 6 Ovid, l. c. 97, ‘Et modo porticibus spatior, modo munera regum Miror, et in cunctis stantia signa locis.’

page 36 note 1 Bulletin de C. h. vol. ii. p. 399. The date, M. Homolle thinks (ib. iii. 155), may have been 17 B.C., when Julia visited Asia Minor with her husband Agrippa.

page 36 note 2 Bulletin de C. h. iii. 366. The Herods, as M. Homolle remarks, were brought into relation with the Greeks by their tastes, and (as at Delos) by the instrumentality of Jewish colonies. A statue to Herod Antipas had been erected at Cos also (Corp. Inscr. Graec. 2502); and his father, Herod the Great, had received a like honour at Athens (Corp. Ins. Att. iii. 1, 550.) The date is somewhere between 4 B.C. and 38 A.D.

page 36 note 3 Sometimes παρεπιδημοῦντες is replaced by sometimes ξένων is substituted for Ἑλλήνων: sometimes we have (Bulletin de C. h. iii. 371).

page 36 note 4 (ib.).

page 36 note 5 Pharsal. vi. 425 (of Sextus Pompeius), Non tripodas Deli, non Pythia consulit antra.

page 36 note 6 Lebégue, 263, 326: referring to Heydemann, , Die Antiken Marmorbildwerke (1874), No. 235.Google Scholar

page 36 note 7 Paus. viii. 33, 2.

page 37 note 1 Anthol. Graec. ed. Jacobs, , vol. ii. p. 144, No. 408Google Scholar

page 37 note 2 ib. p. 149, No. 421

page 37 note 3 ib. p. 195, No. 550 Antipater of Thessalonica, to whom these epigrams are ascribed (though the first is given also to Apollonides) lived in the early part of the first century A.D. In another epigram (Jacobs, ii. 35, No. 100, ) Alpheus of Mitylene (whose date was about the same) says that he cannot follow Antipater in calling Delos wretched (δειλαίην): the glory of having borne Apollo and Artemis is enough for all time.—I may note in passing that Tibullus, iii. 27 (Delos ubi nunc, Phoebe, tua est?), inadvertently quoted by M. Lebégue (324) as referring to the decay of Delos, has a different context.

page 37 note 4 Gibbon, ch. xxiii. vol. iii. p. 168 (ed. Dr. Smith).

page 38 note 1 Theodoretus, , Hist. iii. 16Google Scholar, Gibbon has not recorded this detail, which, trivial in itself, is highly characteristic of Julian's reverence for pagan precedents.

page 38 note 2 Delphi, Dodona, and Delos were the three holy places beyond the limits of Macedonia at which Alexander had intended to build new temples: Droysen, , Gesch. des Hellenismus, ii. 38.Google Scholar

page 38 note 3 The presage of the meteor (‘facem cadenti similem…minax Martis sidus,’ Ammian. Marcell. xxv. 2) may have been more instantly striking to Julian, if he had in his mind the only oracle concerning his campaign of which Theodoretus (l. c.) gives the terms: (the Tigris).

page 38 note 4 Finlay, , Hist. of Greece, vol. ii. p. 190.Google Scholar

page 38 note 5 Recherches sur Délos, p. 129.

page 41 note 1 Cyril, , Adv. Julian. ix. 307 BGoogle Scholar (quoting Porphyry, Clem, . Alex, . Strom. vii. 848Google Scholar, Iamblichus, , Vit. Pyth. 5Google Scholar,

page 41 note 2 l. c.: Diog. Laert. viii. § 13: Macrobius, , Sat. iii. 6.Google Scholar

page 41 note 3 Callim, . Hymn. Del. 321Google Scholar.

page 41 note 4 See Fig. 1. The original in M. Lebégue's work is from a drawing by M. É. Burnouf.

page 43 note 1 Virgil's, phrase, ‘Templa dei saxo venerabar structa vetusto’ (Aen. iii. 84)Google Scholar is referred by M. Lebégue to the grotto. I hesitate to recognise so special an allusion.

page 43 note 2 Lebégue, p. 89.

page 44 note 1 Paus. ix. 8, 4.

page 46 note 1 Monuments grecs. No. 7, pp. 28—34.

page 46 note 2 Paus. vii. 3, 1; 2, 6.

page 47 note 1 Orat. 18. 1, The word θεμιστεύειν reminds us that in the Homeric hymn Θέμις attends the birth of the Delian Apollo (94).

page 48 note 1 Corp. Inscr. Gr. 2271.

page 51 note 1 Among the miscellaneous objects found on the top of Cynthus was part of a ἡλιοτρόπιον—viz.: the two supports, and a piece of the dial, which was almost vertical, like the hemisphere at Ravenna and the old solar dials in the Naples Museum (Lebégue, p. 136).

page 52 note 1 Homolle, M., in the Bulletin de C. h. iii. 99.Google Scholar See plates i., ii., iii. published with part i. of vol. iii.

page 52 note 2 Cp. Overbeck, , Schriftquellen, pp. 11 f.Google Scholar

page 52 note 3 Curtius, E., Die knieenden Figuren der altgriech. Kunst (1869).Google Scholar

page 53 note 1 Bulletin de C. h. iii. 107; cp. Monuments grecs, No. 7. p. 61.

page 53 note 2 Bulletin de C. h. i. 284.

page 53 note 3 Ib. iii. 147.

page 54 note 1 Bulletin de C. h. i. 151.

page 54 note 2 Ib. iv. 350.

page 54 note 3 Cp. Strabo, xiv. 673.

page 55 note 1 Cp. the contemporary Polybius, in a place which also illustrates the use of in this Cretan text for ‘estimation;’ ii. 61, ‘through their attachment to the Achaean League.’ The phrase of our text, διαθησιόμενον (to recite) may again be illustrated by Polyb. iii. 108, ‘the harangue of L. being founded on his own experience.’ The phrase διατίθεσθαι ῥῖσιν, etc., was common in later Greek.

page 55 note 2 Bulletin de C. h. iii. 290.

page 56 note 1 The epic σφι would not be at variance with the general complexion of the Cretan dialect. For the subjunct. after the relative, cp. Isocrates Pan. § 44, and ll. cc. in Goodwin, Moods § 65, 1 n. 3. The Greek ἔχομεν ὅ τι εἴπωμεν seems to have been developed out of the negative form (where the subj. is deliberative),

page 57 note 1 Bullctin de C. h., ii. 570.

page 57 note 2 Ib. iv. 69.

page 58 note 1 See Table II. in Kirchhoff, 's Studien zur Gesch. des Griech. Alphabets (3rd ed. 1877).Google Scholar

page 59 note 1 Studien, p. 73.

page 59 note 2 ‘Etwa um die Schneide des sechsten und fünften Jahrhunderts,’ ib. p. 78.

page 60 note 1 The mere presence of the koppa is a point on which it is unsafe to insist here. In Kirchhoff's opinion (op. cit. p. 39) the known evidence does not compel us to suppose that the koppa had fallen into disuse so early as about Ol. 60 (540 B.C.).

page 61 note 1 Another possibility which occurs is that, λ standing for λλ, η is the termination of the feminine stem.

page 61 note 2 See Tables I. and II. in Kirchhoff's Studien.

page 62 note 1 Contemporary Review, vol. 33, p. 776 (Nov. 1878).

page 62 note 2 The cost of photographing the seven plays of Sophocles in the Laurentian MS. (32, 9) at Florence has been estimated at about £500. The number of subscribers (libraries or individuals) in Europe and America would probably be sufficient to warrant this or any similar undertaking.