Arrive at the mythical, magical, and magnificent site of Delos and you might wonder how this barren islet, which has virtually no natural resources, became the religious and political center of the Aegean. One answer is that Delos provided the safest anchorage for vessels sailing between the mainland and the shores of Asia; another answer is that it was the alleged bithplace of Apollo and Artemis, two of the most important deities of the Greek pantheon. A third is provided if you climb Mt. Kynthos to see that the isle, no more than 5 km (3 miles) long and 1 km (½ mile) wide, is shielded on three sides by other islands. Indeed, this is how the Cyclades—the word means "circling ones"—got their name: they circle around the sacred island. Delos is "the hearth of the islands" as Callimachus wrote in the 3rd century BC.
Delos's amazing saga begins back in the times of myth: Zeus fell in love with gentle Leto, the Titaness, who became pregnant. When Hera discovered this infidelity, she forbade Mother Earth to give Leto refuge and ordered the Python to pursue her. Finally Poseidon, taking pity on her, anchored the poor floating island of Delos with four diamond columns to give her a place to rest. Leto gave birth first to the virgin huntress Artemis on Rineia and then, clasping a sacred palm on a slope of Delos's Mt. Kynthos, to Apollo, god of music and light.
By 1000 BC the Ionians, who inhabited the Cyclades, had made Delos their religious capital. Homeric Hymn 3 tells of the cult of Apollo in the 7th century BC. One can imagine the elegant Ionians, whose central festival was here, enjoying the choruses of temple girls—Delian korai, who serve the "Far-Shooter"—singing and dancing their hymn and displaying their graceful tunics and jewelry. However, a difficult period began for the Delians when Athens rose to power and assumed Ionian leadership. In 543 BC an oracle at Delphi conveniently decreed that the Athenians purify the island by removing all the graves to Rineia, a dictate designed to alienate the Delians from their past.
After the defeat of the Persians in 478 BC, the Athenians organized the Delian League, with its treasury and headquarters at Delos (in 454 BC the funds were transferred to the Acropolis in Athens). Delos had its most prosperous period in late Hellenistic and Roman times, when it was declared a free port and quickly became the financial center of the Mediterranean, the focal point of trade, where 10,000 slaves were sold daily. Foreigners from as far as Rome, Syria, and Egypt lived in this cosmopolitan port, in complete tolerance of one another's religious beliefs, and each group built its various shrines. But in 88 BC Mithridates, the king of Pontus, in a revolt against Roman rule, ordered an attack on the unfortified island. The entire population of 20,000 was killed or sold into slavery. Delos never fully recovered, and later Roman attempts to revive the island failed because of pirate raids. After a second attack in 69 BC, Delos was gradually abandoned.
In 1872, the French School of Archaeology began excavating on Delos—a massive project, considering that much of the island's 4 square km (1½ square miles) is covered in ruins. The work continues today. Delos remains dry and shadeless and most guards leave on the last boat to Mykonos in the early afternoon, but if on the way to Mykonos you see dolphins leaping, you'll know Apollo is about and approves.
