Delos, Greece

Delos is a Greek island in the Aegean Sea, in the Cyclades group of islands. Today, the island is either uninhabited or has no permanent residents. Since ancient times, Delos has been a sacred place of worship for the Greeks. The island is home to many attractions, including the temples of Apollo and Dionysus. Delos has preserved numerous traces of various civilizations of the Aegean world-from the 3rd millennium BCE to the early Christian period. The archaeological sites of Delos, diverse and very closely concentrated, create the image of a large, multinational Mediterranean port.

According to Greek mythology, on the island of Delos, fleeing Hera’s vengeance, one of Zeus’s lovers arrived-Leto. There on the island she gave birth to two twins-the gods Apollo and Artemis. Apollo was the most Greek of the gods, if one may put it that way- the god of light, poetry, and music. Therefore, for a long time, the island was one of the greatest cult centers of antiquity. Believers came to the Delian sanctuary from throughout the Greek world to honor the god with splendid rites and sacrifices, which are described with admiration in the Homeric Hymn to Apollo. Another important factor in the development of Delos was its geographical position at the center of the islands, at the intersection of routes from mainland Greece to Asia Minor, as well as routes from Egypt, Phoenicia, and Syria to Western Mediterranean.

As a result of the second invasion of Athens (426 BC), on the sacred island of Apollo it was forbidden to give birth and to die. All pregnant women, the severely ill, and people of advanced age were forcibly transported to the nearby island of Rheneia. Delos reached its peak in the late ancient Greek and ancient Roman periods, when the island was declared a free port and quickly became a financial center of the Mediterranean. But in 88 BC, during a revolt against Roman rule, the Pontic king Mithridates ordered an attack on the unfortified island. All the population, numbering about 20 000 people, was killed or sold into slavery. Delos was no longer able to recover from such a blow, and later attempts by the Romans to restore the island failed due to pirate raids. After the second attack, Delos declined and was finally abandoned.

The maximum length of Delos is 5 km, its width does not exceed 1300 m, and its total area barely reaches 6.85 sq. km. Its soil is rocky and infertile, with the exception of just one plain in the northwest, which is occupied by the sanctuary of Apollo and Artemis. The island is one of the first places in the entire Aegean archipelago to attract archaeologists’ attention. In the 17th century, the Venetians brought to the port of Venice one of the archaic lion statues made of Naxos marble, while other antiquities were taken to Rome and England. Delos’s influence on the development of architecture and monumental sculpture in Greco-Roman antiquity is enormous. Today, only archaeologists and scholars live on the island permanently.

In the Cyclades there is a dry Mediterranean climate with an average annual temperature of 18–19°C, with mild winters and cool (by Greek standards) weather thanks to seasonal winds and trade winds in summer.