Geography

​Around Crete are islands, including Thera, the mother-city of the Cyrenaeans and a colony of the Lacedaemonians, and near it Anaphe, where there is the temple of Aegletes Apollo. And Callimachus also says at one time as follows: “Aegletes and Anaphe, neighbor to Laconian Thera,” and at another time, mentioning Thera: “mother of our homeland, rich in horses.” Thera is long, being two hundred stadia in circumference, and lies opposite the island of Dia which is near Heracleion of Knossos, and is about seven hundred stadia distant from Crete; near it are Anaphe and Therasia. About a hundred stadia distant from Therasia is the islet of Ios, where some say the poet Homer was buried. To one going westward from Ios are Sikinos, Lagusa, and Folegandros, which Aratus calls ‘iron-like’ because of its ruggedness; near these is Kimolos, whence comes the Kimolian earth. From there Siphnos is in sight, concerning which they say ‘Siphnian astragalos’ because of its cheapness. Still closer both to Kimolos and to Crete is Melos, more noteworthy than these, being seven hundred stadia distant from the Hermionic promontory of Scyllaeum, and almost the same distance from Dictynnaeum; the Athenians once sent an expedition and slaughtered most of its youths. These islands, then, are in the Cretan Sea, while more in the Aegean are Delos itself and the Cyclades around it, and the Sporades adjacent to them, to which also belong the islands mentioned around Crete.

​Now Delos has its city situated in a plain, and the temple of Apollo, and the Letoum; and above the city lies Cynthus, a bare and rugged mountain, and a river Inopus, not large, flows through the island; for indeed the island is small. It has been honored from of old because of the gods, beginning from the heroic times; for the myth says that here Leto laid aside her labor pains for Apollo and Artemis. Pindar says: “For formerly it was driven by the waves and the blasts of all kinds of winds; but when the daughter of Coeus, raging with the near pains of childbirth, set foot on it, then indeed four upright pillars leapt up from the foundations of the earth, and with their capitals pillars of adamantine base held up the rock; there she gave birth and beheld her blessed offspring.” And the neighboring islands, called Cyclades, made it famous, sending publicly in its honor sacred embassies, sacrifices, and choruses of maidens, and gathering great festivals in it.

​At first, then, they are said to have been twelve; but more were added. Artemidorus, at any rate, enumerates them, having said of Helena that it lies stretched along from Thoricus to Sunium, about sixty stadia in length; for from this island, he says, are the so-called Cyclades. He names Ceos as the nearest to Helena, and after this Cythnos, Seriphos, Melos, Siphnos, Kimolos, Prepesinthos, and Oliaros, and in addition to these Paros, Naxos, Syros, Mykonos, Tenos, Andros, and Gyaros. Now the others I consider to belong to the twelve, but Prepesinthos, Oliaros, and Gyaros less so; of these, having anchored at Gyaros, I found a small village inhabited by fishermen; and when we departed, we took on board one of the fishermen from there who had been chosen as an ambassador to Caesar (Caesar was then in Corinth, on his way to his Actian triumph). While sailing with us, indeed, he told those who asked that he was going on an embassy to petition for a reduction of their tax; for they were paying one hundred and fifty drachmae, and would have difficulty paying even one hundred. The poverty of these people is shown also by Aratus in his ‘Meticulous Poems’ (Kata Lepton): “O Leto, you will surely pass me by either to iron-like Folegandros or straightway to Gyaros, wretched and similar to it.”

​Delos, then, having become so famous, was still further increased by Corinth when it was destroyed by the Romans; for the merchants moved there, attracted both by the immunity from taxation of the temple and the convenience of the harbor; for it lies in a favorable position for those sailing from Italy and Greece to Asia. The festival, too, is a sort of commercial affair, and the Romans were especially accustomed to attend it, more than any others, even when Corinth was still standing. And when the Athenians took the island, they took sufficient care both of the temples and of the merchants. But the generals of Mithridates and the tyrant who made it revolt attacked and ruined everything, and the Romans received the island back in a deserted state after the king retreated to his own country, and it has continued to be in an impoverished state until now. The Athenians now hold it.