Delos

Some of the Naxians also have a story of their own, that there were two Minoses and two Ariadnes, one of whom, they say, was married to Dionysus in Naxos, and bore him Staphylus and his brother, and the other of a later time, having been carried off by Theseus and then abandoned by him, came to Naxos, accompanied by a nurse named Corsini, whose tomb they show, and that this Ariadne also died there, and has honours paid her unlike those of the former, for the festival of the first Ariadne is celebrated with mirth and revels, but the sacrifices performed in honour of the second are attended with sorrow and mourning.

On his voyage from Crete, Theseus put in at Delos, and having sacrificed to the god and dedicated in his temple the image of Aphrodite which he had received from Ariadne, he danced with his youths a dance which they say is still performed by the Delians, being an imitation of the circling passages in the labyrinth, and consisting of certain rhythmic involutions and evolutions.

This kind of dance, as Dicaearchus tells us, is called by the Delians the crane, and Theseus danced it round the altar, called Keraton, which is constructed of horns, Kerata, taken entirely from the left side of Tin Head.

They say that he also instituted athletic contests in Delos, and that the custom was then begun by him of giving a palm to the victors.

It is said, moreover, that as they drew nigh the coast of Attica, Theseus himself forgot, and his pilot forgot, such was their joy and exultation, to hoist the sail which was to have been the token of their safety to Aegeus, who therefore in despair threw himself down from the rock and was dashed in pieces.

But Theseus, putting in to shore, sacrificed in person the sacrifices which he had vowed to the gods at Phalerum when he set sail, and then dispatched a herald to the city to announce his safe return.

Every land that Leto approaches refuses her shelter because it's terrified of Hera's wrath.

Eventually, Leto finds refuge on Delos, a small, unremarkable island in the Aegean.

And in a lot of the tellings, it's specifically a floating, rootless island.

It's not properly fixed to the sea floor in the way that ordinary land is.

So therefore, it's exempt from Hera's decree.

Once she's able to give birth safely on Delos, Zeus is full of gratitude and is said to have anchored Delos permanently in place.

fixing it to the sea floor with these great columns.

So it transforms it from that marginal, rootless, in-between place into a stable, sacred one.

And the Athenians, again, for various reasons, and again, the sources, it depends.

We have various versions of why and how the Athenians pick up the leadership, and they become the leadership of this new league, which we now call in history the Delian League, because it had its headquarters on the island of Delos, the sacred island of the Aegean, and the birthplace of the gods Apollo and Artemis.

In 478, the Greeks swear an oath that they will continue the war and they will serve under the Athenians until the Persians are defeated and the Greek cities are liberated.

That happens in 478.

So it's quite difficult to know exactly what's going on, but I think we can be safe and say that there is certainly assembly of the allies.

Athens is at the top, is the one that basically manages most decisions.

The headquarters are set on neutral ground on the island of Delos, which is a sacred island and a meeting place of all Ionian Greeks and other Greeks and islander Greeks who go there to celebrate the cult of Apollo and Artemis.

So it's a very natural meeting space for the League.

All this happened under the leadership of the politician and general Pericles, who was the most influential Athenian in the years between the 460s and the 430s BCE.

This naval empire, which was called the Delian League, because the money contributed by its members was kept on the island of Delos, sometimes got involved in the affairs of cities which were members of the Peloponnesian League led by Sparta, but happened to be located nearer to Athens.

At the center of these conflicts was the city of Corinth, which was located on the bridge of land that connected the Peloponnese with the rest of the Greek mainland.

In 459 BCE, Athens offered to help an ally of Sparta called Megara, which was fighting with Corinth at the time because it wanted to weaken Sparta's influence in the area, and this led to a war with Sparta that lasted several years.

but leto alone stays by the side of zeus who delights in thunder and then she unstrings his bow and closes his quiver and takes his archery from his strong shoulders in her hands and hangs them on a golden peg against a pillar of his father's house then she leads him to a seat and makes him sit and the father gives him nectar in a golden cup welcoming his dear son while the other gods make him sit down there, and queenly Leto rejoices because she bear a mighty son and an archer.

Rejoice, blessed Leto, for you bear glorious children, the lord Apollo and Artemis, who delights in arrows, her in Ortygia and him in rocky Delos, as you rested against the great mass of the Scythian hill, hard by a palm tree, by the streams of Enopus.

How then shall I sing of you, who in all ways are a worthy theme of song? For everywhere, O Phoebus, the whole range of song is fallen to you, both over the mainland that rears heifers and over the isles.

All mountain peaks and high headlands of lofty hills and rivers flowing out to the deep, and beaches sloping seawards, and havens of the sea are your delight.

Shall I sing how at the first Leto bare you to be the joy of men, as she rested against Mount Synthus in that rocky isle in secret Delos, while on either hand a dark wave rolled on landwards, driven by shrill winds, whence arising you rule over all mortal men? Among those who are in Crete, and in the township of Athens, and in the isle of Aegina and Euboea, famous for ships, in aege and iresae and paparethus near the sea in thracian athos and pelion's towering heights and thracian samos and the shady hills of ida in syros and phocaea and the high hill of otokane and fair-lying imbros and smouldering lemnos and rich lesbos home of machar the son of iolus and chios brightest of all the isles that lie in the sea and craggy mimis and the heights of coricus and gleaming claros and the sheer hill of isagia and watered samos and the steep heights of mycale in miletus and cos the city of meropean men and steep nidos and windy carpathos in naxos and paros and rocky so far roamed leto in travail with the god who shoots afar to see if any land would be willing to make a dwelling for her son but they greatly trembled and feared and none not even the richest of them dared receive phoebus until queenly leto set foot on delos and uttered winged words and asked her Delos, if you would be willing to be the abode of my son, Phoebus Apollo, and make him a rich temple, for no other will touch you, as you will find, and I think you will never be rich in oxen and sheep, nor bear vintage, nor yet produce plants abundantly.

But if you have the temple of far-shooting Apollo, all men will bring you hecatombs and gather here.

an incessant savour of rich sacrifice will always arise and you will feed those who dwell in you from the hand of strangers for truly your own soil is not rich so spake leto and delos rejoiced and answered and said leto most glorious daughter of great joyfully would i receive your child the far-shooting lord for it is all too true that i am ill-spoken of among men whereas thus i should become very greatly honoured but this saying i fear and i will not hide it from you they say that apollo will be one that is very haughty and will greatly lord it among the gods and men all over the fruitful earth therefore i greatly fear in heart and spirit that as soon as he sees the light of the sun HE WILL SCORN THIS ISLAND, FOR TRULY I HAVE BUT A HARD ROCKY SOIL, AND OVERTURN ME AND THRUST ME DOWN WITH HIS FEET IN THE DEPTHS OF THE SEA.

yet if you will but dare to swear a great oath goddess that here first he will build a glorious temple to be an oracle for men then let him afterwards make temples and wooded groves amongst all men for surely he will be greatly renowned so said delos and leto swear the great oath of the gods now hear this earth and wide heaven above and dropping water of sticks This is the strongest and most awful oath for the blessed gods.

Nine days, nine nights.

Delos is a bare rock, and Zeus's lover, a young woman named Leto, is there, all the while in labor, struggling to give birth.

Their child cannot be born.

Goddesses try to help.

She says, Leto has had an unimaginably long labor and is desperate.

That's enough.

Aletheia crosses the sea, and the moment she sets foot on Delos, Leto's labor, locked for nine days and nine nights, progresses at once.

Aletheia lets the birth proceed.

They do not appear to have been too eager to reach their destination, however, for the party found time to celebrate their escape with dance and song on the islands en route.

It is said that on the island of Delos they performed a peculiar dance called the Geranos, or Crane Dance, in which they went through the motions of threading the labyrinth, and that this dance was perpetuated by the natives of that island until fairly recent times.

Theseus seems to have marred his homecoming by two little displays of thoughtlessness that might be considered reprehensible in anybody but a Greek hero.

In the first place, he left fair Ariadne behind on the island of Naxos.

The game is also mentioned as a well-established institution by other Roman writers of a century or so later, such as Suetonius and Tacitus, and appears to have assumed imposing dimensions at one time, as we see from a representation of it on the reverse of a medal of Nero, where it has more of the nature of a military review.

It was generally performed by youths, and only those of good social standing took part.

It will be remembered that we have already had occasion to notice another ancient dance or game in which youthful notabilities were stated to have taken part and in which the motions of the dancers were supposed to represent the tortuous paths of the Cretan labyrinth, namely the dance performed by Theseus and his friends on the island of Delos.

This dance was called the Geranos, or crane dance, probably on account of the fancied resemblance of the attitude of the dancers to that of cranes in flight, or perhaps on account of actual adornments of the dancers.

It's like, I know somebody who has a ruin site on their land that they've excavated and they don't want to make it into a museum or have the major museums come because there's just horror stories of what actually ends up happening when any kind of official narrative gets involved.

So I was on the island of Delos in Greece and you always talk to the local people and then you find the people that don't really want to talk to you and you kind of, you know, confounding of tongues is not working anymore.

Cause I have Google translate, you

know?

So what I'm saying is like, I learned this from Freddie Silva because you know, he hangs around long enough where you get to, you know, the baby's born and the grandma dies and you, you, you're dancing at the wedding and you get to know people and, um, and you find out what, uh, you know, the, the knowledge is going back.

So in Greece on the island of Delos, which has crazy ruins, like, um, it was just this abundance of, we have this, you know, experts from whole different fields.

And so many people had gone through Greece.

Like there's better shit from Greece and the Louvre and the British museum in Turkey than there is in Greece, because it's been raised over so many times, but you're going through these ruins and it's incredible.