DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.4266#0057
24 ANTIQUITIES AT DELOS.
receiving this mandate the Delians migrated into Achaia, and were there enrolled Achgean citizens \
Subject to so derived an authority, Delos was subsequently assailed during the Mithradatic war
86 b. c. by several military and piratical invasions b, for the destruction of Carthage and Corinthc,
146 b. c, had rendered it a rich and inviting emporium. The renewal of such prosperity, however,
was not of permanent duration, Commerce having gradually appropriated to herself more congenial
martsd, and a Voice soon after reverberated along the shores of the Archipelago, ordained to
confound and silence for ever the delusive oracles of idolatry. Pausanias indeed informs us, that
even in his time, if the Athenian guard to the Temple of Apollo were to have been withdrawn, Delos
would then have become desertedc; a prediction most amply verified, since, although begirt with the
still well peopled Cyclades, islands so named from encircling it, this, their ancient focus of influence,
has long presented a deplorable wilderness of ruin, more desolate than its original solitude f.
The island will yet, however, continue to interest the Grecian traveller, from its association
with mythologic and classic history, although no time-stained column rears its majestic shaft,
to claim and gratify his distant admiration. Mount Cynthus also, the fabled birth-place of Diana
and Apollo, to whose shrine at its base the Hyperborei*, or most northern people of antiquity, sent
annual offerings, is equally unproductive of picturesque effect, presenting to the eye a com-
paratively diminutive rocky eminence, composed of a dark earth-coloured granite, worn into
rounded divisions of form, now rising in the centre of a flat and barren islet; while the wrecks
of the solemn temples, costly sculptures, and impressive colossi, with which it was anciently crowned
and encircled, are prostrate, and strewed like the refuse of a quarry, over a surface, thus rendered
more uncongenial to vegetation. Venetians, Turks, Muscovites, and Greeks, have carried from
it in turn, innumerable marbles applicable to their tombs or public edifices, so that the architect
who now visits Delos, with the exception of identifying the Orders already published by Stuart
and Revett, can do little more than glean from the defaced and rejected remains, which the Le-
vantine spoliators, in their destructive operations, may accidentally restore to light. To such frag-
ments, and to others that have hitherto been incorrectly published, the two following Plates are
devoted.
PLATE IV.
Fig. 1.—This is a view of the portal or gateway, on the ascent of Mount Cynthus, formed to
support the wall of an ancient fortification of that height. This entrance is constructed with ten
large stones, inclined to each other, like those at the aperture to the Great Egyptian Pyramid. It is,
perhaps, the earliest specimen in Greece of the architecture termed Pelasgic, displaying the first step
towards the principle of the arch, and was probably executed by the colony settled here by Minos. The
foreground beneath it, is represented strewed with fragments of architecture and sculpture, as they
are scattered over a great part of the island. A capital, with the bulls' heads attached, (restored in
the next Plate,) is delineated in the wantonly defaced state it appeared, as well as a triglyph, charged
also with a bull's head. We have beside these, here represented, the fragment of the colossal foot of
the great statue of Apollo, the offering of the Naxians, discovered by us near the pedestal bearing the
celebrated Inscriptio Deliaca. It was brought to England at our suggestion, for the British Museum,
(where it now ish,) and has been before alluded to in the third volume of our edition of Stuart's Athens.
a Polybii Reliquiarum Lib. XXX. C. XVIII. Lib. XXXII. the exigency which produced the rise and populousness of this
C. XVII. Legat. C. CXXIII. Spanhemii Obs. in Hymn, in commercial " depot," will have ceased. The industry and capital
Delum. 0f its inhabitants may therefore be more benefically employed at
b Athenaeus, L. V. C. LIII. Paus. L. III. C. XXIII. the superior neighbouring ports of Peloponnesus.
c Strabo, L. XII. p. 486. L. XIV. p. 668. f Paus. L. VIII. C. XXXIII.
d Resulting from this cause, it may reasonably be expected, f Homer speaks of the birth of Apollo,—zgavaji til A&a, " in
that the Island of Hydra, within a very short period of time, will rugged Delos." Hymn, in Apoll. v. 16. See also the Pseudo-
be also uninhabited; for, from an arid rock, the resort of a few Orphic Hymn to Latona, v. 5, and the Hymn to Delos of Calli-
poor Albanian fishermen, flying from Turkish tyranny, Hydra machus, vv. 243. 268.
became, in recent history, an important commercial island, and e Herod. L. IV. C. XXXIII. Paus. L. I. C. XXXI.
continued unmolested and governed by its own primates on pay- h Syn. of Contents of the Brit. Mus. 1827- Room 14. No. 103.
ing a small tribute to the Porte. On Greece being declared free,
receiving this mandate the Delians migrated into Achaia, and were there enrolled Achgean citizens \
Subject to so derived an authority, Delos was subsequently assailed during the Mithradatic war
86 b. c. by several military and piratical invasions b, for the destruction of Carthage and Corinthc,
146 b. c, had rendered it a rich and inviting emporium. The renewal of such prosperity, however,
was not of permanent duration, Commerce having gradually appropriated to herself more congenial
martsd, and a Voice soon after reverberated along the shores of the Archipelago, ordained to
confound and silence for ever the delusive oracles of idolatry. Pausanias indeed informs us, that
even in his time, if the Athenian guard to the Temple of Apollo were to have been withdrawn, Delos
would then have become desertedc; a prediction most amply verified, since, although begirt with the
still well peopled Cyclades, islands so named from encircling it, this, their ancient focus of influence,
has long presented a deplorable wilderness of ruin, more desolate than its original solitude f.
The island will yet, however, continue to interest the Grecian traveller, from its association
with mythologic and classic history, although no time-stained column rears its majestic shaft,
to claim and gratify his distant admiration. Mount Cynthus also, the fabled birth-place of Diana
and Apollo, to whose shrine at its base the Hyperborei*, or most northern people of antiquity, sent
annual offerings, is equally unproductive of picturesque effect, presenting to the eye a com-
paratively diminutive rocky eminence, composed of a dark earth-coloured granite, worn into
rounded divisions of form, now rising in the centre of a flat and barren islet; while the wrecks
of the solemn temples, costly sculptures, and impressive colossi, with which it was anciently crowned
and encircled, are prostrate, and strewed like the refuse of a quarry, over a surface, thus rendered
more uncongenial to vegetation. Venetians, Turks, Muscovites, and Greeks, have carried from
it in turn, innumerable marbles applicable to their tombs or public edifices, so that the architect
who now visits Delos, with the exception of identifying the Orders already published by Stuart
and Revett, can do little more than glean from the defaced and rejected remains, which the Le-
vantine spoliators, in their destructive operations, may accidentally restore to light. To such frag-
ments, and to others that have hitherto been incorrectly published, the two following Plates are
devoted.
PLATE IV.
Fig. 1.—This is a view of the portal or gateway, on the ascent of Mount Cynthus, formed to
support the wall of an ancient fortification of that height. This entrance is constructed with ten
large stones, inclined to each other, like those at the aperture to the Great Egyptian Pyramid. It is,
perhaps, the earliest specimen in Greece of the architecture termed Pelasgic, displaying the first step
towards the principle of the arch, and was probably executed by the colony settled here by Minos. The
foreground beneath it, is represented strewed with fragments of architecture and sculpture, as they
are scattered over a great part of the island. A capital, with the bulls' heads attached, (restored in
the next Plate,) is delineated in the wantonly defaced state it appeared, as well as a triglyph, charged
also with a bull's head. We have beside these, here represented, the fragment of the colossal foot of
the great statue of Apollo, the offering of the Naxians, discovered by us near the pedestal bearing the
celebrated Inscriptio Deliaca. It was brought to England at our suggestion, for the British Museum,
(where it now ish,) and has been before alluded to in the third volume of our edition of Stuart's Athens.
a Polybii Reliquiarum Lib. XXX. C. XVIII. Lib. XXXII. the exigency which produced the rise and populousness of this
C. XVII. Legat. C. CXXIII. Spanhemii Obs. in Hymn, in commercial " depot," will have ceased. The industry and capital
Delum. 0f its inhabitants may therefore be more benefically employed at
b Athenaeus, L. V. C. LIII. Paus. L. III. C. XXIII. the superior neighbouring ports of Peloponnesus.
c Strabo, L. XII. p. 486. L. XIV. p. 668. f Paus. L. VIII. C. XXXIII.
d Resulting from this cause, it may reasonably be expected, f Homer speaks of the birth of Apollo,—zgavaji til A&a, " in
that the Island of Hydra, within a very short period of time, will rugged Delos." Hymn, in Apoll. v. 16. See also the Pseudo-
be also uninhabited; for, from an arid rock, the resort of a few Orphic Hymn to Latona, v. 5, and the Hymn to Delos of Calli-
poor Albanian fishermen, flying from Turkish tyranny, Hydra machus, vv. 243. 268.
became, in recent history, an important commercial island, and e Herod. L. IV. C. XXXIII. Paus. L. I. C. XXXI.
continued unmolested and governed by its own primates on pay- h Syn. of Contents of the Brit. Mus. 1827- Room 14. No. 103.
ing a small tribute to the Porte. On Greece being declared free,