The Floating Island
Before it became one of the most sacred places in the ancient world, Delos was a barren rock drifting across the Aegean Sea. It had no fixed location — no roots anchoring it to the seafloor — wandering the waters like a lost ship.
The island had a secret origin. It was actually Asteria, sister of Leto, who had transformed herself into a stone and flung herself into the sea to escape Zeus's advances. Asteria-become-Delos floated aimlessly until the day her sister needed her most.
Leto's Search for Sanctuary
When Leto was pregnant with Zeus's twins, Hera decreed that no land under the sun could shelter her. Leto wandered across Greece, turned away by every city and island that feared Hera's wrath.
Finally, Delos — not truly 'land' since it was floating — agreed to shelter Leto. In exchange, Leto promised that her son would build his greatest temple there, making Delos the most honored island in the world. Poseidon anchored the island to the seafloor with four diamond pillars, and Leto gave birth to Artemis first, who then helped deliver her twin brother Apollo.
The Sacred Sanctuary
True to Leto's promise, Delos became the center of Apollo worship. The Delian League — an alliance of Greek city-states — took its name from the island, and its treasury was housed there before Athens moved it to the Acropolis.
The island's sanctity was so absolute that no one was allowed to be born or die on Delos. Pregnant women and the terminally ill were transported to the nearby island of Rheneia. Even the dead were eventually exhumed and removed from Delos during religious purifications.
The Archaeological Wonder
Today, Delos is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and one of the most important archaeological sites in Greece. The Terrace of the Lions — marble guardians facing the Sacred Lake where Apollo was born — remains one of the most iconic images of ancient Greece. The Sacred Lake itself has been dry since 1926, but its outline is still visible.
Quick Facts
Location: Center of the Cyclades, Aegean Sea
Origin: The Titaness Asteria, transformed into stone
Key Rule: No births or deaths allowed on the island
Modern Status: UNESCO World Heritage Site, uninhabited
The Birth in the Homeric Hymn: A Different Version
The oldest full account of Apollo's birth, the Delian part of the Homeric Hymn to Apollo, differs from the later story in several ways. Asteria does not appear in it. Instead the island speaks for itself. Delos is willing to take in Leto, but it fears that the god it bears will scorn such a rocky, barren place and kick it into the sea. Leto has to swear by the water of the Styx that Apollo will build his temple there before Delos agrees. Then she labours for nine days and nine nights. All the goddesses are with her except Hera and Eileithyia, the goddess of childbirth, whom Hera has kept on Olympus. The goddesses send Iris to bring Eileithyia with the promise of a necklace nine cubits long. As soon as Eileithyia sets foot on the island, Leto throws her arms around a palm tree and gives birth on the soft meadow under Mount Cynthus, and the earth smiles. The hymn also says Artemis was born on Ortygia and only Apollo on Delos. The tale in which Artemis is born first and helps deliver her brother comes from later writers.
Callimachus' Hymn to Delos gives the Asteria version, in which the island had been a goddess who leapt into the sea to escape Zeus. It adds that every land fled from Leto in terror, that the unborn Apollo prophesied from the womb, and that swans from the river Pactolus flew seven times around the island during the birth. That is said to be why Apollo later strung his lyre with seven strings. Pindar's fragments describe the island being fixed in place on four pillars with adamantine bases.
Rites, Festivals and the Hyperborean Maidens
The hymn also gives an early picture of cult on Delos. Ionians gathered there with their wives and children for boxing, dance and song, and a choir of Delian maidens sang of Apollo, Leto and Artemis. They could imitate the voices and dialects of all peoples so well that each listener felt he was hearing himself. The poet asks the maidens to remember him as "the blind man from rocky Chios", a line ancient readers took as Homer's self-portrait.
Herodotus records a stranger tradition. Offerings wrapped in wheat-straw reached Delos from the Hyperboreans in the far north, passing from people to people. Earlier, Hyperborean maidens had brought them in person. Two pairs are named, Arge and Opis, and later Hyperoche and Laodice. All of them died on Delos, and their tombs, beside the Artemision, received offerings of hair from Delian girls and boys before marriage. Another monument was the Keraton, an altar that Callimachus says the four-year-old Apollo built from the horns of goats Artemis had hunted on Cynthus. According to Plutarch, Theseus stopped at Delos on his way back from Crete and led his companions in the "crane dance" (geranos) around this altar, imitating the turns of the Labyrinth.
Athens sent a sacred embassy to Delos every year on a ship said to be the very one Theseus had sailed. No executions could take place in Athens until it returned. That is why, as Plato's Phaedo explains, Socrates spent about a month in prison before drinking the hemlock.
Purifications, Trade and Ruin
The famous ban on births and deaths was not ancient. Athens imposed it. Herodotus says the tyrant Peisistratus purified the area of the island within sight of the temple by digging up graves there. In 426/5 BC, as Thucydides reports, the Athenians removed every grave on Delos to Rheneia, banned births and deaths, and revived the four-yearly Delia with new athletic and horse races. In 422 they went further and expelled the Delians themselves, though they soon brought them back.
Delos' later history was commercial. After Rome declared it a free port in 166 BC, it became the busiest trading hub in the Aegean, full of Italian merchants, foreign cults and a huge slave market. Strabo claims tens of thousands of slaves could be sold there in a single day, though the number is probably exaggerated. Forces allied with Mithridates VI sacked the island in 88 BC, and pirates attacked it again in 69 BC. It never recovered. The famous marble lions, dedicated by the Naxians around 600 BC, date from the island's archaic religious heyday, long before that boom.
Myth gave Delos a king as well. Anios, a son of Apollo, was both priest and ruler. His three daughters, the Oinotropoi, could turn whatever they touched into wine, grain and oil, and Ovid tells how Agamemnon tried to seize them to feed the army at Troy.
Ancient sources
- Homeric Hymn to Apollo, lines 1–178 — The hymn tells how Leto searched for a birthplace, swore by the Styx, laboured for nine days and was helped by Eileithyia, and describes the Ionian festival on Delos.
- Callimachus, Hymn to Delos — Callimachus tells of Asteria becoming the island, the lands fleeing Leto, Apollo prophesying in the womb, and the swans circling seven times.
- Herodotus, Histories 4.33–35 and 1.64 — Herodotus describes the Hyperborean offerings and maidens and their tombs, and Peisistratus' purification.
- Thucydides, History 3.104 — Thucydides covers the Athenian purification of 426/5 BC, the ban on births and deaths, and the restored Delia, quoting the Homeric Hymn.
- Plato, Phaedo 58a–c — Plato explains how the sacred voyage to Delos postponed Socrates' execution.
Frequently asked questions
Were Apollo and Artemis both born on Delos?
Not in the earliest version. The Homeric Hymn to Apollo has Artemis born on Ortygia and Apollo on Delos. Later writers often place both births on Delos, or make Ortygia another name for the island.
Why couldn't anyone be born or die on Delos?
The rule was an Athenian religious measure, enforced from 426/5 BC, meant to keep Apollo's birthplace pure. People about to give birth or die were taken to the neighbouring island of Rheneia.
Why did Leto's labour last nine days?
In the Homeric Hymn, Hera kept Eileithyia, the goddess of childbirth, away on Olympus. Labour began properly only when Iris brought Eileithyia to the island.
Does anyone live on Delos today?
Only a few site staff live on the island. It is otherwise an open-air archaeological site, visited by boat from Mykonos.