The Sacred Lake on Delos

A birthplace on Delos

Delos is an island in the Cyclades, a group of Greek islands. The god Apollo and his twin sister Artemis were born there. Local tradition names the sacred lake on Delos as the place of their birth.

The oldest telling of the birth is the Homeric Hymn to Apollo, an early Greek poem in praise of the god. It gives its own landmarks: a hill, a palm tree and a stream. A road ran from the sanctuary of Apollo, his holy ground on the island, to the sacred lake. Lions of marble once lined that road.

Leto looks for a place to give birth

Leto, the mother of Apollo, goes from land to land looking for somewhere to give birth. In the hymn, every land refuses her, afraid of the son she is carrying.

At last Delos answers her, and answers frankly. The island would be glad to take the far-shooting lord, since it has a poor name among men and would become greatly honoured. But it has heard that Apollo will be haughty. It also expects never to be rich in oxen and sheep. Leto swears the great oath of the gods, and only then does Delos agree.

The retellings drop this part of the story, the bargain.

Nine days of labour

Leto’s labour lasts nine days and nine nights. Every goddess is with her except the goddess Hera. Hera has kept Eileithyia, the goddess who can release a birth, on Mount Olympus, under golden clouds and out of hearing. At last the other goddesses send Iris, their messenger, to bring her.

Leto braces herself against the great mass of the Cynthian hill, Mount Cynthus, beside a palm tree and the streams of the Inopos. There Apollo is born. The hymn names the island twice.

The hymn names the hill, the palm and the stream, but no lake. The lake comes from local tradition. The two need not be forced into one exact point on the plan of the excavated site. Belief on the island keeps the lake, and the poem keeps its own landmarks.

Athens purifies the island

Thucydides, the historian of the Peloponnesian War, reports what Athens later did with the birthplace. One winter the Athenians purified Delos. They dug up all the graves of those who had died on the island. They also ordered that from then on, nobody should be allowed to die or to give birth there. The dying and women in labour were to be carried across to Rhenea, the neighbouring island.

Long before, Thucydides adds, Pisistratus had done a partial purification. He cleansed only as much of the island as could be seen from the temple. After the purification, Athens held the Delian games, a quinquennial festival, for the first time.

Thucydides also says that long before any of this, the Ionians and the islanders around them came to Delos for a festival. It had athletic and poetry contests, and the cities brought choirs of dancers. He quotes the hymn to prove it: the robed Ionians take their way there with wife and child.

The lions on the road

Workshops from the island of Naxos set a row of marble lions on the road from the sanctuary of Apollo to the sacred lake. They date from the late seventh or early sixth century BC. The lions stood on the road for thousands of years. In 2000 they were moved inside the Archaeological Museum of Delos, out of the island’s weather. They are now in room IV.

The move changed what stands on the ancient road, but not where the offering belonged. The lions indoors are the original sculptures, and copies stand in the line outdoors. Their route still joins the sanctuary of Apollo to the lake that Delos named as the birthplace of the twins.

A visitor today sees the copies guarding the old approach. To meet the weathered marble from Naxos, they must go into the museum. Protecting the lions separated them from their place, but the road still points to the lake.