It has always been a bucket list item to visit Greece and its islands, and they were as beautiful as expected and housed boatloads of ancient artifacts. However, they were on everyone else’s bucket list, too. Poor little picturesque Santorini offered up its beautiful blue roofs, but you had to elbow your way in to snap the requisite photo. We tourists need to ration ourselves. Our guide said they had already passed a limit to building construction (for new AIRBNB, hotels, etc).
Just in time, since downtown Thira already looks remarkably similar to the cruise ports of Juneau, Mazatlan, and Malaga. Jewelry, t-shirts, bars. I enjoyed my souvlaki pita and fries, just like they make it in Castro Valley! We are homogenizing these cultures even as we strive to see them.
At Delos, we had a unique opportunity to walk among original ruins, in what has been a two-century ongoing archaeological excavation. Delos was itself an ancient swirl of cultures, so maybe the blender approach is just as old.
Delos, at the Center of the Cyclades
First, a brief foray into Greek geography. Greece lies across the Adriatic Sea from Italy to the east. The mainland is like a series of outstretched fingers of a knobby hand, with the southern part connecting like a skinny leash (or a bridge over a channel these days) at the port of Corinth.
Piraeus is the main port on the Agean Sea where most ships come (like our cruise ship). It’s a shipping hub just west of Athens, the big daddy capital to the east. Thousands of islands extend outward from those fingers like scattered crumbs, some large islands like Crete and others too tiny to show on the map or have recognizable names. Delos (Dilos) is tiny. Santorini is volcanic, so its dormant crater is still visible. Those two are part of a rough circle called Cyclades, notable circular because they reflect dormant and active volcanoes, as well as the tectonic plates of Europe and Asia that bisects the region. I’m from California, so I know my tectonic plates!
The island of Delos (labeled Dilos on the map) is in the center, overshadowed by larger Mykonos (Mycanos), though Delos was the big daddy, the real deal. It was a sacred site that later became notable, then infamous. To the Greeks, it was considered the birthplace of the twin gods Apollo and Artemis, born of Zeus and Leta, who was not his wife at the time. Many gods and demigods were born from Zeus and not his wife at the time.
Sacred Hub of International Commerce
Delos, therefore, has multiple temples and sites dedicated to both Apollo and Artemis. The remains from the Temple of Apollo was once flanked by a row of lions, a few still standing. There also stood a massive Temple of Artemis, a wonder of its time, though not as big as a true ancient wonder, the Temple of Artemis built across the Aegean in Ephesus. Ephesus is now part of southern Turkey, while the ancient wondrous temples are simply remembered.
About those lions… they are all over the archaeological sites and in the artwork. Greece was familiar with them and used them as symbols for kings and gods. One tour guide told us that lions were not limited to Africa because many lion skeletons were found across Greece. Researchers say that they were spread across the Balkans and that many skeletons were found in remote areas, not close to populated areas, so they were apparently plentiful in southern Europe in the 800-600 BCE timeframe. Hence, Apollo got a row of lions on his front porch.
But Apollo and Artemis weren’t the only honored ones with temples. On the same island, there were Temples to Isis built by Egyptians, to Astarte by the Phoenicians, to Yahweh by the Jews. Temples were built by Syrians, Romans, and a few more minor -Ans. All the cultures worshipped in peace and harmony, just like in a Coca Cola commercial. Well not exactly.
After the Athenians defeated the Persians (see movie The 300) they gathered the city-states nearby and formed the Delian League. It was also known as the Athenian Empire, since defeating the Persian army with their navy made them Athens the most powerful local power. The Delian League required all members to pay tribute, i.e. cash money, to Apollo for a treasury kept in Apollo’s Temple and administered by Apollo’s people, the Athenians. No separation of church and state there.
This lasted for a few centuries until first Alexander the Great subsumed the Greeks under the Macedonian banner, then Rome got its act together and defeated the Greeks after Alexander died. The Romans made Delos a free port, which is when other city-states came and built temples and started trading. Delos, as a central and well-traveled location, became particularly known as a place to trade slaves, captured either during one of the various wars or by one of the multiple pirate groups of the Mediterranean.
Formerly sacred, formerly center of the Delian League, Romans turned it into a commercial hub, which intensified when Rome destroyed the commercial Grecian hub of Corinth. Rome ceded Delos back to the Greeks in that treaty after Corinth, and Delos became the Manhattan of its day. Multiple groups kept a noticeable presence on the island. Some wealthy built villas up on the hills among the temples, with plenty of fresh water cisterns. There was even a sizeable theater for performances.
Delos, Squeezed Between the Romans and the Mithridites
All that polyglot culture met a sad end. Our tour guide explained that Mithridates (IV) in 88 BCE came to Delos during a war with Rome. Believing the island to be full of Romans, which it was to some extent, the Mithridites (there’s a mouthful) massacred the people on the island–20,000 of the wealthiest merchants and purveyors of high finance until the Medicis. They think that one of the reasons that many artifacts like wine glasses were intact was because they were simply dropped by people trying to flee.
There was a little more to it, of course, than simply a bloodthirsty army coming to kill scores of innocents. The Mithridites were one of the many groups that had spread across Turkey and what is called Asia Minor, Mesopotamia, that place where all civilization was born. The Romans were encroaching on the area to their east, and they had installed puppet rulers in two of the cities that the Mithridites considered their territory. We don’t know how many people the Romans massacred when that happened. We just know that the response in Delos took out what had been a thriving culture, with temples full of money.
We don’t know who ended up with the money.