remains were rapidly destroyed or exported. The lower parts of Delos are covered with lime-kilns, which were actively employed as lately as 1820. Marble statues or slabs, which could be easily broken, were the first victims of the kilns. Then other relics followed, until scarcely a whole stone remained, except what had been buried under layers of earth accumulated upon the ancient soil. The scanty salvage from this general wreck had passed into the hands of Western collectors before the end of the sixteenth century. Wealthy Venetians obtained probably the largest share of such prizes. A few waifs and strays found their way to England[1].
Spon's account of Delos (1676) indicates that he saw little more than is to be seen at the present day. He tells a story of a proveditore at Tenos, who, baffled in an attempt to remove the colossus of Apollo, had sawed off a piece of the face as a souvenir. The church of Tenos, it may be remarked, is built of old materials brought from Delos. The German traveller Ross (1835) states that the Turks were in the habit of resorting to Delos for marbles with which to make their turbaned tombstones. The first accurate map of Delos was that
- ↑ Two marbles, now at Oxford, bear inscriptions of which the origin has hitherto been doubtful: one (Corp. Insc. Gr. 2860), a list of gifts to Apollo, was attributed by Böckh to Ephesus; the other (C. I. G. 2953 b), containing the accounts of a temple called the Artemision, was ascribed by Böckh to Ephesus, by Corsini to Smyrna. M. Homolle has shown that the first certainly, the second presumably, belongs to Delos (Bulletin de Corr. hellén. vol. ii. p. 321 f.).
