has been thought by some to betray the influence of Phoenicia on the myth[1]. However that may be, there can be no doubt that Phoenicia was in contact with Delos from an early time; at first, through the occasional voyages of Phoenician traders,—then through the posts of Phoenician commerce in the Aegean. The quail (ὄρτυξ), from which Delos took the name of Ortygia, was sacred not only to the Hellenic Leto but also to the Tyrian Heracles,—a solar god, whose worship at Delos, it can scarcely be doubted, was older than that of Apollo. Asteria, another name given to Delos, appears to have been sometimes confused or identified with Astarte[2]: and the Syrian Aphrodite, who at a later period held a shrine in Delos, had probably been known there since the first days when the traders of Tyre had entered the waters of the archipelago. Crete, again, has prehistoric relations with the sacred island. It is from Crete that Theseus brings to Delos the ancient wooden statue of Aphrodite. Cretan traits belong to another goddess worshipped at Delos,—Eileithyia[3] The connection between Delos and Egypt, though perhaps later, was at any rate old. The oval basin[4]
- ↑ Ῥοιώ (ῥοιά, pomegranate) is the Danae of the story, and her father Στάφυλος is the Acrisius (Tzetzes, l.c.).
- ↑ The name of Astartê is given to Delos only by Latin mythographers of the decadence (Lebégue, p. 21); but the associations which suggested it may have been very ancient.
- ↑ Olen had composed hymns to this goddess (Paus, ix. 27. 2), in whom the character of an Hyperborean Artemis seems blended with that of a Cretan Aphrodite.
- ↑ Theognis, v. 7; Callim. Hymn. Del. (τροχόεσσα) 261; In Apoll. 59 (περιηγής): cp. Her. ii. 170.
