(τροχοειδὴς λίμνη) at Delos recalls that of Saïs: the Delian stream called the Inopus was believed to swell with the rising of the Nile[1]. Among the early visitors to Delos we must not omit the Carians. The fact that part of Caria was known as Phoenice corresponds with the somewhat indeterminate use of the term "Carian" which may be remarked in Greek writers. The Carians are "speakers of a barbarous tongue"; and yet the Hellenic Apollo deigns to employ their language. The fact seems to be that the tribe or tribes of Hellenic origin settled in this south-west corner of the Asiatic sea-board were deeply saturated with alien and especially Semitic influences: by the other Hellenes they were not always recognised as kinsmen: and sometimes the name of "Carian" was applied to people who were wholly non-Hellenic, especially to Phoenician settlers on that part of the coast. In early times the "Carians" appear as pirates, clad in bronze armour, who make raids on the Aegean islands. The graves found on Delos when the Athenians exhumed the dead in 426 B.C. were chiefly Carian; and it is to the Carians that M. Lebégue would ascribe the primitive temple which he has excavated on Cynthus[2].
The Hellenic period of Delos begins with the
- ↑ Callim. l.c. 206; Paus. ii. 5. 2. Tournefort heard a local legend that the spring in the N.E. of Delos was fed by the Jordan. But the same thing was said also of a spring in Mykonos (Lebégue, p. 16).
- ↑ Thuc. iii. 104; Lebégue, p. 75. Carians preceded Ionians in other places which afterwards became seats of Apollo's worship—as at Tralles, Colophon, Claros, and Miletus.
