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Modern Description: In contrast to the area of the Sanctuary of Apollo, the degree of conservation of streets and dwellings in the southern sector of the city is remarkable and bears comparison at times with Pompeii. The beauty and sophistication of the houses provide a lively picture of civil and domestic life and architecture in Hellenistic Greece.
The typical Delian House of the Hellenistic and Roman period had its rooms grouped around a central courtyard which was reached from the street by a short corridor. In the absence of external windows, this well of light was the sole illumination of the tenebrous interiors, and served to keep the air cool during the summer months. Richer homes had a peristyle round the court, with marble columns, and the walls plastered, painted and polished to a shine, so as to maximise the light. The so-called ‘Rhodian Peristyle' is also found on Delos, consisting of a large hall rising the full height and fronted by a taller colonnade occupying one side, and generally two storeys of rooms constituting the others. The central court would normally have a mosaic floor, whose brilliant colours revived when wet: this served as an impluvium catching rainwater for the all-important cistern beneath. Some houses possessed wells; but stored rainwater was generally preferred because of its supposed beneficial and medicinal qualities.
From the southeast corner of the Agora of the Competaliasts at the head of the embarkation mole, the well-paved and drained main street of the Theatre Quarter ascends between houses and shops – some furnished with marble windows for dispensing sales – giving directly on to the street. Occasional niches show that the street was lit by lamps at night. To the right is a house with a stove and built-in basins, probably a Dyer's Workshop. A small passage and steps lead (right) up, past a dolphin mosaic covering a cistern, into the House of Cleopatra. The marble colonnade has been restored; in the courtyard stand replicas of the two elegant statues (now in the Museum) representing Cleopatra and Dioscourides, the 2nd century BC, Athenian owners. On the opposite side of the road (left) is the House of Dionysos, where part of the staircase to an upper floor remains. In one room the rough plaster has graffiti (triremes, horseman, etc.), perhaps done by the plasterers before they added the surface layer for the painted marbling. The courtyard contains a particularly elegant *mosaic of Dionysos, executed in opus vermiculatum, i.e with tiny tesserae of often varying shapes which enhance the pictorial effect; the god is crowned with ivy leaves and holding a thyrsos, mounted on a tiger wreathed in vines. The binding cement has been variously tinted with the colour of the tesserae it holds, so as admirably to increase the tonal unity and fluidity of the design. These mosaics must be imagined gleaming from beneath standing water rather than in their present dusty condition. Farther along, the House of the Trident, one of the largest houses on the island, has a ‘Rhodian' peristyle and an elegant well-head. The mosaics are simple but striking, and include an anchor with a dolphin and a trident with a ribbon tied in a bow: the resemblance between this design and the trademarks on amphorae found in a sunken ship off Marseille has been pointed out, suggesting that the house may have belonged to the Delian wine-merchant who owned the ship. Another mosaic depicts a Panathenaic amphora suggesting that a member of the household had won a victory in a chariot-race.
At the top of the first rise the street emerges into the space before the cavea of the theatre, built in the early 3rd century BC. It held around 5,500 spectators. The cavea also served as a large water-catchment area during rain-storms: two well-preserved drain-mouths can be seen to either side of the semi-circular orchestra, which conduct the water into the impressively *vaulted cistern below. The stone arch is not a common element in Greek architecture: the eight granite spans here are well-preserved examples. The cistern was originally roofed with marble blocks and would probably have held around 500,000 litres of water for communal use when full.
The cavea is partly cut into the hill and partly built up to either side with bulwarks of fine isodomic blocks, rusticated for the most part and becoming polished closer to the sides of the stage. Only in the lowest tier are the backs of the seats preserved. The large and once elaborate skene was in the form of a rectangle with colonnades on all four sides – a design not found elsewhere. On the side facing the audience it would have had engaged Doric columns and was flanked by paraskenia, each having two higher columns. From the highest point of the theatre, 18m above the orchestra, there is a fine view over the excavations and the shore. 20m to the south of the cistern are the large foundations which supported the Altar of Dionysos with, behind it, remains of a small Temple of Apollo, dated by an inscription to 110/109 BC. Two adjacent shrines were dedicated to Artemis-Hecate (west) and Dionysos, Hermes, and Pan (east).
Beside the theatre to the southeast, and entered through a fine marble doorway, is a building known as the ‘Hostel'. It had three stories and a very large cistern, almost 20m deep, with a feed-pipe from the gutters visible in the southwest corner; a marble washing-slab with drainage indentation also lies near the entrance. The building is thought to have been a guesthouse which put up visitors to the Delian festivals.
The path east from the theatre towards the base of Mt. Kynthos, passes between two of the best-preserved Hellenistic houses on Delos: to the right hand side, the *House of the Masks, a large, merchant's house which consists of a complex of shops, workshops and living-quarters all in the same block.
The side looking onto the street consists of shops which would have been rented out by the owner; the residence (entered by circumventing the west side of the block) is set back to the south, around a peristyle of fluted columns built beside a deep, rock-cut cistern, which was originally covered by a wing of the house. Well-preserved reception rooms look onto the court from the north, each with mosaic floor and painted walls, showing several layers of successive decoration (frequently painted to represent marble). The *mosaics in the central room have an abstract field surrounded by theatrical masks: in the subsidiary room to east is a famous and technically masterful depiction of Dionysos, wearing flowing oriental garb, seated on a panther. He holds the thyrsos and a tambourine; the detail shows even the whiskers of the animal. (Splashing the mosaic with water helps to enliven the colours and details properly.) The same theme appears elsewhere in Delos, and in Hellenistic floors in both Pella and Eretria, suggesting that the mosaic workers had a popular repertoire in common, perhaps transmitted within workshops through a kind of ‘pattern book'. The square fixture holes in the peristyle columns for blinds or screens are still visible at a height of about 220cm above the ground.
A similar design is found in the House of the Dolphins, just to the northeast, named after its magnificent central *mosaic.
Concentric rings of elegant wave, key, and gryphon-head designs, surround a central emblema which has survived only scantily: pairs of stylized dolphins, ridden by small figures with divine emblems, fill the corners. The mosaic bears a (rare) signature by the artist, a certain “[Askle]piades of Arados” – a town in Phoenicia. Perhaps not unconnectedly, another mosaic in the entrance-way bears an apotropaic symbol of Tanit, the Phoenician moon-goddess. Here the peristyle is formed of columns which are only fluted for half of their height: the drain from the impluvium into the cistern below is on the south side. The holes for the wooden door-imposts are clearly visible in the marble thresholds.
Wikidata ID: Q15723502
Trismegistos Geo: 542

Info: McGilchrist's Greek Islands

(From McGilchrist’s Greek Islands, © Nigel McGilchrist 2010, excerpted with his gracious permission. Click for the books)

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