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Modern Description: In the northwest corner of the Precinct of Apollo are two buildings: the Ecclesiasterion, an assembly building first erected in the early 5th century BC and then re-modelled more than once in Hellenistic times, whose marble seats along the north wall to either side of an aedicule are still well-preserved in situ; and, across from it, a small rectangular edifice of the late 5th century BC, referred to generally as an ‘Administrative Office' building. Between the two, a tiny passageway latterly remained the only access in and out of the Sanctuary from the north. Continuing north the pathway passes beside two important sacred structures. Immediately to the left is the Sanctuary of the Twelve Gods or Dodekatheon, attested here from Archaic times and dedicated probably to four triads of gods: Zeus, Hera and Athena; Apollo, Artemis and Leto; Hades, Demeter and Kore; and Poseidon, Aphrodite and Hermes. The granite base of the temple and marble elements of the superstructure at the west end are visible, and a number of the dozen altars which lay in its precinct are clustered to the east. Almost contiguous to the north, and opposite what was once a complex of shops, is the Letoön, constructed around 540 BC in a veined, white marble, and consecrated to the mother of Apollo and Artemis, without whose exhausting search for a place to give birth and final choice of Delos, there would never have been any sanctuary here in the first place. The temple is built over a widely protruding marble crepis which forms a beautifully rounded ledge in Parian marble, on which offerings were laid; it had a paved vestibule, giving access to the naos which protected the seated effigy of Leto. The temple is small, but its temenos appears to have stretched some considerable way to the east – an area now occupied by the large, open area of the Agora of the Italians. The latter was laid out in the late 2nd century BC, but never fully completed.
- Detour into Agora of the Italians: The size of the agora (overall almost 100 x 70m) gives some sense of the importance and wealth which the community of Italian merchants had achieved on Delos by the 2nd century BC through banking and trade in slaves and other commodities. The area is entered through a ruined Doric Propylon; the wide, central space of beaten earth is surrounded by a Doric peristyle of white marble columns on red bases (the latter visible on the north side). It formerly had an Ionic, colonnaded gallery above. The construction was donated by several individuals or trade groups known as Hermaists. Begun in c. 110 BC, it was repaired after the sack of Delos by Mithridates, but then left unfinished around 50 BC. On the inner side is a series of rooms or exedrae containing votive monuments, statues, and mosaics: noteworthy on the west side are those of Lucius Orbius, Caius Cluvius, and Caius Ofellius, (where a fine nude statue by the Athenian sculptors Dionysios and Timarchides, now in the Museum, was found); the room of Publius Satricanius, on the north side has a fine mosaic. In an exedra on the east side was found a statue of a Wounded Gaul (now in Athens). A building such as this – comparable to today's shopping malls – would have been thronged with life in the daylight hours: make-shift stalls in the central court selling goods under canopies would have been fixed to the colonnade, so that people sauntered in the shade of the colonnade itself between parallel rows of shops to one side and stalls to the other. On the outer east and west sides of the structure are more lines of shops opening into the street. West of both the Italian Agora and of the Letoön are the remains of a granite building with a double court: the ground floor was divided into small rooms, perhaps sculptors' workshops (statues of an unfinished sphinx and gryphon are visible), while above may have been an assembly room.
The avenue leading north from the Letoön begins to open out and is bordered to the west by the celebrated *Terrace of the Lions, which constitutes a ceremonial entry of a kind clearly influenced by similar avenues in Egyptian sanctuaries. (The original sculptures are now in the Museum; good copies have been placed on site). This line of magnificent creatures – more panthers than lions – laid out and executed by the Naxians in their native stone some time at the end of the 7th century BC, faces the rising sun across the Sacred Lake where Apollo and Artemis were born. Their elongated backs, lean flanks and crouching haunches are charged with attentive energy. They were once the ceremonial guardians of the entry to the Sanctuary – that is, in earliest times when boats landed not in the Sacred Harbour (which had not yet been constructed), but in the Bay of Skardana instead, which lies over the rise to the north of here. The logic of this older entry, which first passed by the Sacred Lake with its palms and swans, and then proceeded south under the gaze of the lions towards the Temple of Leto and thence to the Sanctuaries of Apollo and Artemis, was impeccable. The effect of later re-orienting the Sacred Precinct for arrival from a harbour to the south side was to render the Terrace of the Lions somewhat irrelevant.
Although five lions are visible in situ, their original number was at least nine, and could even have been as many as sixteen. One, removed by the Venetians in 1716, now stands by the entrance to the Arsenal in Venice, completed with an 18th century head. The lion was traditionally more closely associated with Artemis than with Apollo for whom it had no particular significance, and it is noteworthy that the positioning of the lions here is more in alignment with the Temple of Artemis than with that of Apollo. At the time the terrace was created in the 7th century, the prominence of Artemis at Delos may have been much greater than it was in later times. The lions look onto the Sacred Lake, now dry since 1925 when it was drained for reasons of salubrity. Its form is indicated by a modern wall, which represents its extent in Hellenistic times. This is the lake referred to as ‘round like a wheel' (τροχοειδής), of which Herodotus was reminded when describing the Sacred Lake of Sais in Egypt (Ηist. ΙΙ, 170). In it were kept the sacred swans and geese of Apollo. The lake was formed by an overflow of the Inopos torrent which originally debouched to the north, into the Bay of Skardana. A palm-tree has been planted in the centre in memory of the grove which grew here in antiquity and of the sacred palm to which Leto clung when giving birth to the twins. The Sacred Lake was once the first element of the Sanctuary of Apollo encountered by visitors; today it is one of the last, and it marks the northern limit of the sacred area in early antiquity. The extensive remains that lie beyond it, on the hill of Skardana to the north, all date from Hellenistic times and after. Beyond them, the land drops steeply to the Bay of Skardana, which was the island's harbour and entrance up until the building and organisation of the Sacred Harbour during the course of the 6th century BC.
The re-erected columns visible to the northwest of the Lion Terrace belong to the large edifice of the Association of the Poseidoniasts of Berytos (modern Beirut), a guild of Syrian ship-owners and merchants who worshipped Baal, a god they identified with Poseidon. The vestibule leads into a court bounded on the west by a portico onto which opened four scared rooms. One of these, later than the others, was dedicated to the goddess Roma – a popular cult, in fashion in the late 2nd century BC – and contains her statue. On the east side a colonnade leads to a peristyle court, with a cistern. Note the clear, dedicatory inscription of the Poseidoniasts “to the gods of their fathers” along the west-side entablature. Further to the west is another open court with a mosaic pavement, which was probably used as a meeting-place. To the south were reception rooms and, in the basement below them, a series of shops. A number of statues were found in this building including the memorable group of Aphrodite and Pan (now in the National Museum in Athens), in which the goddess threatens the menacing Pan with her sandal: the work is probably an original of the 3rd century BC, much influenced by Praxitelean forms.
Beyond the Building of the Poseidoniasts a road runs north/south along the side of four houses, some of which bear apotropaic symbols carved beside their doorways – a phallus, a man holding an animal, a cutlass, etc. These and other symbols, such as the club of Hercules or the conical caps worn by the Dioscorides, can be found elsewhere in the area. The clearest examples are on the two marble door-posts of the house set slightly back to the west from the middle of the street. Their symbolic purpose was to protect the dwellings from evil spirits. Note also the floors in attractive chequer-board mosaic in the houses at the south end.
To the north, along a straight east/west street, two entire blocks of houses have been excavated: their urban plan (later and more organised than their counterparts to the south in the Theatre Quarter), their functional furnishings (latrines and ample cisterns), their cool two-storey marble peristyles (‘House of the Comedians') and their decoration with reliefs and mosaics, give a sense of the comfortable life of Hellenistic Delos. The easternmost building, known as the ‘House of the Diadumenos', from the discovery here of a replica of the celebrated statue by Polyclitus, had an elaborate water-supply system. Many of the houses similarly take their names from the exemplary finds made in them which are now exhibited in the museum (‘House of the Jewels', ‘House of the Seals', etc.) The *‘House of the Lake', which occupies a whole block on its own, has an especially well preserved peristyle of monolithic columns with a mosaic impluvium floor. Its northeast corner (opposite the entrance to the ‘Granite Palaestra') bears a large fish/phallus image for good fortune, carved in relief on one of the granite corner-blocks.
One of Delos's most celebrated finds – a magnificent male portrait in bronze, executed with a thoughtful and sensitive naturalism, and still preserving its original eyes (now in the Archaeological Museum in Athens) – comes from the so-called ‘Granite Palaestra' (mid-2nd century BC). This massive structure lies due north of the Sacred Lake (directly beyond its older and more ruined sister-edifice, known as the ‘Lake Palaestra') and takes its name from the granite blocks of which it is partly constructed: these survive well in the fine extent of the south wall. In the middle is a large cistern in four compartments, with a roof in poros stone, which was surrounded by a Doric peristyle. Extending both due south and northwest from the Granite Palaestra are well-conserved stretches of the City Wall.
The enceinte, often called the ‘Wall of Triarius', was built by the Roman legate Triarius in 69-66 BC to protect Delos from the attacks of the pirate, Athenodoros. It was partly built over houses and shops which were demolished and filled with rubble to form a foundation. The southern stretch of the wall was removed in 1925-26. It skirted the east side of the Sacred Lake and of the Agora of the Italians. On a bastion of the wall, directly east of the Italian Agora, was found a small Prostyle Temple of the 2nd century BC with four columns, open to the east, and with an altar in front dedicated to a female goddess – possibly Aphrodite.
Wikidata ID: Q27537830
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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