Delian Cults prior to 168/7

Delos was, of course, an international religious center, enjoying its fame as Apollo’s and Artemis’ birthplace. Over time the whole island had become, in a sense, sacred, for in the Hellenistic period neither birth, death or burial, nor war was permitted on it.^[1] For centuries various Greek and foreign states had sent, in acknowledgment of Apollo’s power, first-fruit offerings, choruses, and dedications to Delos. But despite the international appeal of the cult and despite the regular presence of foreigners on the island, the Delians had maintained their religious institutions and traditions and had excluded foreign influences no less tenaciously than had the Athenians. So long as Delians retained control of their own religion, Delian institutions were upheld. What these institutions were and what the Athenians found on Delos when they arrived in 167/6 can be summarized from the superb and highly detailed study of Philippe Bruneau, Recherches sur les cultes de Délos à l’époque hellénistique et à l’époque impériale (1970).

On Delos the myth and cults of Apollo, his sister Artemis, his mother Leto, and the birth goddess Eileithyia predominated. The sanctuary of Apollo had three temples, with the “Great Temple” finally nearly completed ca. 280 and replacing the archaic poros temple as “the” temple of Apollo (52–54).^[2] The sanctuary had its great altar of goat horns (Κερατῶν), founded by Apollo himself (19–29). His festival, the Apollonia, was celebrated annually with sacrifices, athletic contests, choral songs, literary and musical productions, and, as at the City Dionysia in Athens, the awarding of crowns to individuals for meritorious civic service (65–81). At the Apollonia a chorus of Delian women (Deliades) performed, a chorus that the Delians, unlike the Athenians, maintained throughout the year to perform at a multitude of religious occasions, often at night, under torchlight, to the accompaniment of a flutist (35–38). Also throughout the year Apollo received theōriai (religious embassies) bearing first-fruit offerings from cities such as Calymna, Cnidos, Rhodes, Alexandria, and Athens, and the Deliades regularly performed on these occasions (93–114).

Artemis’ sanctuary adjoined Apollo’s to the northwest. Her archaic temple remained in service until it was replaced by a new Artemision in extensive remodeling after 179. In her sanctuary was the tomb (σῆμα) of the Hyperborean Maidens Laodice and Hyperoche (172–74). Artemis was also honored by the Delians on adjacent islands: the Artemision “on the island” with a temple, altar, bronze cult statue, and dining room, and another sanctuary for her as Artemis Ortygia with a “house” (οἶκος) and a spring (176–91). As the myth has it, Artemis, the firstborn, had assisted in the birth of her twin brother, and hence was appropriately revered by women as Artemis Lochia (“of Childbirth”) on the east slope of Mount Cynthos. Her sanctuary there, on a long terrace, included an altar and a temple (191–95). The Letoön, the sanctuary of Apollo’s mother Leto, was just north of her son’s sanctuary and included an archaic temple, altar, wood cult statue, and the sacred date palm to which Leto clung in the agonies of childbirth (207–12). Within the sanctuary of Apollo was a temple of Eileithyia, goddess of childbirth, who enjoyed unusual prominence at Delos because of her role in Apollo’s birth myth (212–19). Both Leto and Eileithyia had annual festivals.

The myths and cults of this Delian triad, Apollo, Artemis, and Leto, together with Eileithyia, gave Delos its international prominence and its raison d’être as a religious center, but the Delian people, like peoples of other Greek states, had also a coterie of deities to serve their local needs. Zeus Cynthios, the major figure, shared with Athena Cynthia on the summit of Mount Cynthos a large sanctuary, the Cynthion, which was remodeled and improved in the century before 270. The sanctuary was the site of banquets, armed processions, and torch races (221–32). The cult may have served as the Delian equivalent of an Olympian acropolis cult, like that of Athena Polias in Athens, at least in spatial terms. The Delian Athena Polias, known from the sixth century, was associated with and probably subordinate to a Zeus Polieus. In the third century first appear Zeus Soter and Athena Soteira (233–38). After 166 the Athenians had one priest serve all four. Apollo was, of course, “the” god of Delos, and it is not surprising that, unlike in Athens, the cults of the Poliades and Soteres developed little. No temple for them is known, and the one surviving altar, of Zeus Polieus from the third century, stood in Apollo’s sanctuary.

Delos was famed for not having earthquakes (Hdt. 6.98), and credit for that no doubt should be given to Poseidon, because at his festival, the Posideia, he was honored as Asphaleios (“Securer”) and Orthosios (“Uprighter”). The festival featured contests and a banquet, and from the records of expenditures (520 drachmas in ca. 180 B.C.) for the banquet, Bruneau has calculated, at 1 1/2 obols per banqueter, about 2,000 participants, consuming about 1,600 quarts of wine. The banquet quite likely served most of the male, adult citizenry of Delos, and those few who missed it received their 1 1/2 obols in cash (257–67).

The women of Delos celebrated, as Greek women everywhere, the Thesmophoria for Demeter, Kore, and the Zeus Eubouleus common in the Cyclades. The Thesmophorion had altars for each, a temple for Demeter and perhaps one for Kore, a stoa, megaron, treasury, and statues of Demeter and Kore (269–90). As part of this cult the Delian women performed annually a separate, idiosyncratic ritual, the Nyktophylaxia (“Guard of the Night”), which involved, among other events, digging through a certain door, perhaps of the megaron, and walling it up again after the festival (290–93).

Although no Dionysion is attested, choregic monuments survive from the late fourth century and an altar for Dionysos was built in 281 near the Letoön. The Delians held annual Dionysia, surely in the theater, and this festival featured a phallic procession and competitions in tragedy, comedy, and boys’ choruses (295–326). The Delian month name “Lenaion” also presumes a Dionysiac Lenaia like the Lenaia in Athens. The Dioscouroi, as protectors of travelers, received a sacrifice on Delos as early as 301, and their sanctuary, the Dioscourion, included a temple, a hero cult–type altar (ἐσχάρα), and a dining hall where theoxenia was probably held (379–94). Hestia’s cult, as in Athens, was located in the Prytaneion where a continual fire was maintained. She served as patroness of the archons, who regularly made dedications to her (441–44).

To these traditional deities we may add the hero Anios, whose role is analogous to that of Erechtheus in Athens. He was the son of Apollo and Rhoio, was king of Delos at the time of the Trojan War, and served as priest of Apollo and as a mantis. His sons were Andros, Myconos, and Thasos, eponyms of nearby islands. His daughters, the Oinotrophoi Oino, Spermo, and Elaïs, had the power to transform whatever they touched into, respectively, wine, grain, and olive oil, a gift no doubt of their great-great-grandfather Dionysos. Anios’ sanctuary included a colonnaded courtyard, “houses,” and an ἐσχάρα. By the Delians he was called simply Basileus (“King”) or Archegetes (“Founder”), and they alone could enter his sanctuary (413–30).

The Delians were as if not more hesitant than the Athenians to introduce foreign cults and accept them into state cult. Asclepios appears first at the end of the fourth century, one hundred years later than in Athens. His temple was still under construction in 297, and his sanctuary eventually had also, among other buildings, a gateway, colonnade, and dining room. As at Athens and everywhere, he was a god of healing and his cult, once founded, prospered (355–77). The cults of non-Delian gods, when introduced, were placed distant from the civic and cult center of the island; thus the Asclepieion was on the north coastline of the Bay of Fourni. The Cabeireion (later called the Samothrakeion), the sanctuary of the Cabeiroi, protectors of sailors, was founded in the first half of the fourth century on the left bank of the Inopos River (379–99).^[3] The Egyptian cults, attested as early as 332/1 in Athens, first appear on Delos in the first half of the third century along the Inopos. The earliest Sarapieion (A) was privately founded by the Egyptian priest Apollonios from Memphis, and after his death at the age of ninety-seven the priesthood remained in his family. The largest Sarapieion (C), a monumental complex above the reservoir of the Inopos, was the only one to become a state cult, and that not until ca. 180 B.C. (457–66). Sarapis, Isis, Anoubis, and Harpocrates were, at this period, primarily “saviors,” “healers,” and protectors of sailors. The needs of foreign sailors and merchants passing through or based on Delos are probably sufficient to explain the introduction of these cults, as they are for the foreign cults in Piraeus, and the Delians themselves seem little more inclined than the Athenians to participate in them.

Within the sanctuary of Apollo, Aphrodite had a state cult, by legend founded by Theseus on a stop on his return to Athens from Crete. Her festival, the Aphrodisia, included among other events a performance by the Deliades. Near the theater there was another Aphrodision, a private sanctuary founded by the Delian Stesileos, with a temple, altar, “houses,” and a marble cult statue. Stesileos, who served as archon in 305 and as a chorēgos for the Apollonia in 284 and the Dionysia in 280, also provides an example of a religious institution, common at Delos but not at Athens, that allowed the Delians to cope with some of the religious and political pressures of the times. Stesileos in 302 donated a considerable sum of money, a fund to be held by the state and administered by the state hieropoioi, to endow the Stesileia, an annual sacrifice, banquet, and dedicatory vase for Apollo and Aphrodite. Though named after the donor, this “festival” and others like it on Delos were to give divine honors to the deities, not to the founders. Years later Stesileios’ daughter Echenice followed her father’s example and endowed, with 3,000 drachmas, the Echenikeia for the same deities (331–44).

This particular type of “festival,” named after the donor but intended to honor the deity, perhaps derived from the embassies (theōriai) sent to Delos by cities with sacrifices, choruses, and dedications to honor Apollo. Whatever its origins, it became the format according to which, in the third century, the Ptolemies, Antigonids, and Attalids made their primary contribution to Delian religious life. In Athens, as we have seen, benevolent Hellenistic monarchs might be rewarded with divine honors and large public festivals in their honor. But on Delos these same monarchs received from the Delian state itself no such honors. Rather, the kings or members of their families or staff contributed sums of money, probably rather modest by their standards, and from the interest each year a sacrifice was performed, the Deliades sang, and a vase was made and inscribed to commemorate the event. The celebration was named after the monarch, whether Ptolemaieia, Antigoneia, or Attaleia, but the recipient of the honors was Apollo, not the monarch. In addition to endowing such festivals the Hellenistic monarchs also occasionally made dedications of precious objects or, less frequently, of buildings (515–83).

The Confederation of Island States, however—made up of Delos, Myconos, Cynthos, Ceos, Ios, Andros, Naxos, Amorgos, and Paros and based on Delos—at the end of the fourth century gave, as Athens did, divine honors to Antigonos Monophthalmos and Demetrios Poliorcetes in festivals of alternating years, the Antigoneia and Demetrieia.^[4] These festivals included sacrifices, contests, artistic performances, and singing by the Deliades (564–68). As political fortunes changed, the Confederation apparently abandoned the Antigoneia and Demetrieia and established ca. 287/6 a cult for Ptolemy I Soter. Soon after his death in 283 “the Savior” was honored “with godlike honors” (τὸν σωτῆρα Πτολεμαῖον ἰσοθέοις τιμαῖς) for having “liberated” their cities. The Confederation erected an altar for Ptolemy on Delos and celebrated a festival, the Ptolemaieia, for him there. The festival included a tragedy competition. Delians, as did citizens from the other islands, no doubt participated in these festivals, but the celebrations were not their state festivals (531–33). The Delians may also have participated in the cult of Arsinoe Philadephos privately founded by the Egyptian admiral Hermias in 268 (543–45). Another exception to the usual practice on Delos was Antigonos Gonatas’ foundation, in 245, of the Panaia, a festival of the Macedonian Pan (561).

Such is a rough summary of the pre-168 B.C. major Delian cults, deities, and festivals. Though offering only a bare-bones survey of the detailed study of Bruneau and of the complex and beautiful site of Delos, it does give in outline the religious structure the Athenians found on their arrival. This structure was traditionally Delian and probably little changed, except for architectural improvements, from that of the fourth and fifth centuries B.C. The relative newcomer Asclepios the Athenians knew well. Sarapis had by now at least one state cult on Delos, but the Athenians knew of him and Isis only from one or two small, private non-Athenian cults in their own city. The cult of the Cabeiroi, though probably still private on Delos, the Athenians no doubt knew only by reputation. Although the Delian state itself had not established divine cults for Antigonids and Ptolemies, Delian citizens surely participated in the Confederation’s Ptolemaieia and, earlier, in its Antigoneia and Demetrieia that were not dissimilar to those once held in Athens. But, all in all, the religion of Delos in 168 was conventional and traditional, classical in structure. The Delians, as Bruneau says in summary (657–58), were attached to the religious traditions of their island, were hostile to establishing new foreign cults, and allowed the private foundation of some Egyptian cults but were slow to make them “official.” All these traits they shared with the Athenians.