Delos - A slave to history

Greece – Delos

                                       A SLAVE TO HISTORY

Delos, I’d never heard of the place.  It’s a small island just half an hour ferry ride from Mykonos and it first cropped up when I was researching Mykonos.  I’d bought a Greek Islands travel guide and Delos had two whole pages devoted to it.
When we arrived at Mykonos our hotel loaned us a book and Delos had 33 pages dedicated to it.  I determined it was my one “must see” while staying at Mykonos. Getting there was a laugh; the 9.15 ferry had been altered to 10.00 and they said they would return at 1.00 or 1.30.  Lorraine, acutely aware of the time factor occurring due to our later exit to Santorini, pleaded with them for 1.00 or we wouldn’t travel.  They instantly decreed a 1.00 return; so much for timetables.

   

Leaving the harbour at Mykonos

We eased from the harbour and into the morning wind, passing by Agh. Gerogios Island and soon after arriving at the fabled place named Delos.  At first view it seems extraordinary that 25,000 people (our guide said 30,000) lived here at one time.  This tiny windswept speck of just 6.85 square kms in the Aegean Sea has a history, and what a history it is.
                        

Some of the wonder of Delos

According to legend, Leto had sex with Zeus (she wasn’t alone there) which greatly upset Hera, Zeus’ wife.  Fleeing the scene, Leto found that no-one wanted to know her because Hera had threatened destruction upon anyone assisting so Leto arrived at the almost uninhabited Delos and gave birth to the twins, Artemis and Apollo, whilst clinging to a solitary palm tree.  Thus the scene was set for Delos to become an island of worship and the temple building began.

Poseidonites Temple

The island then became a centre for commerce and, when it became a free trade port, the place boomed; the biggest money earner being slaves.  Ancient writers claimed 10,000 were sold here per day; this can be readily dismissed however; perhaps a few hundred would be more likely.  As with any Greek tale, you initially divide by 10 to get somewhere approximating the truth.

Still, standing on the island today imagining a multitude of ships plying trade back and forth almost beggars belief.  Though protected, the port is small and they must have berthed one on top of the other, as sailing ships were wont to do in the 19^th century, yet this was over 2,500 years ago.

Our guide showed us shops and houses, explaining sewerage systems (they were flushed with sea water to conserve drinking water), house construction (no windows to prevent malaria carrying mosquitoes from the lone swamp), the Italian agora (market place) and theatre, emphasising how important it was in Hellenic culture as it was free and troubadours used to travel around the Mediterranean to various venues.  Only males were allowed to act in plays and mostly males attended.

Sewer works for the theatre

I was fascinated with the fact that so many other gods had temples here and enclaves from different countries had their own ghettos on the island.  For example, the Poseidonites came from Beirut to worship here; had their own temple and own area where they lived.  Apart from Apollo, the main god worshipped here, there was a veritable horde of them, including Artemis (his twin sister), Hestia, Asclepius, Heracles, Zeus and even one dedicated to twelve gods.  Needless to say, Lorraine’s favourite will always be Bacchus!

More temple remnants

The greatest of the many statues dedicated to Apollo was 9 metres high, sculpted from a single block of marble weighing 32 tonnes.  They built a temple to it where it was supposed to reside but got the measurements wrong.  The statue was too big to fit in and so was installed outside where it could be seen from the harbour.  In 1416 a Florentine attempted to raise it, to no avail.  In 1675 its head was cut off and has been lost forever, but the torso and pelvis were also dragged away but for some reason were abandoned and still lie there whilst the Delos Museum has its left hand and the British Museum a section of the left leg.

There were a modicum of other things in the museum as well that promoted interest, most notably the statuary and mosaics; a worthwhile place to spend some time.
  

One of the few mosaics in the museum

From 700 B.C. the place started to flourish and, when later it became a free trade (no taxes) port from 314 B.C. to 166 B.C., with slaves the number one commodity, it boomed.  Eventually the Athenian league, in a cleverly disguised ploy to take it over, decreed that the place needed to be cleansed so all births and deaths had to take place on the neighbouring island of Rhenia, thus ruling out any hereditary type claims and then Athenians were implanted here using a ballot system, so popular was the place.

Later, when under Roman control, around 87 B.C. Mithridates Eupator, who already ruled all the countries around the Black Sea, looted the place to obtain money to hire mercenaries.  It is estimated that 20,000 people were slaughtered and that caused the demise of Delos.

During the ensuing centuries people would come and take building materials, leaving little for today’s tourists to savour, but enough to give a good outline of the place and cause one to enthuse about what an amazing place it was.

                                                                             The avenue of the lions is made up of cast replicas

The Avenue of the Lions, some temples and an area of houses behind the theatre still contain enough upright walls and columns to give you a general idea of how thriving Delos was in its heyday, and you can still imagine the agora with different kingdoms vying for a presence there and erecting ever larger facades to denote their presence.

The old harbour at Delos

Definitely a place worthy of your time if you’re in the area

IRON KNOB

It lay there twisted and winding just outside the perimeter.  It sat there, snake-like, but never threatening, merely promising something that might have eventuated but never did.  Was it really salvation, had anyone tried to use the hose?  These were questions that ran through my brain as I lifted my gaze upwards once again to the burnt out ruin in whose grounds I stood.

Couldn’t help but wonder just how it had started, who had been affected and where their lives had gone afterwards.  It had all the appearance of insurance not being involved.  Nothing had been cleared, the corrugated iron lay strewn where it had fallen, charred bits of wood stuck out here and there, noticeably the beams that once supported the floor.  There were things here, but there was nothing.  It all seemed symptomatic of the town really.  What once was, was no more, but you could still see the signs.

                                     

The Newsagent had long been closed, shops boarded up and the barren multi-hued hill in the background only added to the air of melancholy.  There were indicators to the museum and guided mine tours.  I followed them and, for some reason I know not, decided to go in.  I sort of figured it might be a thrill for those inside to actually get a visitor.  There were sounds and visions of children 50 metres away – signs of life at last!  I took some outside shots of the brightly painted old cart that had been lovingly restored and eyed off some of the freshly painted mining equipment before going inside.

      

I opened the door apprehensively.  The museum may have had lots on show but little had been spent in the lighting department.  They were in somewhat cramped circumstances and a trained curator had been noticeably absent when they set the display up.  There was a significant collection of minerals at one end but you could hardly make them out in the dimness and they were sadly not shown to their best advantage.

                     

The cricket team photo, circa 1913, was something I paused at.  Some of the lads were dressed with shirt and tie and braces, a couple looking decidedly uncomfortable, while the umpire was primed in his 3-piece suit.  It was the scorer that troubled me, couldn’t work out whether he was attired in a monk’s habit, a boiler suit or an unfastened straightjacket.  While most gazed askance, his eyes penetrated the camera and were clearly aimed at YOU, though with what intent I couldn’t tell, but somehow there was an evil there.  Other photos were classics; a dressed up aboriginal family in a cart pulled by camels, a vintage haulage truck from the 20’s and a ten pound Pom recruiting poster.  Then there was a poem from an old people’s home in Monteith, Scotland, extolling the virtues of a lady well past her prime.

Other bric-a-brac and the usual suspects (old typewriter, phone etc.) littered various spaces around the interior and I ended up buying a souvenir tea towel (come on, be honest, how many of you have got an Iron Knob tea towel?) mainly because I felt like they needed some cash flow.

As I paid, I couldn’t help notice the tiny café off to the side whose furnishings were distinctly 50’s, though there were only two tables.  How many people had they served today on their ill-matched tablecloth and napkins I wondered but the lady taking my money had been perturbed that she’d just had 40 school children in.  I guessed that was probably about a month’s worth of normal tourists like me in one hit, so she needed a rest.

Next I headed off, well, almost.  I was intrigued by some buildings over yonder so I drove up a gravel (read “dust”) road to them and discovered it was actually stables and entry was forbidden.  The sign clearly said, “Keep Out Private Propity, by order Babe and Red Dog”.  Well, I certainly didn’t want to argue with that, so I contented myself with gazing at the unusual array of horses and such they had inside.  All manner of same appeared from tiny ponies to something resembling mules to colourful normal sized horses.  How such a collection had been arrived at I was curious to know but would never find out.

                                                       

Back through town I passed the decidedly rustic Buckingham Shack, a corrugated iron abode of mismatched colours with a window either side of the main door and a strange fence of interlocking rings that caught my eye.  The air conditioning consisted of an open front and rear door and I could discern two figures inside.  Someone actually lived there, but what sort of a life was hard for me to imagine.  I’d certainly want a library close by.

                                      

It was time to leave and I bade farewell to the big bucket dredge beside the main road and headed off further west, still with the images of a mining town struggling with the realities of a new century.