The monuments that have been excavated up to now speak most eloquently for the grandeur of the sacred island and illuminate a past civilisation, which was Europe's cradle and wet nurse. The excavations that started in 1872 and are still in progress have unearthed the Sanctuary and a good part of the cosmopolitan Hellenistic town. John and the Ottomans, Delos was turned into a quarry site with its temple columns burnt for lime, and its houses left in ruins. Captured after its abandonment successively by the Byzantines, Slavs, Saracens, the Venetians, the Knights of St. Since then, the island fell rapidly into decline and was gradually abandoned. Delos was attacked and looted twice: in 88 BC by Mithridates, the King of Pontus, an enemy of the Romans, and later, in 69 BC, by the pirates of Athenodorus, an ally of Mithridates. The prosperity of the island and the friendly relations with the Romans were the main cause of its destruction. Festus, 2nd century AD) – the greatest commercial centre of the whole world. The small island became soon the maximum emporium totius orbis terrarium (S. Rich merchants, bankers and ship-owners from all over the world settled there, attracting many builders, artists and craftsmen, who built for them luxurious houses, richly decorated with frescoes and mosaic floors. After 167 BC, as a result of the declaration of Delos as a free port, all the commercial activity of the eastern Mediterranean was concentrated on the isle. The Apollonian sanctuary, established at least since the 9th century BC, reached the peak of its glory during the Archaic and Classical period, when it acquired its Pan-Hellenic character. The island was first settled in the third millennium BC. According to the legend, it was there that Apollo-Sun, god of daylight, and his twin sister Artemis-Moon, goddess of night light, were born. Outstanding Universal Value Brief synthesisĭelos, even though a small (350.64 ha), rocky island in the centre of the Aegean Sea, was considered as “the most sacred of all islands” (Callimachus, 3rd century BC) in ancient Greek culture.
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