Homeric Hymn
“And you, O lord Apollo, god of the silver bow, far-shooter, once walked on craggy Kynthos, and once wandered about the islands among the people. Many are your temples and wooded groves, and all hills and towering peaks of lofty mountains and rivers flowing to the sea are yours, Phoebus, yet ‘tis Delos that most delights your heart; for there the long-robed Ionians gather in your honour with their children and chaste wives: they delight in boxing and dancing and song, and honour you when the games begin, so often as they hold their gathering. A man would say that they were as deathless and ageless as gods, were he to come upon the Ionians thus met together. For he would see the grace of them all, and would be pleased at heart to behold the men and well-girded women, their swift ships and great wealth. And there is this great wonder besides – whose renown shall never perish – the girls of Delos, hand-maidens of the Far-shooter; for when they have praised Apollo first, as well as Leto and Artemis who delights in arrows, they sing, telling of men and women of past days, and charm the tribes of men. Also they can imitate the tongues of all men and their clattering speech: each would say that he himself were singing, so close to truth is their sweet song.”
Homeric Hymn to Apollo, 7th century BC
Delos through the eyes if a 17th-century traveller
“This island, once so celebrated, the resort of multitudes, the seat of religion, religious ceremonies and pompous processions, is now an uninhabited desert, everywhere strewn with ruins, so various, and so well wrought, as to evince its once populous and flourishing condition. The only animals we saw here, besides rabbits and snakes, were a few sheep brought occasionally from Myconos, a neighbouring island, to crop the scanty herbage which the ruins will permit to grow. Travellers, who have visited this place, have been distrest for water; I have, therefore, given a map of the island, in which, among other particulars, the situation of an excellent well is marked. The number of curious marbles here is continually diminishing on account of a custom the Turks have, of placing at the heads of the graves of their deceased friends a marble column; and the miserable sculptors of that nation come here every year and work up the fragments for that purpose, carving the figure of a turban on top of the monumental stone. Other pieces they carry off for lintels and window sills; so that, in a few years, it may be as naked as when it first made its appearance above the surface of the sea.”
Stuart, J. - Revett, N., The Antiquities of Athens, London 1794, vol. ΙΙΙ, chap. Χ
Martin Heidegger in Delos
“Reflections that have concerned me for some time regarding the truth, references to revelation and concealment found the desired confirmation during the sojourn on Delos. They ceased to be something apparently imaginary, they were fulfilled, they were paid for in presentness, they were filled with the ‘clearing’ of the past that had first granted presentness to the Greeks. With the experience of Delos alone, the journey to Greece became a sojourn of ‘clearing’, a sojourn near whatever the truth is…”
Martin Heidegger, Aufenthalte, Frankfurt a.M. 1989
Delos and Rineia - sites of self-knowledge
“The twin islands, Delos with the tumult of bygone life and Rineia with the silence of death, are not places for strolling around in. Many layers of our history have accumulated on their ruins. They are places of self-knowledge, harsh places, that whirl and eddy, places that devour: This island, I’m telling you, is little by little eating me up and I am beginning to resemble it.”
Kousathanas, P. - Pelekis, V., Delos, spring of 1991 AD, Mykonos 1991, p. 15.