Greek PantheonSacred Site
Delos
The sacred island birthplace of Apollo and Artemis, where their mother Leto finally found refuge to give birth.
About Delos
Leto's island, Apollo's birth
The Homeric Hymn to Apollo has Leto wander until Delos, a floating rock, agrees to host her labor. Artemis and Apollo are born there; the island is pinned and made holy. Archaic Delos was a real Ionian sanctuary: temples, a sacred lake, a ban on dying on the island in later Athenian rule. The hymn is the charter. There is no older literary rival for the birth story. The geography is tiny; the cult catchment was the Aegean.
On the map
Delos among other places of the Greek Pantheon.
Sources and further reading
Source notes
These references are recorded in the catalog. Their passage wording and translation have not been checked, so quotations are not displayed here.
- Homeric Hymn to Apollo
About this entry
By Elizabeth Stein for Mythos Atlas. About the author. Editorial notes are grounded in the site's cited sources and can be challenged through the contact page.
Coordinates mark where the myths place a site, or where the tradition locates it today. Mythic realms are left off the map or marked as symbolic placements.
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