few Athenian officials; and several epigrams of the 1st or 2nd century A.D. attest the same fact, though the temple and worship were probably kept up until the official extinction of the ancient religion. A museum has now been built to contain the antiquities found in the excavations; otherwise Delos is now uninhabited, though during the summer months a few shepherds cross over with their flocks from Myconus or Rheneia. As a religious centre it is replaced by Tenos and as a commercial centre by the flourishing port of Syra.
See Lebègue, Recherches sur Délos (Paris, 1876). Numerous articles in the Bulletin de correspondance hellénique record the various discoveries at Delos as they were made. See also Th. Homolle, Les Archives de l’intendance sacrée à Délos (with plan). The best consecutive account is given in the Guide Joanne, Grèce, ii. 443-464. For history, see Sir R. C. Jebb, Journal of Hellenic Studies, i. (1889), pp. 7-62. For works of art found at Delos see Greek Art. (E. Gr.)
DE LOUTHERBOURG, PHILIP JAMES (1740–1812), English
artist, was born at Strassburg on the 31st of October 1740, where
his father, the representative of a Polish family, practised
miniature painting; but he spent the greater part of his life in
London, where he was naturalized, and exerted a considerable
influence on the scenery of the English stage, as well as on the
artists of the following generation. De Loutherbourg was
intended for the Lutheran ministry, and was educated at the
university of Strassburg. As the calling, however, was foreign
to his nature, he insisted on being a painter, and placed himself
under Vanloo in Paris. The result was an immediate and
precocious development of his powers, and he became a figure in
the fashionable society of that day. In 1767 he was elected into
the French Academy below the age required by the law of the
institution, and painted landscapes, sea storms, battles, all of
which had a celebrity above those of the specialists then working
in Paris. His début was made by the exhibition of twelve
pictures, including “Storm at Sunset,” “Night,” “Morning after
Rain.” He is next found travelling in Switzerland, Germany and
Italy, distinguishing himself as much by mechanical inventions
as by painting. One of these, showing quite new effects produced
in a model theatre, was the wonder of the day. The exhibition
of lights behind canvas representing the moon and stars, the
illusory appearance of running water produced by clear blue
sheets of metal and gauze, with loose threads of silver, and so on,
were his devices. In 1771 he came to London, and was employed
by Garrick, who offered him £500 a year to apply his inventions
to Drury Lane, and to superintend the scene-painting, which he
did with complete success, making a new era in the adjuncts of
the stage. Garrick’s own piece, the Christmas Tale, and the
pantomime, 1781–1782, introduced the novelties to the public,
and the delight not only of the masses, but of Reynolds and the
artists, was unbounded. The green trees gradually became
russet, the moon rose and lit the edges of passing clouds, and all
the world was captivated by effects we now take little notice of.
A still greater triumph awaited him on his opening an entertainment
called the “Eidophusicon,” which showed the rise, progress
and result of a storm at sea—that which destroyed the great
Indiaman, the “Halsewell,”—and the Fallen Angels raising the
Palace of Pandemonium. De Loutherbourg has been called the
inventor of the panorama, but this honour does not belong to
him, although it first appeared about the same time as the
eidophusicon. The first panorama was painted and exhibited
by Robert Barker.
All this mechanism did not prevent De Loutherbourg from painting. “Lord Howe’s Victory off Ushant” (1794), and other large naval pictures were commissioned for Greenwich Hospital Gallery, where they still remain. His finest work was the “Destruction of the Armada.” He painted also the Great Fire of London, and several historical works, one of these being the “Attack of the Combined Armies on Valenciennes” (1793). He was made R.A., in addition to other distinctions, in 1781, shortly after which date we find an entirely new mental impulse taking possession of him. He joined Balsamo, comte de Cagliostro, and travelled about with this extraordinary person—leaving him, however, before his condemnation to death. We do not hear that Mesmer had attracted De Loutherbourg, nor do we find an exact record of his connexion with Cagliostro. A pamphlet published in 1789, A List of a few Cures performed by Mr and Mrs De Loutherbourg without Medicine, shows that he had taken up faith-healing, and there is a story that a successful projection of the philosopher’s stone was only spoiled by the breaking of the crucible by a relative. He died on the 11th of March 1812. His publications are few—some sets of etchings, and English Scenery (1805).
DELPHI (the Pytho of Homer and Herodotus; in Boeotian
inscriptions Βελφοί, on coins Δαλφοί), a place in ancient Greece in
the territory of Phocis, famous as the seat of the most important
temple and oracle of Apollo. It was situated about 6 m. inland
from the shores of the Corinthian Gulf, in a rugged and romantic
glen, closed on the N. by the steep wall-like under-cliffs of Mount
Parnassus known as the Phaedriades or Shining Rocks, on the E.
and W. by two minor ridges or spurs, and on the S. by the
irregular heights of Mount Cirphis. Between the two mountains
the Pleistus flowed from east to west, and opposite the town
received the brooklet of the Castalian fountain, which rose in a
deep gorge in the centre of the Parnassian cliff. About 7 m. to
the north, on the side of Mount Parnassus, was the famous
Corycian cave, a large grotto in the limestone rock, which afforded
the people of Delphi a refuge during the Persian invasion. It is
now called in the district the Sarant’ Aulai or Forty Courts, and
is said to be capable of holding 3000 people.
I. The Site.—The site of Delphi was occupied by the modern village of Castri until it was bought by the French government in 1891, and the peasant proprietors expropriated and transferred to the new village of Castri, a little farther to the west. Excavations had been made previously in some parts of the precinct; for example, the portico of the Athenians was laid bare in 1860. The systematic clearing of the site began in the spring of 1892, and it was rapidly cleared of earth by means of a light railway. The plan of the precinct is now easily traced, and with the help of Pausanias many of the buildings have been identified.
The ancient wall running east and west, commonly known as the Hellenico, has been found extant in its whole length, and the two boundary walls running up the hill at each end of it, traced. In the eastern of these was the main entrance by which Pausanias went in along the Sacred Way. This paved road is easily recognized as it zigzags up the hill, with treasuries and the bases of various offerings facing it on both sides. It mounts first westwards to an open space, then turns eastwards till it reaches the eastern end of the terrace wall that supports the temple, and then turns again and curves up north and then west towards the temple. Above this, approached by a stair, are the Lesche and the theatre, occupying respectively the north-east and north-west corner of the precinct. On a higher level still, a little to the west, is the stadium. There are several narrow paths and stairs that cut off the zigzags of the Sacred Way.
In describing the monuments discovered by the French excavators, the simplest plan is to follow the route of Pausanias. Outside the entrance is a large paved court of Roman date, flanked by a colonnade. On the north side of the Sacred Way, close to the main entrance, stood the offering dedicated by the Lacedaemonians after the battle of Aegospotami. It was a large quadrangular building of conglomerate, with a back wall faced with stucco, and stood open to the road. On a stepped pedestal facing the open stood the statues of the gods and the admirals, perhaps in rows above one another.
The statues of the Epigoni stood on a semicircular basis on the south side of the way. Opposite them stood another semicircular basis which carried the statues of the Argive kings, whose names are cut on the pedestal in archaic characters, reading from right to left. Farther west was the Sicyonian treasury on the south of the way. It was in the form of a small Doric temple in antis, and had its entrance on the east. The present foundations are built of architectural fragments, probably from an earlier building of circular form on the same site. The sculptures from this treasury are in the museum, as are the other sculptures found on the site. These sculptures, which are in
