"Would I were still drifting before the breath of all winds, rather than that I had been stayed to shelter homeless Leto! Then had I not so greatly mourned my poverty. Ah, woe is me, how many Greek ships sail past me, Delos the desolate, whom once men worshipped! Hera is avenged on me for Leto with vengeance late but sore[1]."
"Ye desolate isles, poor morsels of the earth, girdled by the waves of the sounding Aegean, ye have all become as Siphnos or parched Pholegandros, ye have lost your brightness that was of old. Verily ye are all ensampled of Delos,—of her who was once fair with marble, but was first to see the day of solitude[2]."
"Famous wert thou, Tenos, I deny it not; for of yore the winged sons of Boreas [slain in Tenos by Heracles] gave thee renown. But renowned was Ortygia also, and her fame went even to those who dwell beyond the North Wind on Rhiphaean hills. Yet now thou livest, and she is dead. Who would have looked to see Delos more lonely than Tenos[3]?"
- ↑ Anthol. Graec. ed. Jacobs, vol. ii. p. 144, No. 408 (εἴθε με παντοίοισιν—).
- ↑ ib. p. 149, No. 421 (νῆσοι ἐρημαῖαι—).
- ↑ ib. p. 195, No. 550 (κλεινὴν οὐκ ἀπόφημι—). Antipater of Thessalonica, to whom these epigrams are ascribed (though the first is given also to Apollonides) lived in the early part of the first century A.D. In another epigram (Jacobs, ii. 35, No. 100, Λητοῦς ὠδίνων ἱερὴ τροφέ) Alpheus of Mitylene (whose date was about the same) says that he cannot follow Antipater in calling Delos wretched (δειλαίην): the glory of having borne Apollo and Artemis is enough for all time.—I may note in passing that Tibullus, iii. 27 (Delos ubi nunc, Phoebe, tua est?), inadvertently quoted by M. Lebégue (324) as referring to the decay of Delos, has a different context.
