Delos was to know greatness, first as a religious center and later as a busy commercial port. In turn it was glorified, lauded, destroyed, rebuilt and destroyed once again; a rich history which lasted several hundreds of years.

Archaeological excavations confirm that the island was inhabited during the second half of the third millennium B.C. Traces of a small prehistoric settlement with circular huts, built either by fishermen or pirates, were found on the summit of Mt Kynthos (112,60 m). From there the first inhabitants enjoyed the security of being able to survey both the sea and the valley below. We have no way of knowing for sure who they were, Kares perhaps, who had come from Asia Minor as claimed by the historian Thucydides, although this has not been proved scientifically. It is also more than likely that the inhabitants of Minoan Crete visited the island. After that first settlement was abandoned and until the beginning of the Mycenaean Age (c. 1600 B.C.), as with other Cycladic islands, no evidence has been found of man's presence on Delos.

Later, during the second half of the second millennium, the Mycenaeans arrived and settled by the harbor. Following the collapse of the Mycenaean world due to invasion by the Dorians (c. 1100 B.C.), the Ionians settled on many Aegean islands and along the Eastern coast of the Aegean Sea, bringing with them the worship of Apollo, which was introduced also on Delos, and by the 7th century B.C. Delos had become the chief religious sanctuary of all the Ionians, and magnificent religious observations and festivals took place on a regular basis.

The first Ionians who attempted to impose their authority on the sanctuary of Delos were the Naxians in the 7th century B.C.; they erected a great many buildings and countless offerings were dedicated to the god. The Oikos of the Naxians, the Colossus of Naxos and the renowned Terrace of the Lions are the best known of these. During the second half of the 6th century B.C. Paros, another neighboring island had an important role to play in the affairs of the sanctuary for a while. In the same century, just after 540 B.C., Peisistratos, the tyrant of Athens, also became involved in the running of the place as the result of some oracle, and he ordered a "purification", in other words the removal of all burial monuments from the area around the sanctuary. The tyrant of Samos, Polykrates, also interested himself in Delos and actually dedicated the nearby island of Rheneia to Apollo, joining it literally to Delos with a huge chain.

During the period of the Persian Wars, the Persians respected the Delian Apollo, the sanctuary and its people. One year after the end of the wars, in 479, the Athenians founded a maritime league (the Delian Confederacy, later to be known as First Athenian Confederacy), which was an alliance between the Athenians on the one side, and the Ionian cities and the islands of the Aegean on the other, with Delos as its headquarters. The purported aim of the alliance was to create a united defense against the Persians, but in fact it was the means by which the Athenians would establish their hegemony in the Aegean Sea and gain control over the sanctuary of Delos. The members of the alliance were obliged to pay an annual tariff and the funds were kept in Apollo's temple on the island. Athens then became the undisputed master as far as the running of the sanctuary was concerned, with its administration in the hands of Athenian overseers, the Amphictiones. Thus, both as the birthplace of Apollo and as the headquarters of the league, Delos acquired a conspicuous position in the Greek world. Devotees poured in from all over to worship at the sanctuary, to bring offerings and to attend the Delia, the festival which, from the year 426 B.C., was celebrated every four years in honor of Apollo and which included athletic competitions, horse and chariot races, musical contests, and ended with theatrical plays and banquets. However, in 454 B.C. the Athenians transferred the common treasury to Athens, the new headquarters of the alliance, thus drastically weakening the role of Delos. Furthermore, after a plague hit Athens at the beginning of the Peloponnesian War and was regarded as a sign of Apollo's wrath, and as a consequence of which (or, to be more accurate, using this as an excuse), the Athenians decided on a second purification of the island: all the tombs on Delos were opened, with the exception of only a few which were considered sacred, and the bones and the funerary offerings were transferred to a mass grave on the neighboring island of Rheneia. A law was also passed forbidding thenceforth both births and deaths on the sacred island. As a result, expectant women and the dying were carried at once to Rheneia. The explanation is simple: if a person was neither born in a place, nor were his ancestors buried there, then that place could hardly be considered his homeland, nor could he claim it as his own. This was precisely what the Athenians were aiming for in order to make themselves masters of Delos. In 422 B.C. the purification was completed when the Athenians banished all the native Delians to the town of Adramytion in Asia Minor, on the pretext that they were "impure", and where the Persians slaughtered many of them. The survivors would later be led back to Delos by the Athenians due to a certain warning by the oracle of Delphi.

After the defeat of Athens in the Peloponnesian War in 404 B.C., Delos enjoyed a short independence until 394 B.C. when the Athenians regained possession. Later with the Macedonians prevailing, firstly under Philip II and then under Alexander the Great, Delos became part of the Macedonian sphere of influence. In 314 B.C. the island became independent without, however, being neutral since once again it became a member of a new island alliance, under the leadership of Ptolemy I of Egypt. During its independence and up until the year 167 B.C. local noblemen, the Hieropes, governed Delos and its sanctuary. Roundabout the middle of the 3rd century B.C. the naval alliance disbanded but Delos had already begun to grow into a significant trading centre, dealing mainly in grain. The sanctuary continued to attract its loyal devotees but trade was now more important.

Extensive port facilities were constructed and public and private banks were set up. In 166 B.c. the Romans, not only as a reprisal against Rhodes for its pro-Macedonian stance, but also to neutralize a dangerous competitor, declared Delos a free port, waiving all duty otherwise to be paid. The island was once again handed over to the Athenians and all native Delians were exiled to Achaia, never to return. The Athenians became the masters not only of the sanctuary but of the whole island, which they now regarded as their own special domain. Thanks to its duty-free status, Delos developed into the chief international exchange center for Eastern Mediterranean commerce. It became also the main slave market of Greece. This, together with the destruction of both Corinth and Carthage in 146 B.C., led to the arrival in Delos of wealthy merchants, bankers and shipping magnates from Athens and other parts of Greece, from Italy, Egypt, Phoenicia, Syria, Palestine and Asia Minor, who then established their businesses, and built their lavish mansions here. In their wake came artists, sculptors, painters, mosaic craftsmen and the like. Naturally these foreigners all brought with them their own customs and cultures and of course their own religions. The first synagogue outside Palestine was thus built here. Shrines and temples were dedicated to the Egyptian deities Isis, Serapis, Anubis, Horus (in the form of Harpocrates). Others were built to the Syrian deities Atargatis and Adad, to the Semitic gods Sin and Baal-Zebul. Delian society had become truly multi-racial and multi-cultural, where anything was acceptable. Money was the new god and the inhabitants led lavish lives of plenty. Most goods were imported, including a great variety of foodstuff, since the island produced very little. It is purported that in its heyday in the 2^d century B.C. Delos had up to twenty-five thousand inhabitants. However, there is no existing data with which to verify this, and it is quite possible that this figure is, in reality, quite different. Nevertheless, it is a fact that the Greeks, mainly Athenians, constituted a third of the total population, another third were Italians, mainly from the south, and the rest originated from various places of the Eastern Mediterranean. People of all races and religions lived side-by-side harmoniously in this paradigm of a community.

However, this proverbial paradise was not destined to last forever. In 88 B.C. Mithridates, King of Pontus (i.e. the kingdom of the Black Sea), was at war with Rome and because Delos remained loyal to the latter, his army descended on the island and sacked it. Twenty thousand people lost their lives according to Pausanias, who was prone to exaggeration. Retaken the following year by Sulla, Delos was given back to Athens. The city was partly rebuilt, but in 69 B.C. it was yet again destroyed, this time by the pirates of Athenodoros, who were allies of Mithridates. After the attack, the Roman legate Gaius Triarius had a defensive wall built in order to withstand any new attacks, but it was already too late: Delos was no longer a safe haven. Merchants who had not fled the sacking of the year 88, fled now for safer destinations. New ports in Italy (Ostia, Pozzoles) and in the Middle East took over from Delos. Furthermore, the pirates of the Aegean began to make more frequent raids on the once wealthy island, which was now inhabited by a smaller and much humbler community that had established itself among the ruins of the once luxurious mansions. A sign of how far things had sunk is that during the reign of Emperor Hadrian, in the first century B.D., the Athenians, lords of Delos at that time, put the island up for sale but found no buyers. There were at this point very few residents left on the island.

At the end of the third century a small Christian community made an appearance here, and when Christianity prevailed, Delos became a diocese in control of the islands of Kea, Serifos, Kythnos, Mykonos, and Syros. What remains of the small, Christian basilica of St. Quiricus dates back to this time (5"' century A.D.). The last inhabitants abandoned the island in the sixth century and in the Synekdimos (a book of prayers) written at that time, Delos is mentioned derisively as A-Delos ("the non apparent") visited by the Byzantines, Slavs and Saracens (there is an Arabic inscription on the south side of the Stoa of Philip) and then, in 1207, together with all the islands of the Cyclades, Delos fell into the hands of the Venetians following the occupation of Constantinople by the Crusaders of the Fourth Crusade in 1204. The Venetians promptly turned it over to one of the feudal lords of Mykonos. In 1329 the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem too, paid a short visit to the island. In 1566 Delos was seized by the Turks and from then it became a safe haven for pirates, while from the 17th century on, a number of European travelers paid visits to the island, removing marbles and leaving us sketches and descriptions of the ruins.

Eventually, in 1827, after independence from Turkish rule, Delos was incorporated into the Greek state. Throughout the years that Delos remained uninhabited, the people of Tinos and Mykonos who were drawn by the readily available building material used it as a marble quarry. The monuments closest to the sea, like those of the sanctuary, were plundered and ruined, since transportation of the materials was so much easier while the buildings located higher up have been preserved to a much greater extent. The French School began systematic excavations in 1873 and between the years 1904 and 1914 most of the ancient town was uncovered. Works are still in progress.

Of all the ancient cities which have been excavated in Greece, Delos is the best preserved and unique in that it has been uncovered in its entirety, with its harbors, market places, theatre, gymnasium, stadium, wrestling arenas, its temples and sanctuaries, and districts of private residences. The ruins of Delos constitute the largest archaeological site in Europe, and alongside those of Athens, Olympia and Delphi, comprise one of the most significant archaeological sites of the ancient Greek world.

Author's Note: While you are in Mykonos island staying in one of those beautiful Mykonos hotels don't forget to visit Delos island. from Delos Pictures you will understand how beautiful this place is.