Hymn to Delos

The holy nurse of Apollo's youth—when, my heart, or at what time will you sing of her, of Delos? Indeed all the Cyclades, which lie in the sea the holiest of islands, are rich in song; but Delos wishes to bear away the first prize from the Muses, because she washed and swaddled Phoebus, the lord of song, and first praised him as a god. As the Muses hate the singer who does not sing of Pimpleia, so Phoebus hates whoever forgets Delos. To Delos now I shall apportion a share of my song, that Apollo of Cynthus may praise me for caring for his beloved nurse.

Windswept she is, and barren—such as, beaten by the sea, she is the haunt of gulls rather than the run of horses— fixed fast in the deep; and the sea, rolling much about her, wipes off upon her the great foam of the Icarian water. Therefore the fishers who roam the brine made their dwelling there. But it is no cause for blame that she be named among the first, when, toward Ocean and toward Titanian Tethys, the islands gather, and she ever walks before them as their leader. Behind, following in her tracks, comes Phoenician Cyrnus, not to be despised, and Macris of the Abantes, home of the Ellopians, and lovely Sardo, and the isle upon which Cypris first swam up out of the water, and which she keeps safe in return for her landing. Those islands are strong, fenced round with sheltering towers; but Delos has Apollo. What stouter rampart is there? Walls and stones may fall beneath the blast of Strymonian Boreas; but a god is forever unshaken. Delos, dear, such a helper stands around about you.

But if too many songs circle round you, with what shall I entwine you? What is it that pleases you to hear? Is it how at the very first the great god, smiting the mountains with his three-pronged blade, which the Telchines wrought for him, made the islands in the sea, and heaved them all up from their lowest foundations and rolled them into the deep? And these he rooted firm from below in the depths, that they might forget the mainland; but you no constraint pressed— you sailed free upon the open seas, and your name was Asterie of old, since you leapt into the deep abyss fleeing from heaven the marriage of Zeus, like a star. So long as golden Leto did not yet draw near you, so long you were still Asterie, and not yet called Delos. Often did sailors, coming from the yellow town of Troezen toward Ephyra within the Saronic gulf, look upon you; and returning back from Ephyra some no longer saw you there, while you had run beside the swift, narrow strait of resounding Euripus, and that same day, refusing the water of the Chalcidian sea, swam onward as far as the headland of Athenian Sunium, or Chios, or the isle's nipple dripping with water, Parthenia (for it was not yet Samos), where the nymphs, the neighbouring Mycalessian nymphs of Ancaeus, gave you welcome.

And when you gave Apollo a ground for his birth, in return the seafarers laid this name upon you, because no longer unseen did you sail, but in the deep waves of the Aegean set the roots of your feet. Nor did you tremble at angry Hera; she upon all the women in childbed who bore sons to Zeus roared terribly, but on Leto beyond all the rest, because she alone was destined to bear to Zeus a son dearer than Ares. Therefore she herself kept watch within the upper air, raging mightily and unspeakably, and she barred Leto worn with her pangs; and two warders she set to keep watch over the earth: the one, on the mainland's floor seated upon the high crest of Thracian Haemus, furious Ares kept guard with his armour, and his two horses were stabled by the seven-chambered cave of Boreas; the other, a watcher over the broad islands, the daughter of Thaumas sat, swooping down upon Mimas. There they remained, threatening those cities to which Leto turned, and turning them aside from receiving her. Arcadia fled, and the holy mountain of Auge fled, Parthenion, and behind them fled old Pheneus. Fled all the land of Pelops that lies along the Isthmus, save Aegialus and Argos; for upon those paths she did not tread, since Inachus fell by lot to Hera. Aonia too fled the one road, and there followed Dirce and Strophie, holding the hand of their black-pebbled father Ismenus; and far behind followed Asopus heavy-kneed, since he had been smitten by the thunderbolt. And the earth-born nymph Melie, whirled in the dance, ceased from it, and her cheek grew pale, gasping for her coeval oak, when she saw the foliage of Helicon shaken. My goddesses, tell me, Muses, is it true that the oaks were born when the Nymphs were? The Nymphs rejoice when the rain makes the oaks grow; the Nymphs again weep when leaves are no more upon the oaks. At them Apollo, still in the womb, was terribly enraged, and uttered no idle thing, threatening against Thebe: "Thebe, why, wretched one, do you put to the test your coming doom? Do not yet, do not force me against my will to prophesy. Not yet do I care for the tripod-seat at Pytho, nor has the great serpent yet died, but still that dread-jawed beast, creeping up from Pleistus, wreathes snowy Parnassus with its nine coils; yet all the same I shall speak something sharper than from the laurel. Flee onward: swift shall I overtake you, washing my bow in blood. You have got for offspring the children of an evil-tongued woman. You shall not be my dear nurse, nor shall Cithaeron be; but of the pure, and to the pure, may I be the care." So he spoke. And Leto, turning back, again withdrew.

But when the Achaean cities refused her as she came—Helice, the consort of Poseidon, and Bura, the ox-stall of Dexamenus, son of Oeceus— she turned her feet back toward Thessaly; and Anaurus fled, and great Larissa, and the Chironian heights, and Peneus too fled, winding through Tempe. Hera, even then your heart lay pitiless, nor were you broken, nor did you have mercy, when, stretching out both her arms in vain, Leto cried such words: "Nymphs of Thessaly, daughters of the river, tell your father to lull his great stream. Twine yourselves about his beard, beseeching that the children of Zeus be born in his water. Phthiotian Peneus, why do you now strive with the winds? O father, you are not mounted upon a prize-racing horse. Are your feet thus always swift, or only over me do they run light, and have you been made to fly suddenly today?" But he was deaf. "O my burden, where shall I carry you? For my poor sinews have given out. Pelion, O bridal-chamber of Philyra, but you remain, remain, since even the beasts upon your mountains often have laid down their untimely birth-pangs, the lionesses." And Peneus answered her, letting fall his tears: "Leto, Necessity is a great goddess. For I, lady, do not refuse your pangs; I know of others too who washed themselves of childbirth from my waters. But Hera has threatened me with abundance. Look, what a watcher keeps watch from the topmost mountain, who would easily drag me up from my depths. What shall I devise? Or is it sweet to you that Peneus should perish? Let the appointed day come; I shall endure for your sake, even if I must run forever with a thirsting ebb, drained of my streams, and be called, alone among rivers, the most dishonoured. Behold me. What more? Only call upon Eileithyia." He spoke, and checked his great stream. But Ares was about to lift up the topmost peaks of Pangaeus and hurl them into his eddies and hide his channels; from on high he thundered and struck his shield with the point of his spear; and it rang out warlike; and the mountains of Ossa trembled, and the Crannonian plain and the ill-blown edges of Pindus, and all Thessaly danced with fear; such was the echo that roared from his shield. And as when, the Etnaean mountain smouldering with fire, all the recesses shake when the giant beneath the earth shifts upon the other shoulder of Briareus, and the furnaces roar beneath the tongs of Hephaestus together with the works, and dreadfully the fire-wrought cauldrons and tripods, falling upon one another, ring out— such then was the clang of his well-rounded shield. Yet Peneus did not give ground again, but stood as before, steadfast as at the first, and stayed his swift eddies, until the daughter of Coeus called to him: "Be saved, and rejoice, be saved; do not for my sake suffer harm in return for this compassion; your kindness shall have its recompense." She spoke, and after many toils came to the islands in the sea; but they did not receive her as she came— not the Echinades, which hold a sheltered anchorage for ships, nor Corcyra, the most hospitable of all, since Iris, hastening upon them from the heights of lofty Mimas, turned them all aside; and they at her rebuke fled in a body down whatever stream each chanced upon. Then to ancient Cos, the Meropian island, she came, the holy haunt of the heroine Chalciope. But this word of her son held her back: "Do not, mother, bear me here. I neither blame nor begrudge the island, since it is rich and good for pasture, if any other is; but there is owed to it from the Fates another god, the highest race of the Saviours; beneath whose crown shall come, not unwilling to be ruled by a Macedonian, both the inland regions and those that sit amid the seas, as far as where the West is, and whence the swift horses carry the sun; and he shall know the ways of his father. And one day a common struggle shall come upon us later, when the Titans of a later age, raising against the Greeks a barbarian sword and Celtic war, shall rush from the uttermost West, like snowflakes or equal in number to the stars, when they most graze across the sky; and the strongholds and the Crissaean plains and the mainlands shall be hemmed in on every side, and they shall see the thick smoke of a burning neighbour, and no longer by report only, but already beside my temple shall they catch sight of the phalanxes of the enemy, and already beside my tripods the swords and the shameless belts and the hated shields, which for the Galatians, that senseless tribe, shall set up an evil road; of these some shall be my prize, and others, by the Nile, having seen those who bore them breathe out their lives in fire, shall lie there as the prizes of a king who has accomplished many labours. O Ptolemy that art to be, these prophecies I reveal to you. Greatly shall you praise the seer yet in the womb hereafter, for all your days. But you, mother, consider this: there is, dimly seen in the water, a slight island, wandering over the seas; its feet are not in one place, but it floats upon the tide like an asphodel-stalk, now where the South wind, now the East, wherever the sea carries it. Bear me thither; for to her you shall come, since she is willing."

As he spoke thus, the other islands ran away across the sea; but you, Asterie, lover of song, were coming down from Euboea to look upon the encircling Cyclades—not long ago, but still behind you trailed the seaweed of Geraestus. . . . . . . burning, since you were scorched round about by fire, seeing her, poor wretch, weighed down by her pangs: "Hera, do to me this that is dear to you; for I have not kept your threats. Come, come over to me, Leto." You spoke; and she ceased from her grievous, longed-for wandering, and sat beside the stream of Inopus, which deepest the earth sends forth at that time, when with full flood the Nile comes down from the Ethiopian crag; and she loosed her girdle, and leaned back upon her shoulders against a palm-trunk, worn out by grievous helplessness; and down through her flesh ran the sweat of the South. And she said, gasping: "Why, child, do you weigh down your mother? Here, dear, is your island, floating upon the sea. Be born, be born, child, and come gently from the womb."

Heavy-hearted bride of Zeus, you were not, after all, to remain long unaware; such a messenger ran to you, and spoke, still gasping, and her words were mingled with fear: "Honoured Hera, far foremost of goddesses, I am yours, and yours are all things, and you sit as queen, the lawful mistress of Olympus, and we fear no other hand of a woman; but you, mistress, shall know the cause of your wrath. Leto is loosing her girdle within an island. All the rest loathed her and would not receive her; but Asterie called her by name as she passed by— Asterie, the evil sweepings of the sea; you know it yourself. But, dear lady—for you have the power—defend, mistress, your slaves who tread your soil at your command." So she spoke, and sat down beneath the golden throne like a hound of Artemis, which, when it ceases from the swift chase, sits, the huntress, beside her feet, its ears held straight up, ever ready to receive the goddess's call; like to her the daughter of Thaumas sat beneath the throne. And she never forgets her seat, not even when sleep lays its forgetful wing upon her, but there, against the very corner of the great throne, bending her head a little aside, she sleeps slantwise. Nor ever does she loose her girdle or her swift running-shoes, lest her mistress should say some sudden word to her. And she, grievously vexed, spoke out: "So now, you reproaches of Zeus, may you marry in secret and bear in hiding, not even where the wretched hard-labouring grinding-women toil, but where the seals of the sea bring forth, upon desolate reefs. Yet against Asterie I bear no grudge for this offence, nor is there any way I would do her displeasure, much as I should—for very wickedly she favoured Leto; rather I revere her exceedingly, because she did not tread my bed, but chose the sea instead of Zeus."

So she spoke; and the swans, the singers of the god, left Maeonian Pactolus and circled seven times about Delos, and sang over the birth-pangs, the birds of the Muses, the most tuneful of winged things; whence the child afterward bound just so many strings upon his lyre, as often as the swans had sung over his pangs. An eighth time they sang no more; he leapt forth, and over a long time the Delian nymphs, offspring of an ancient river, sang the holy song of Eileithyia, and at once the brazen sky echoed back the piercing ululation, nor was Hera angry, since Zeus had taken away her wrath. Golden then, Delos, did all your foundations become, and golden flowed the round lake all day long, and golden grew the leafage of the natal olive-shoot, and with gold brimmed deep Inopus, winding along. And you yourself took up the child from the golden ground, and laid him in your bosom, and spoke such a word: "O great one, of many altars, of many cities, bearing much, you fertile mainlands and you islands dwelling round about: such am I, hard to plough; yet from me shall Apollo be called Delian, nor shall any other of lands be loved so much by another god— not Cerchnis by lord Poseidon of Lechaeum, not the Cyllenian hill by Hermes, not Crete by Zeus— as I by Apollo; and I shall be no longer a wanderer." So you spoke; and he drew the sweet breast. Therefore from that day the holiest of islands are you called, the nurse of Apollo's youth; nor does Enyo nor Hades nor the horses of Ares trample you; but to you year by year the tithe-bearing firstfruits are ever sent, and all the cities lead up their dances— those toward the dawn and those toward the evening and those in the middle who have set up their lots, and those who above the northern shore have their dwellings, a most long-lived blood. These first bring the stalk and the sacred sheaves of the corn-ears; which the Pelasgians at Dodona, coming out from afar, are the very first to receive, those servants who lie on the ground, of the unsilent cauldron. Next they come to the Holy City and the mountains of the Malian land; from there they sail across to the good Lelantian plain of the Abantes; and no longer long is the voyage from Euboea, since your harbours are near. First did Oupis and Loxo and blessed Hecaerge, the daughters of Boreas, bring these from the yellow Arimaspians, and the noblest then of the young men; nor did they come back home again, but they were happy in their lot, and never were they without glory. Indeed the Delian maidens, when the sweet-sounding wedding-song frightens the spirits of the girls, offer their coeval hair to the maidens, and the boys their first harvest of down, the young men, offering it to those youths.

Fragrant Asterie, around you and about you the islands have made a ring, and as a chorus surround you; nor silent nor noiseless does Hesperus of thick locks look down upon you, but ever loud-resounding. Some sing the strain of the Lycian old man, which the seer Olen brought you from Xanthus; and the women of the chorus beat with their feet the firm ground. Then too with garlands is weighed down the holy image, that famous one of ancient Cypris, which once Theseus set up with the youths, when he sailed up from Crete. They, having escaped the harsh bellowing and the savage son of Pasiphae and the winding lair of the crooked labyrinth, lady, around your altar, as the harping rose, danced in a circle, and Theseus led the chorus. Thence the ever-living sacred things of the sacred ship the children of Cecrops send to Phoebus, the rigging of that ship.

Asterie of many altars, of many prayers, what sailor, what merchant of the Aegean, ever passed you by in his running ship? Not even though strong winds blow upon him, and need brings the swiftest voyage, but they furl their sails quickly, and do not go on their way again, before they have danced round your great altar, smitten with blows, and bitten the holy trunk of the olive, twisting their hands behind them; sports which the Delian nymph devised, things for laughter to the young Apollo.

O hearth of the islands, well-hearthed one, hail yourself, and hail Apollo, and her whom Leto bore.