Syros, Ceos, Teos, are registered at Delos[1]. The people of Cyzicus on the Propontis had obtained an oracle from Delphi, declaring their city to be sacred. They send an embassy to request that this response may be published in the temple of the Delian Apollo[2].
It is due to this quality of Delos as the common depository of archives that recent researches have been able to throw some fresh light on an interesting institution. For more than a century after Alexander the history of the Aegean islands is obscure. But three inscriptions published by Böckh had already taught us that there existed at this period a Confederation of the Islands, τὸ κοινὸν τῶν νησιωτῶν. One of these inscriptions was a decree in favour of a Syracusan named Timon; two others were dedications, in honour respectively of Ptolemy Philadelphus and of a Rhodian named Agathostratus[3]. M. Homolle has discovered at Delos five more inscriptions which record acts of this Island League. Two are dedications on statues erected by the Confederation,—one in honour of "the navarch Callicrates of Samos"—possibly the very navarch of that name mentioned in the epigrams of Poseidippus—the other, to Apollo. Three are decrees. In one, it is
- ↑ Lesbos: Expédition de Morée, vol. iii. Inscriptions of the Aegean isles; Delos, No. 2, p. 24:—Tenos, Ceos, Teos, Corp. Inscr. Graec. 2334, 2272, 3067:—Syros, Crete, inscriptions found by M. Homolle, Bulletin de Corr. h. vol. iii. p. 292.
- ↑ Bulletin de C. h. vol. iv. p. 471.
- ↑ Corp. Inscr. Graec. 2234, 2273, 2283 c.
