Book 10
5.1
The islands near Crete are Thera, the metropolis of the Cyrenaeans, a colony of the Lacedaemonians, and, near Thera, Anaphe, where is the temple of the Aegletan Apollo. Callimachus speaks in one place as follows,Aegletan Anaphe, neighbor to Laconian Thera,Callinus Fr. 113 (Schneider)and in another, mentioning only Thera,mother of my fatherland, famed for its horses.Callinus Fr. 112 (Schneider)Thera is a long island, being two hundred stadia in perimeter; it lies opposite Dia,i.e., almost due north of Dia. an island near the Cnossian Heracleium,Heracleium was the seaport of Cnossus (10. 4. 7). but it is seven hundred stadia distant from Crete. Near it are both Anaphe and Therasia. One hundred stadia distant from the latter is the little island Ios, where, according to some writers, the poet Homer was buried. From Ios towards the west one comes to Sicinos and Lagusa and Pholegandros, which last Aratus calls “Iron” Island, because of its ruggedness. Near these is Cimolos, whence comes the Cimolian earth.A hydrous silicate of aluminium, now called “cimolite.” From Cimolos Siphnos is visible, in reference to which island, because of its worthlessness, people say “Siphnian knuckle-bone.”i.e., the phrase is a proverb applied to worthless people or things. And still nearer both to Cimolos and to Crete is Melos, which is more notable than these and is seven hundred stadia from the Hermionic promontory, the Scyllaeum, and almost the same distance from the Dictynnaeum. The Athenians once sent an expedition to Melos and slaughtered most of the inhabitants from youth upwards.416 B.C. (see Thuc. 5.115-116). Now these islands are indeed in the Cretan Sea, but Delos itself and the Cyclades in its neighborhood and the Sporades which lie close to these, to which belong the aforesaid islands in the neighborhood of Crete, are rather in the Aegaean Sea.
