I had dinner the other night at one of my favorite places on
Mykonos, a bamboo-capped, white stone shack perched at
the bottom of a waning crescent moon beach close-by the old town. It’s called Niko’s Place but everyone knows
it as Joanna’s (to distinguish it from the better known and also delightful
Niko’s Taverna just off the old port).
It’s nestled in a cove on what once was the island’s most famous beach,
Megali Ammos, before new roads made dozens of other beaches readily
accessible.
For me, there’s no more beautiful spot for sunset than
Joanna’s. The sea shimmers in
combinations of gun-metal blue, silver, and gold against a backdrop of
vermilion skies and shadowy forms of distant islands. But for a lone white church with a blood red
roof on the tiny island of Baou at the entrance to the bay, nothing in view
suggests that the hand of man played a part in any of this––unless of course
you look sharply to the left or right.
But no one comes here to do that.
This is a place for remembering simpler times and watching a glowing
orange ball fade below the horizon.
On a clear day (as most are) you can see Tinos to the right,
Syros dead ahead, and a bit of Rhenia (or big Delos, as the locals call it) off
to the left. Delos is out there too,
around a bend to the left and less than a mile away. I wrote about Delos in my
very first Murder is Everywhere post.
It’s hard not to think of Delos as you watch the sunset. After all, Delos is where Apollo, god of the
sun, and his twin-sister, Artemis, the original divine personification of the
moon were born to their mother, Leto, out of her assignation with Zeus. Delos wasn’t Leto’s first choice for a
delivery room, because back then it was little more than a rock bouncing around
the Aegean Sea. But she had little
choice because Zeus’ wife (and sister—more about that here),
Hera, had the world fearing her jealous wrath, and only tiny Delos saw nothing
to lose in making a “You take care of me, I’ll take care of you bargain” with
Zeus.
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| Birth of Artemis and Apollo to Leto |
From the moment of Apollo’s birth, when golden light flooded
down upon Delos, the island prospered, so much so that it rose to emerge as one
of antiquity’s bastions of commerce and religiosity.
But Apollo didn’t stick around his birthplace very
long. Jealous Hera drove Leto away from
her children forcing Apollo to grow up quickly—in a matter of hours to be
precise (on a diet of nectar and ambrosia)—and begin a pilgrimage that launched
his myth, one of the oldest of all Greek myths and one of the few of entirely Greek
creation (as opposed to foreign influences).
Although Apollo’s exploits gave rise to his being known by
many different names and titles—Karneios, Hyakinthios, Pythios, Thargelios,
Nomios, Delphinios, Ismenios, Hebdomeios, Lykios, Musagetes, etcetera—they all
in one way or another derived from his link to the eternal operation of the sun
and all that the ancients attributed to it.
In much the same way Apollo’s sister, Artemis, found that the
qualities attributed to the moon—bringing fertility to the earth through cool,
dew filled nights and casting light into the dark night offering protection to
flocks and hunters—had her identified with those traits (fertility, hunting)
and called by names and titles linked to those perceived powers of the moon: Agrotora,
Kalliste, Diktynna, Britomartis, Eleuthro, Orthia, Limnaia, Potamia, Munychia,
Brauronia, Amarynthia, etcetera.
 |
| Adonis and Artemis |
As a duet, Apollo and Artemis might be best known for a
bloody, Bonnie and Clyde-style episode brought on by an affront to their mother
(and them) by the daughter of a king who boasted that her own children were “more
beautiful” than Leto’s. Talk about
perturbing the wrong folk. Artemis and
Apollo promptly punished the prideful mother (Niobe) by slaying all of her
children, Artemis by arrows the daughters, and Adonis by arrows the sons. In her anguish the mother turned to stone.
On the off chance I’ve written something that a buddy of
those Delosian twins might find offensive, please don’t come looking for me. You’ll want to talk to Alexander S. Murray who
wrote Who’s Who in Mythology. It’s his book that’s responsible for driving this
post…so help me gods.
Jeff—Saturday
