Anaphe in 218 B.C.

Anaphe — Spring 218 BC · The Isle of Revelation.

A tiny island east of Thera, on the southern edge of the Cyclades — the isle of "revelation." When the Argonauts were lost in a terror of darkness on the open sea, the legend tells, Apollo drew his bow and flashed a beam of light that revealed this little island to them; and from that revealing (anaphē) it took its name. There they founded the sanctuary of Apollo Aigletes, "the Gleaming." A single small polis lives by its harbour beneath the god’s shrine, free among the independent isles that orbit sacred Delos.

Anaphe is a speck of rock at the far south-eastern rim of the Cyclades, the last land before the open sea toward Crete. One small community keeps its harbour beneath the cliff-set shrine of Apollo Aigletes, and lives by the god, by its fishermen and goats, and by the ships that put in on the long crossing. In this age of Delian independence the great fleets of Egypt, Macedon and Rhodes watch these waters, but a place so small and so poor is left to its god and its quiet — remembered less for any power than for the famous tale of its naming.