6. From Crete, we will now proceed to DELOS. Virgil, on the authority (as it appears) of some ancient epic poet, calls the Cretans ministers of the Delian altars.(891) The voyages of Theseus from Cnosus to Delos is also founded on the same connexion, as will be more fully explained hereafter.(892) We must not, however, too hastily conclude, that in the age of Minos, when the Cretans were the dominant nation in the Greek Archipelago, Delos received the worship of Apollo from a Cretan colony.(893) It may with greater probability be conjectured, that the Dorians in their first expedition to Crete (which could hardly have traversed so great a distance without leaving behind some traces of its existence) had founded the sanctuary at Delos; since the tradition of the transmission of sacred presents from the country of the Hyperboreans to that island, is most simply explained as a memorial of a religious connexion, which had once been long maintained, by means of sacred processions, with the northern settlements of the Dorians.
7. Now respecting the presence of Cretans at Delphi, it was nothing more than an attempt of these islanders, who dwelt on the very verge of the Grecian territory, to gain for themselves the credit of a reciprocal influence upon the early settlements of their own race and religion. We find in the Hymn of Homer, that Apollo, descending from Olympus, himself founded his temple at Pytho, and afterwards obtained experienced priests, minstrels, and prophets(894) from Cnosus; for which purpose he, in the shape of a dolphin, conducted a Cretan vessel to Crissa. Crissa, or Cirrha (for that the same place was originally signified by both names I consider as certain(895)), a fortified town in the inmost recess of the Crissæan bay, was probably a settlement of this Cretan colony, as the name Κρῖσα seems to signify nothing else than a _Cretan_ city (Κρησία πόλις).(896) Although the Pythian sanctuary itself was situated in the territory of Crissa,(897) yet the town of Crissa possessed, besides an altar of Apollo Delphinius on the shore, in early times one of the chief temples of Apollo:(898) hence in Homer’s Catalogue the _sacred_ Crissa is mentioned, together with the rocky Pytho; and the Pythian sanctuary is called _Crissæa templa_, on the faith of some ancient tradition, by a Roman poet. This expression must have been borrowed from poems anterior to the destruction of Cirrha (about 585 B.C.) before this town had by its extortions and oppression of pilgrims deserved the wrath of the Amphictyonic confederacy; nor is it probable that it retained a share in the management of the Delphian temple up to the very last moment of its political existence, when it was visited with a destruction so complete, as nearly to deprive us of all knowledge of its previous history. The unfortified town of Delphi, which, with the Amphictyons, obtained after that war the sole management of the temple, previously perhaps had not been a place of any importance; at least it is not mentioned in any earlier writings than one of the most recent hymns of Homer, and by Heraclitus of Ephesus.(899)