Thomas W. Allen, E. E. Sikes, Commentary on the Homeric Hymns

[15] It is natural to mention both the children of Leto, although the hymn is addressed to one of them. Artemis is joined with Apollo in the invocation at 165, where see note.

16 = Orph. h. xxxv. 5. Ὀρτυγίͅη: hardly the Syracusan Ortygia, as Fick (Odyssee p. 281) supposes, although that place was closely associated with Artemis; see Pind. Nem.i. 1 f., Pind. Pyth.ii. 7.Delos itself was anciently called Ortygia (schol. Apoll. Arg. 1.419, Athen. ix. 392 D and in Alexandrian poetry e.g. Callim. h. Apoll. 59, followed by Verg. Aen.iii. 124, Hesych. s.v. “Ὀρτυγία”, Eust. 1558), but the islands are here expressly distinguished; cf. Anth. Pal. vi. 273 “Ἄρτεμι Δᾶλον ἔχουσα καὶ Ὀρτυγίαν ἐρόεσσαν”. We may here follow Strabo (x. 5. 5), who identifies Ortygia with Rheneia. The Ortygia of Od. 15.404 is unknown. For further references see Preller-Robert i. p. 297, Farnell Cults ii. p. 433, Jebb on Soph. Trach.214.Farnell (ib. p. 465) and von Schoeffer (de Deli ins. rebus) favour strabo's identification.

Apollo was also supposed to have been born at other places where the localities possessed, or were given, a verbal resemblance to the Delian sites: at Ephesus ( Tac. Ann.iii. 61esse apud se . . lucum Ortygiam; see below 117); at Tegyra near Orchomenus, where a mountain was called Delos, and the birth was localised between the streams called Phoenix and Elaia ( Pelop. 16, de defect. or. 412 B, V. H. v. 4).

The hymn evidently represents the birth as taking place on the mountain, at the early sanctuary known as the grotto (Lebègue p. 49, 54, 75, Jebb J. H. S. i. p. 47); in later times, beginning with Theognis, the scene of the birth was transferred to the plain below, and the “λίμνη” took the place of the Inopus (Lebègue p. 95 f.). The transference was no doubt due to the building of the first temple of Apollo in the plain. Cf. Appendix i.