LINDUS
LINDUS (
Λίνδος: Eth.
Λίνδιος:
Lindos, one of the most important and most ancient towns in the island of Rhodes, was situated on the eastern coast, a little to the north of a promontory bearing the same name.
The district was in ancient times very productive in wine and figs, though otherwise it was, and is still, very barren. (Philostr.
Icon. 2.24.)
In the Homeric Catalogue (
Il. 2.656) Lindus, together with the two other Rhodian cities, Ialysus and Camirus, are said to have taken part in the war against Troy. Their inhabitants were Dorians, and formed the three Dorian tribes of the island, Lindus itself being of one the Dorian hexapolis in the south-west of Asia Minor. Previous to the year B.C. 408, when Rhodes was built, Lindus, like the other cities, formed a little state by itself, but when Rhodes was founded, a great part of the population and the common government was transferred to the new city. (
Diod. 12.75.) Lindus, however, though “it lost its political importance, still remained an interesting place in a religious point of view, for it contained two ancient and much revered sanctuaries,--one of Athena, hence called the Lindian, and the other of Heracles.
The former was believed to have been built by Danaus (
Diod. 5.58; Callim.
Fragm. p. 477, ed. Ernesti), or, according to others by his daughters on their flight from Egypt. (
Hdt. 2.182;
Strab. xiv. p.655; comp.
Plin. Nat. 33.23;
Act. Apost. 17.17.)
The temple of Heracles was remarkable, according to Lactantius”
[p. 2.194](1.31), on account of the vituperative and injurious language with which the worship was conducted.
This temple contained a painting of Heracles by Parrhasius; and Lindus appears to have possessed several other paintings by the same artist. (
Athen. 12.543, xv. p. 687.) Lindus also was the native place of Cleobulus, one of the Seven Sages of Greece; and Athenaeus (viii. p. 360) has preserved a pretty poem ascribed to Cleobulus, and which the Lindian boys used to sing as they went round collecting money for the return of the swallows in spring.
The site of Lindus, as described by Strabo, “on the side of a hill, looking towards the south and Alexandria,” cannot be mistaken; and the modern neat little town of
Lindos is exactly the spot occupied by the ancient Dorian city.
The place and its many ancient remains have often been visited and described, and most recently by Ross in his
Reisen auf den Griech. Inseln, vols. iii. and iv., from which it appears that ancient remains are more and more destroyed.
There are many tombs cut in the rocks, some of which have had beautiful architectural ornaments; the remains of a theatre at the foot of the hill; and on the acropolis are seen the ruins of two Greek temples, which, to judge from inscriptions, belonged to the Lindian Athena and Zeus Polieus.
The number of inscriptions found at Lindus is very considerable. (Comp. Ross,
l.c. vol. iii. pp. 72, &c., vol. iv. pp. 68, &c.; Hamilton,
Researches, vol. ii. pp. 55, &c.;
Rhein. Museum, for 1845, pp. 161, &c.)
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