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Delos 429 BC

Delos is a Greek island in the Cyclades archipelago of the Aegean Sea, located near Mykonos. According to Greek mythology, Delos was the birthplace of Apollo and Artemis, and it became the site of the Grand Temple of Apollo in the renowned Sanctuary of Apollo. In 478 BC, Delos became the meeting ground and birthplace of the Delian League, an Athenian-led confederation of Greek city-states which united against Persia during the Greco-Persian Wars. In 454 BC, the Athenian leader Pericles removed the Delian League treasury from Delos to Athens, centralizing the League's power around Attica. In 426 BC, during the Peloponnesian War, it was ordered that dead bodies be purged from the island to purify it as sacred ground. Four years later, all of its inhabitants were relocated to Asia as part of its purification. In 166 BC, the Roman Republic converted Delos into a free port, and, after the Third Macedonian War, Rome expelled its inhabitants and granted the island to Athens. It soon became the center of the largest slave market in the region, filled with slaves taken by the Cilician pirates or from the dissolution of the Seleucid dynasty. After the destruction of Corinth in 146 BC, Delos became the largest trading center in Ancient Greece, but it declined due to Pontic invasions in 89 and 66 BC. By the end of the 1st century BC, the trade routes had shifted, and Delos lost its wealth and was unable to sustain a large population; in later times, it was uninhabited. In 2001, Delos had only 14 inhabitants.

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