A small holy island, sacred to Apollo. Odysseus mentions it once, on the Phaeacian shore, when he is trying to find words for what Nausicaa looks like to him. He tells her he once saw a young palm tree growing beside the altar of Apollo on Delos, so straight and sure of itself that he stood rooted to the ground and stared. You do the same thing to me. The island appears in the story only as that single image, a memory of pilgrimage, the kind of detail a much-traveled man keeps in his mind for the right moment. It tells you something about Odysseus too: that even broken and naked on a stranger’s beach, he reaches for a holy tree, not a metaphor of fire or war.
Delos
The sacred island of Apollo. A young palm tree grew straight beside his altar there, and Odysseus has never forgotten it.