5. The exact spot where the birth of Apollo took place was shown in Delos, since the least circumstance connected with so important an event could not fail to excite interest. It must be looked for in the place where the torrent Inopus flows from mount Cynthus.(1310) Here there was a circular pool (the λίμνη τροχόεσσα), the form of which is often carefully mentioned.(1311) By its side grew two sacred trees, the palm and the olive, which are not elsewhere reckoned among those sacred to Apollo; as in Greece Proper the first does not grow at all, and the second not without great care. The Delian temple alone could boast of the palm, the use of palm-branches at the games having also originated in Delos.(1312) This island acquired so much sanctity by the birth of Apollo, that no living being was permitted either to be born or die within its boundary.(1313) Every pregnant woman was obliged to go over to the neighbouring island of Rheneia, in order to be delivered. One of the ideas of the Greeks respecting religious purity (which may in general be traced to the worship of Apollo) was, that all intercourse with pregnant women polluted in the same manner as the touch of a corpse. The prohibition against keeping dogs had the same origin.(1314) On the whole, the Delian traditions are not to be considered as of very great antiquity or credit; they contain, indeed, hardly any original source of information respecting Apollo, being generally composed of descriptions of the sanctity of the island itself; several legends, as that of its having once floated on the ocean, &c., appear to have been the invention of the Ionians; this race, even in fiction, allowing itself far greater latitude than the Dorians.