The importance of the sanctuary and the religious celebrations of the Hyakinthia festival connected with it for the population of Laconia until late antiquity, is testified by ancient written sources and inscriptions. The most complete and significant of them are Pausanias (3.19.1-5) and Athenaios (4.139d-f, 6.232a). The traveller provides the most important information for the statue and mainly the throne. Herodotus (1.69) informs us that Croesus from Lydia donated the money needed for the metal lining of the statues of Apollo in the mount Thornakas and in Amykles. Other sources contain brief references to the cult celebrations that took place in Amyklaion until the Roman period; however they mainly provide information on the connection of the Apollonian with the chthonian cult of the local hero, Hyacinth. Polykrates, for example, mentions in Deipnosophistes that the Laconians celebrated Hyakinthia each summer to honour Hyacinth and Apollo. Finally, in Athenaios (4.173f) there is a mention to the “Hyakinthia Road”, the route that follow the festive procession from Sparta to Amykles.
Il. 2.584; Pindarus Pyth. 1.65, 11.32. Nem. 11.34. Isthm. 7.14; Aristophanes, Lysistrata 1297-1299; Thucydides 5.2; Athenaios 4. 138f-140a; Polybius 5.19; Xenophon, Hellenica 4.5.11; Strabo 7.1.2, 8.5.1; Pausanias 3.1.3, 3.10.8, 3.16.2, 3.18.7-19.6.
Inscriptions
IG V.1 27, 145, 511 (=SEG XI 790); 559, 823 (= Fiechter, E. 1918. "Amyklae. Der Thron des Apollon." JdI 33:223, No 11-12); SEG I 87-88; SEG XI 689-691 (= E. Buschor, E. and W. von Massow. 1927. "Vom Amyklaion." AM 52:63-64, No 6-10).
