Page:History of Art in Phœnicia and Its Dependencies Vol 2.djvu/113

 SUMMARY OF THE HISTORY OF CYPRUS. 91 history were Phoenician, on this point the Greek tradition never varies, from the times of Homer down to those of the latest historian of antiquity. The Iliad presents Cyprus to us as a land thoroughly Phoenician. She supplied no contingent to the Greek host before Troy ; her master was Kinyras, to whom Agamemnon owed his cuirass, a splendid specimen of an art in which the Phoenicians excelled. 1 Now in the oldest Hellenic traditions Kinyras is the repre- sentative of the Asiatic civilization. He is sometimes placed in Syria, sometimes in Cilicia, a land which was early occupied by the Semites. He was sometimes looked upon as the father of Adonis, with whom he shared the love of Aphrodite, that is, of the Phoenician Astarte ; he introduced the worship of that goddess into the island and founded her temple at Paphos, where he was venerated as the eponymous chief of a powerful priest-family, the Kinyrades.' 2 In the Odyssey Cyprus is twice spoken of, together with Phoenicia and Egypt, as a distant country on the very horizon of the world. 3 We do not possess a single one of the antique histories of Cyprus, 4 so that it is only through passing allusions that we know anything of Greek notions as to its story. A belief in the precedence of Phoenicia is constantly im- plied. To give but one example, Theopompus tells us how " The Greeks, the companions of Agamemnon, occupied Cyprus after expelling the people of Kinyras, a race whose remains still inhabit Amathos." 5 The people of Kinyras and the Phoenicians were one and the same, and these words of Theopompus are confirmed by what we know of Amathos from other sources; in all the struggles of the two different races who divided the island between them, that city took a leading part against Hellenism. 6 And supposing no such historical evidence had been forth- coming, we should have arrived at a decision in favour of the 1 Iliad, xi. 19-23. 2 PINDARUS, Pyth. ii. 16. Theocritus, Scol. i. 109. TACITUS, History, ii. 3. APOLLODORUS, Hi. xiv. 3. OVID, Metamorphoses, x. 297, 298. 3 Odyssey, iv. 81-85 ; xvii. 448. 4 A list of them will be found in ENGEL (Kypros,- Q. i. book i. chapter i.) together with a resume of all that we know as to their contents. 5 THEOPOMPUS, fragm. cxi. (in Fragmenta Hist. Grcec. ed. Muller, vol. i.). 6 HERODOTUS, v. 104.