Page:History of Art in Phœnicia and Its Dependencies Vol 2.djvu/121

 SUMMARY OF THE HISTORY OF CYPRUS. 99 which had been commenced by the Phoenicians, was carried on by the newer colonists. The olive is the Grecian tree par excellence, as the famous myth of Athene is enough to prove. According to that story the olives that wave on every coast of the Mediterranean are all descended from the single plant which sprang up at the touch of Pallas on the Athenian acropolis. This useful tree was carried by the Greeks to every shore on which they landed, from Cyprus in the east to Cadiz, from Hadria to Cyrene. Its favourite soil is a chalky soil near the sea, so that Cyprus suited it exactly. Thanks to seed and cuttings imported by the colonists, it gradually spread all over the lower slopes of the island, and in time drew around it an almost unbroken band of tender green. In our days these olive groves subsist only in a few rags here and there ; at more than one point traces of the ancient plantations may be easily distinguished, but many of the trees have ceased to bear since they were left to themselves and their roots allowed to become choked with debris from the slopes above. The material prosperity of the Hellenic colonists lasted through the whole of antiquity ; but the Cypriot Greeks never seem to have tried 'to recover the maritime supremacy they enjoyed about the ninth century ; they even appear to have been in some degree careless of their independence. Twice only, in a long series of years, do we find them making a real effort to reconquer it. The Greek cities showed no united front to a foreign master ; they had none of the hatred for a despot, or of the love for a republican form of government, aristocratic or democratic, which distinguished the communities of Hellas proper ; they were always ready to accept a monarchy. So, too, they resigned themselves into the hands of any great Oriental emperor who might happen to have the upper hand for the moment, provided only that he was content to ask from them nothing but ships in time of war and an agreed tribute in time of peace. Even now the Greeks of Cyprus are more indifferent to the pan- Hellenic idea than those in any other part of the Levant. They were always the easiest of subjects for the Turks; in 1823 they looked passively on while their bishops and priests were massacred, and in the years that have passed since then they have paid their heavy taxes to the Sultan without any of the resistance by which, for example, the neigh- bouring island of Crete has never ceased to be convulsed. In