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Selected and rare materials, excerpts and observations from ancient, medieval and contemporary authors, travelers and researchers about Cyprus.
 
 
 
 
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CLAUDE DELAVAL COBHAM
Exerpta Cypria
page 84

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FÜRER 7!> the female slave of another master, but tho nobles themselves pair off their own serfs; unless, and this is a rare case, α master allows a union with another's serf, when the children belong to the master of tho female slave, that the offspring may follow the womb that bare it. The nobles are greatly given to amusements, especially hunting and hawking, and at certain seasons of the year, at Carnival especially, they hold solemn games and banquets with great cost and splendour. In their rules of succession the eldest brother takes the title and property to the exclusion of his juniors. Nowadays they mostly marry the daughters of Venetians. At the time we reached the city the inhabitants were making a great commotion, and storming the house of some official, because they had discovered that the greatest pari of the corn, in which the country abounds, was being sent out of the island, so that bread was lacking for their daily food. At lost some of the chief nobles came and with soothing words and promises appeased the rioters. In the cathedral church a certain Venetian lies binned called Carlo Capello. He was remarkable for his knowledge of three languages and other attainments, and as he came of one of the first families, and was a man whose wonderful grace of manner made him generally popular, the Venetians set him to rule, as their custom is, for a term of two years the island of Crete, then for three years that of Cyprus. During his lifetime he ordered this epitaph to be inscribed on his tomb. " I, Carlo Capello, knight of the Republic of Venice and Viceroy of Cyprus, bade this shrine be erected for my body : but that my soul shall fly to God I have desired and believed. Hail, ye chosen of God ! and win for me by your prayers His boundless mercy. Reader, I lived and helped the good, but life Wae toil, and death a refuge and release. All that in good is mind, yet all our strife To learn and know is hushed in deaths great peaee. How vain our hopes and fears 1 dreams, idle dreams, Are earth's sole gift; the mind must live and soar To ite own starry home, and death, whieh seems So fearful, tcaeh us its eternal lore." On April 10 we left Nicosia, and next day reached Limiso, α considerable village, with a see the income of which is 3000 ducats, and a castle of which the ruins are visible. On April 25, two hours after sunset, we left the shore of Cyprus in a Venetian vessel, which was reckoned one of the chief and largest of its time, with more than two hundred persons in onr company, and abont noon next day we reached the city of Faphos, where Paul and Barnabas exposed in a marvellous way the fraud and malice of one Elymas, and won the Proconsul Sergius to Christ. This city also has α bishopric with an estimated revenne of 3000 ducats. On May 7 we left Faphos and four days later got into the Attalic gulf.

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