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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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GIOVANNI MARITI
Travels in the Island of Cyprus
page 86

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82 Journey from the Village of Citti [CH. which I shall speak presently. It is a mere ruin of a town, with a few remains to show that it was once an important city. It was so, and remained such under the Dukes who governed Cyprus for the Greek Emperors of Constantinople. Isaac the last of these was conquered by Richard, King of England, who destroyed the city in 1191. It was never rebuilt. Here stood ancient Amathus, in which was a temple dedicated to Venus and Adonis, see Pausanias, lib. ix. : "Amathus is a city in Cyprus, in it there is an ancient temple of Adonis and Aphrodite." Amathus was the seat of one of the nine Kings, and [Rhoicos reigned there, cir. B.C. 351]. Under the Christians it was a bishopric, and produced men famous for their piety and learning, among whom was the bishop Leontius, who flourished about A.D. 590, and was still alive in A.D. 616; he wrote the life of St John the Almoner, Patriarch of Alexandria, also a native of Amathus ; St Tychon, consecrated bishop by St Epiphanios, in the reign of Arcadius ; and in the Greek Menologies are commemorated other saints who came from this city, as St Stadion and St Mnemonios. All about the place are copper mines, which have been abandoned since the Turks took the island. These were famous in Ovid's day, Met. x. 220, Won by his manly beauty, Cythera no longer allures her: Cnidos, the haunt of fishers, and Paphos too are forsaken, Paphos' sea-girt walls, and Amathus' earthborn treasure. The spot on which the present city of Limasol stands was formerly called Nemosia, from its many groves. After Richard, King of England, had destroyed Amathus, Guy de Lusignan in the twelfth century began to build the new city, which the Greeks called Neapolis ; and as time went on, it was enlarged by other Lusignans, fortified and adorned with palaces, Latin and Greek churches, and was made a bishopric. When the Turks came in 1570 to take the island on July 2 they sacked and burned the city : it is but a poor place now, with a few

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