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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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MALLOCK W.
In an enchanted island
page 226

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A SUNDAY EVENING 228 has alone stayed in my memory—and that is the word νόστον, meaning ' a return home.' Even that I should probably have forgotten, if he had not added further that the adjective νόστιμον, or ' homeward-going,' stands to-day in their dialect as a synonym for ' lovely ' or ' desirable.' A new pathos seemed, as I heard this, to gather round the νόστιμον ήμ,αρ, which Fate took from Achilles. From topics like these we strayed to modern Greek generally ; then to the modern Greek Bible, and from that to the Septuagint, and the differences between the two. There were copies in the room of. both versions. We put them side by side, and set ourselves to compare their respective power and beauty. Two books occurred, as test cases, to both of us—Ecclesiastes and the Song of Solomon. We picked out such verses and chapters as had stamped themselves most vividly on our memories, and verse for verse we read the old Greek and the new. It was a fitting end to a fitting day. As we read of the Eose of Sharon, of the myrrh, of the pomegranates, and of the gardens, the flowers in the room and the air that stole in from the mountains made me feel that my host's house was a lodge in a garden of spices, a garden enclosed, fanned with the winds of Lebanon ; and then again, when we turned over a few pages, and gave our attention to the other Book we had fixed upon, another voice stole through that of the Song of Songs, and whispered to the Mystical Eose the secret that all is vanity.

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