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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 26

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CHAPTER III. OF THE ANCIENT CITY OF CITIUM* NOW DESTROYED. • LEAVING the town of Salines and walking towards the north towards the city of Larnaca you come upon masses of ruins. One grows naturally curious to know what formerly existed on this spot, and in reading in Strabo [xiv. 6, that " after Arsinoe, a city and harbour, came another harbour Leucolla. Then C. Pedalion, whence the coast is generally indented and precipitous up to Cition, which has an enclosed harbour. Then Amathus, a city, &c."] : and seeing that Ptolemaeus, v. 14, places in this order C. Pedalion, Thronoi city and cape, C. Dades, Cition city, mouth of the river Tetios, and Amathus, it seems very likely that the ruins belong to Cition. I do not know how Stephen Lusignan came to forget them when he placed Citium on the site where there is still a village called Citti, where there are no remains whatever to show that there existed there anciently a city of any consequence. And I am strongly inclined to suppose that he was in error in relying on the name of the village, which is called not after the city of Citium, but from the promontory, still called Cape Citti. My own opinion then would be that the ruins I noticed above are really those of the ancient Citium, and this would closely follow the description of the old geographers. I have on my side too Cav. Niebuhr, surveyor to the King of Den-mark, who drew a plan

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