View PDF version of this page

24 Of the ancient City [CH. that Amasis (Aahmes of the XXVIth Dynasty, B.C. 569) brought all Cyprus under his rule : " he first of men took Cyprus, reducing it to pay tribute." About B.C. 525 Cambyses, son of Cyrus, having received the voluntary submission of the Phoenicians, accepted also that of the Cypriots, who then marched against Egypt (in. 19). Cimon the Athenian, son of Miltiades, defeated a Phoenician fleet off Cyprus, and in the following year, B.C. 449, besieged Citium, and died before the town from disease, or, as some have it, from a wound. A King of Citium, perhaps Pymatos [Pumiathon] was in favour with Alexander the Great, and gave him a sword of admirable lightness and temper, which the latter valued so well that it was always at his side, and with it he conquered Darius. Now nothing is visible of this ancient city but the foundations of the walls which surrounded it, and of a building or two. The site is open cultivated field : and in working the soil there are found every day large stones, which are used in the modern buildings of the town of Salines and city of Larnaca. I myself in the year 1767 happened to see an excavation made for the purpose of getting stones, among which the workmen found a head of white marble representing Antoninus Caracalla, and near it many Greek coins of the Roman Empire, of Septimius Severus, Antoninus Caracalla, and Julia Domna, with a Greek legend, and on the reverse the temple of Paphos with the inscription KOINON ΚΥΠΡΙΩΝ : some with Caracalla on one side and Geta on the other, and coins of Claudius Caesar Augustus with a Latin inscription, and on the reverse a crown of laurel within which one read KOINON ΚΥΠΡΙΩΝ. The head passed into the hands of Mr Timothy Turner, consul in Cyprus for His Britannic Majesty, while some of the coins I presented to the Museum of the Etruscan Academy at Cortona.

View PDF version of this page