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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 93

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CHAPTER XIX. OF SOME VILLAGES AND HAMLETS AND OTHER INLAND PLACES IN CYPRUS. TREMITUGIA is a village 12 miles to the west of Nicosia. It was formerly a city called Tremitus, destroyed by Richard, King of England, when he took the island. Ptolemaeus, the geographer, put it in his list of the cities of Cyprus (lib. v. 4, Asia, с. XIV.) St Spyridon, a native of Cyprus, was bishop of Tremitus, and was present in A.D. 325 at the Council of Nicaea. There are full accounts of him in the Ecclesiastical History of Socrates, 1. 12, and that of Sozomen, 1. 11. Its lands, like those of the inland villages generally, are devoted to all kinds of food stuffs, with cotton, silk, olives and wine. Dali is a village on a hill, 12 miles south of Nicosia. The situation is pleasant, and even beautiful, for there are little woods round it, excellent water, and a quantity of sweet smelling herbs, particularly marjoram. Virgil mentions it, Aeneid 1. 691 (Bowen) " Over the limbs of her Ascan the tranquil waters of sleep Venus bestows, then bears him to groves on Idalia's steep, Lulled on her bosom. Beneath him a yielding amaracus laid Folds him in bright hued flowers and in fragrant bowery shade." The ancient city was called Idalium, one of the four Cypriot cities dedicated to Venus. So Virgil again, Aeneid " Amathus too is mine, and the towering fanes of Paphos, Mine are Idalium's groves, and the flowering shades of Cythera."

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