Franklin, John Curtis. 2016. Kinyras: The Divine Lyre. Hellenic Studies Series 70. Washington, DC: Center for Hellenic Studies. http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:hul.ebook:CHS_FranklinJ.Kinyras.2016.
14. Restringing Kinyras
This chapter further documents Kinyras’ fundamental connection with pre-Greek Cyprus. I shall examine traces of popular narratives featuring the Cypriot king and his family which variously mythologized Aegean settlement in the eastern Mediterranean during the LBA–IA transition, and the evolving relationships between the new Greek-speaking communities and the pre-Greek and later Phoenician groups with whom they shared the island.
Aegean Foundation Legends and Epic Homecomings
The Cypriot music-iconography examined in Chapter 11 provides a practical context for a number of Aegean migration and foundation legends, some of which must have been treated in narrative song. [1] Unfortunately, what remains is little more than terse references and passing allusions. [2] Some are found in, or may be reasonably posited for, lost cyclic poems like the Kypria and the Nostoi. Others are fragments, often unidentified, of historical and ethnographic works from the Classical, and especially Hellenistic, periods (Hellanikos, Eratosthenes, Philostephanos, et al.), extracted by lexicographers or placed in ‘secondary use’ by poets (Lykophron, Nonnos), geographers and periegetes (Strabo, Pausanias), historians (Diodoros), biographers (Plutarch), or mythographers (ps.-Apollodoros). [3]
Moreover, the underlying myths are of varying quality, not all deserving the label ‘tradition’. As E. Gjerstad clearly demonstrated in a seminal article:
They may be purely fictional or reflect later logographic speculations and political propaganda, but they may also be more or less clear records of an historical tradition. It is the task of the historian to distinguish the valuable material from the worthless, thus bringing forth the historic evidence. [4]
The basic accuracy of this assessment cannot be doubted; and while one may question how conclusively Gjerstad has executed the historian’s task on specific points, his analysis remains admirably thorough and sensitive, despite many subsequent revisions of detail to his fundamental historical synthesis of 1948.
The plasticity of such myths has been well exposed by I. Malkin’s study of Odysseus’ “returns” from Troy—substantially remolded, and largely developed, during ninth-century “proto-colonization” to the West. The hero’s route, and the relationships established along the way, were continually reformulated by Greek colonists, merchants, and local communities to create a “common, mutually comprehensible world,” typically in the venue of drinking rituals (sympósia). [5]
On Cyprus, a comparable diachronic process, beginning several centuries earlier, will have obscured the facts of immigration, with history continuously reimagined throughout the IA. In particular, one can observe the impact of the Aeolic-Ionic epic tradition, which assigned various homecoming adventures (nóstoi) to the Greek heroes returning from Troy. This development, in which Cypriot migration figures were integrated into the emerging Panhellenic cycle, should be placed in the ninth or eighth centuries, parallel in many respects to the “returns of Odysseus.” This is not due to the spread of Homer per se, since the textualized Iliad and Odyssey did not attain canonical status until the later seventh or sixth century, to judge from the evidence of vase-painting. [6] Rather, it reflects Cypriot (re-)integration with a larger Grecophone storytelling world. Homer’s poems themselves, however, must still be dated early on linguistic grounds, let us say the later eighth century. [7] Given this, it is most significant that Homer himself assumes a developed tradition of ‘Eastern Wandering’, from a stop by Paris and Helen at Sidon en route to Troy, to the post-Troy wanderings of Menelaos, which take him to “Cyprus and Phoenicia and the Egyptian people.” [8] A shared poetics developed precisely around the position of Cyprus on the eastern edge of the Hellenic world. [9]
It is perhaps easiest to apprehend the structural variations that underlie the Cypriot ‘founders’ by beginning with those that are most clearly artificial and aetiological in nature. Litros (< Ledroi) and Lapethos (< Lapethos), for instance, are known only from the highly mannered epicist Nonnos (ca. 400 CE), and were perhaps invented by him for the occasion; nor does he draw any clear connection with Aegean migration. [10] The population of Classical Lapethos was quite heterogeneous, even its kings bearing Greek and Phoenician names alike. [11] The foundation of Idalion was attributed to a certain Khalkanor, whose name betrays an aetiological connection with metalworking at the site (and perhaps nearby Tamassos). [12] Idalion itself is explained in terms of an oracle that suggests an eastward metal-hunting venture: Khalkanor was to build his city where he ‘saw’ (id-) the ‘sun’ ([ h] álion) rising. [13] The foundation of Golgoi by a certain Golgos is equally artificial, and his Sicyonian origin remains puzzling—all the more so given the undeciphered pre-Greek language attested there. [14]
Both Golgos and Khalkanor—the latter depending upon Greek etymology—attest a desire for connection with an ‘Achaean’ past, which, though artificially expressed, may nevertheless be symptomatic of real, if dim, historical recollections. [15] These figures were presumably inspired by emulation of other Cypriot cities for which such claims were better grounded, that is, those whose ctistic legends betray no clear ulterior motive through association with Homer and/or some powerful mother-city. Kourion’s claim to have been an Argive settlement, for instance, could be open to doubt because of the close mythological connection between Argos and Mycenae. [16] It may still be, of course, that the Kourion tradition did have some historical basis. After all, the island’s Arcado-Cypriot dialect indicates that the majority of immigrants came from sites in the pre-Doric Peloponnese. A priori it is quite likely that some groups will have come from the heartland of Mycenaean power. The point is simply that, in a case like this, it is harder to isolate the trustworthy.
By contrast, two migrations are more convincing for the very obscurity of the connections proposed. Lykophron, after giving considerable detail about Teukros, Agapenor, and the sons of Theseus (see below), briefly mentions a fourth and fifth Cypriot founder. These are Praxandros and a band of Laconians from Therapna (connected with Lapethos by Strabo), and Kepheus with Achaeans from the minor sites of Olenos and Dyme. [17] The poet, while making these figures part of the post-Troy homecomings, nevertheless describes them as “not lords of a naval host, but a nameless scattering (sporaí).” [18] They are presumably “nameless” because they are not found in Homer’s Catalogue of Ships. Probably these were genuine Cypriot traditions, available to Lykophron through the ethnographic work of Eratosthenes and Philostephanos. [19]
With Akamas and Demophon at Soloi, however, the epic framework of post-Troy wandering was apparently exploited for fifth-century propaganda. [20] An earlier stratum has the sons of Theseus return to Athens after the war. But Gjerstad convincingly argued that they—along with their fellow countryman ‘Phaleros’ (an eponym for Phaleron, a departure point for Athenian naval expeditions)—reflect Athenian imperial interests and military endeavors on Cyprus, between the defeat of the Persians at Mykale (479) and the death of Kimon in the siege of Kition (449/448). [21] Solon’s anecdotal involvement with Soloi probably also took on its principal features at this time. [22] Akamas’ grandson ‘Khytros’ (< Khytroi) may be similarly understood. [23] Nevertheless, since there does seem to have been Aegean settlement in the region of Soloi at the end of the LBA, [24] a late political myth like this could take on specious substance by repurposing local memories.
Some figures, however, do represent genuinely ancient traditions. Teukros and Agapenor, associated with Salamis and Paphos, respectively, may be confidently associated with historical population movements from western Anatolia and the Peloponnese for reasons, to be discussed below, that overcome any suspicion raised by their incorporation into the epic nóstoi. That these are the two best-attested Cypriot migration legends must relate to the prominence of Salamis and Paphos on the island itself, and hence their greater visibility within early Panhellenic horizons.
As it happens, both Teukros and Agapenor have connections with Kinyras and his family. We thus arrive at the central question of this chapter. In the treatment of Kinyras, one would predict both local Cypriot traditions of potentially sub-Mycenaean antiquity, and a modulation in the ninth or eighth century under the stimulus of Aeolic-Ionic epic. We have already seen evidence of the latter with Kinyras’ brief cameo in the Iliad, where he appears as an esteemed guest-friend to Agamemnon—a fellow Great King. [25] A more ancient Kinyras, I have argued, is found in the rich traditions that make him an all-around culture-hero for the island and its ancient industries (Chapter 13). In both cases, Kinyras is presented in a positive light. But his virtues and talents did not go wholly uncontested. Another stream of tradition made Kinyras a traitor to the Greek cause, who had to be punished accordingly (see below). More middling, ‘hybrid’ perspectives are found at early Paphos and fifth-century Salamis, where the royal dynasties presented themselves as descendants of the legendary king.
I shall develop specific historical explanations for each of these strains, arguing that Kinyras was a kind of historical boundary stone delimiting Greek and pre-Greek perspectives within the evolving social landscape of IA Cyprus, even when the two populations are indistinguishable in the material record. Ultimately this ethnic, national function of Kinyras will permit further inferences about his own early history upon the island (Chapter 15).
Kinyras, Dmetor, and the Changing States of Cyprus
After Kinyras’ brief mention in the Iliad, Homer tells us nothing more about him. Instead Odysseus, lying to Antinoos about how he fell into beggary, claims that he was captured while marauding the coast of Egypt and handed over to a certain “Dmetor son of Iasos, who ruled Cyprus by force.” [26] Dmetor is envisioned as commanding the whole island. [27] Eustathios was puzzled by this:
If Kinyras was king of Cyprus in the Iliad, he is no longer, but the Dmetor who is named seems to have been king. [28]
Eustathios’ suggestion remains the most economical interpretation of the Homeric data. The alternative, to view the Odyssey poet as using a different frame of reference than the Iliad, is not merely uneconomical but discouraged by Homer’s own generous clues. For Dmḗtōr means ‘Subduer’, and is even so defined by the immediate sequel: “who ruled in Cyprus by force.” This is proof enough, were it needed, that Dmetor is no historical figure. Yet he may still have an historical dimension. Both his name and its gloss show that the Odyssey poet recognized an early Greek conquest scenario on Cyprus. That Dmetor exerted his rule “by force” naturally implies a hostile native population, which in turn suggests that his kingdom was recently established. This might be reading too much into a single name, were it not for other mythological examples of Achaean heroes establishing kingdoms on Cyprus just after the fall of Troy—only a few years of dramatic time before the action of the Odyssey (Odysseus was the last hero home).
Dmetor thus concisely embodies a traditional convention that Cyprus, in a post-Troy nóstos, should be a Kinyras-free zone. [29] Kinyras and Dmetor symbolize the island’s two storytelling ‘states’. The transition between them, one may suppose, could be uncompressed and developed at will, as normal with formulaic themes. But of course this need not mean that only Dmetor figured in tales of post-Troy Cyprus.
Another possible lead is Dmetor’s patronymic, Iasídēs, ‘son of Iasos’ (or descendant), if this is more than an on-the-fly invention. Iasos recurs in mythological constructions of the Argive royal house, either as the son of Phoroneus and father of Argos (Hellanikos), or as the son of Argos himself (ps.-Apollodoros). [30] Iasídēs may therefore symbolize not simply a Greek conquest of Cyprus, but one in which ‘Argos’—broadly understood—played a central role. There is also the Iasos whom ps.-Apollodoros places in the Arcadian royal house as the son of Lykourgos—that is, in the ‘disempowered’ branch that descends from the eponymous Arkas via his younger son Apheidas. [31] This Iasos’ brother was Ankaios, father of Agapenor, the Paphian migration hero (see below); this would make Dmetor and Agapenor first cousins. Of course one need not insist on any such precise relationship. But Homer’s Iasídēs may well suggest a specifically Peloponnesian background to Dmetor and his power over Cyprus.
Liar King: The Terracotta Fleet and the Curse of Agamemnon
The political relationship between Kinyras and Agamemnon was more fully elaborated in what Eustathios calls the ‘Cypriot Hosting of the Achaeans’ (Kypriakḕ xenía tôn Akhaiôn). Our knowledge of this tale comes from three authors, who yield four closely related tellings. [32] They speak variously of an Achaean embassy to Cyprus and a broken promise by Kinyras to contribute ships for the expedition against Troy. According to ps.-Apollodoros:
Menelaos went with Odysseus and Talthybios to Kinyras in Cyprus, and tried to persuade him to join the battle. But he [Kinyras] made a gift of a breastplate [33] for Agamemnon, who was not present; and vowing to send fifty ships, he sent one, which [name lost] the son of Mygdalion commanded. And molding the rest out of clay, he launched them into the sea. [34]
This tale must have featured in some version of the lost Kypria, which dealt with events leading up to the Trojan War. [35] We have also seen that, incredible though it seem, Kinyras’ terracotta fleet must somehow allude to an Eteocypriot tradition of terracotta ship-models stretching from the Archaic period back to the MBA. [36] The episode is implicitly aetiological, but is the aetiology fundamental or incidental? That is, did the ritual give rise to the story of Kinyras’ treachery, or merely embellish it?
The “son of Mygdalion” is eccentric and puzzling. The name is reminiscent of ‘Pygmalion’, which some would change the text to read—an easy emendation—recalling the tradition that Kinyras married a daughter of Pygmalion. [37] On this hypothesis, the “son of Mygdalion” becomes Kinyras’ brother-in-law, a plausible enough arrangement. Or should the more difficult reading prevail? Since ‘Pygmalion’ is a Hellenic representation of a Canaanite/Phoenician divine and/or royal name like Pumayyaton, one can find equal support for Mygdalion in Milkyaton, a name born by a fourth-century king of Kition and himself the father of a Pumayyaton. [38] Several alternative attempts at a Semitic etymology for Mygdalion may also be noted. [39]
Either way, the “son of Mygdalion/Pygmalion” is an authentic Cypriot touch. Important enough to rate a mention, he is a faint trace of a more developed portrait of Kinyras’ court. He equally imparts a Cypro-Phoenician flavor, as does making Kinyras himself a faithless foreigner, since Homer usually represents Phoenicians as sneaky dealers. [40]
The Liar King clearly expresses a more general cultural confrontation between Greek and non-Greek. But the opposition is not a simple geographical one between Cyprus and the Aegean; for the virtuous Kinyras appears in Homer, Alkman, and Pindar, and he was promoted by the Kinyrad kings of Paphos who nevertheless bore Greek names (Chapter 16). The Liar King is therefore likely to derive from a specific regional tradition within Cyprus, which, unlike Paphos—where the episode is set [41] —stood to gain by denying Kinyras’ virtues and emphasizing his un-Greekness. The obvious candidate here is Salamis. First, this is the city for which an epic tradition is best attested. Salamis appears in an invocation of Aphrodite in one of the lesser Homeric hymns. [42] There is also the hexametric oracle, attributed to the legendary Cypriot prophet-singer Euklees, which purports to predict Homer’s birth “in a field … / outside of very-wealthy Salamis.” [43] At least two Salaminian singers are known by name, Stasinos and Stasandros. [44] To the former (or alternatively to Hegesias or Hegesinos of Salamis) was attributed the Kypria, some version of which remains the most likely home for the terracotta fleet on other grounds. [45] I suggest therefore that the Liar King served the interests of the Salaminian royal house, undermining the island-wide prestige the Paphian Kinyradai enjoyed as high priests of Aphrodite’s temple. [46]
With or without Salamis, an insinuation of Phoenician sneakiness may have been useful at certain points in the island’s history when a sense of Hellenic identity waxed especially strong here or there. This leads to an important detail added by Eustathios: that Kinyras, “after defaulting” on his promise, “was cursed by Agamemnon.” [47] Though Eustathios himself offers no clear sequel, Agamemnon’s curse is very probably to be connected with a remarkable tradition recorded by Theopompos, to which we now turn.
The Unthroning of Kinyras
Theopompos, active in the fourth century, ranks alongside Herodotos, Thucydides, Xenophon, and Ephoros as one of the most important Classical historians. [48] He traveled and lectured widely in the Greek world, making considerable use of local traditions. [49] An understandable desire to include everything he collected accounts for his proneness to tangents. The fifty-eight volume Philippika, dealing with the history of Philip of Macedon and the generations preceding his rise to power, was so replete with ethnographic, historical, and mythological digressions that their excision by Philip V (ca. 238–179) reduced the work to a mere sixteen books. [50] The original version, however, apparently survived down to the ninth century when it was read by Photios, with the exception of four books he reports as lost. [51] He also mentions a certain Menophanes, who believed that a fifth volume too—Book 12—had fallen from the tradition. Yet Photios himself had this very book in hand, and luckily felt impelled to epitomize it for posterity. We may therefore be sure that he has represented the original structure quite faithfully, even if the severity of his cuts may obscure the relative emphases of the original topics. [52]
Book 12 dealt with the career of Euagoras I (ca. 435–374), the brilliant, swashbuckling king of Salamis who walked a long and dangerous tightrope on the Persian periphery. He grew up while Salamis was controlled by a usurping Phoenician dynasty; a further coup ca. 415 by another Phoenician adventurer—Abdymon (or Abdemon) of Tyre and/or Kition [53] —caused Euagoras to flee to Cilician Soloi. Returning several years later with a picked band of fifty followers, he regained his throne in a daring night attack. [54] Consolidating his position, he went on to enjoy a long reign in which he aimed at, and briefly glimpsed, fairly general control of Cyprus and even several Phoenician cities including Tyre, before Persia cut back his little empire to Salamis itself. [55]
How Theopompos related his Euagoras narrative to the career of Philip is not immediately clear. One likely point of contact is Euagoras’ involvement in the Battle of Knidos (394), since this was relevant to the history of hegemonic struggles in Greece itself. [56] In any case, Theopompos included two curious mythological digressions that are but tersely noticed by Photios. One was on Mopsos, whom the historian tied to ethnic conflict between Greeks and barbarians in Caria (the Meliac War, ca. 700) and probably Pamphylia. [57] He also described, immediately after recounting Euagoras’ surprise upset of Abdymon,
the manner in which the Greeks with Agamemnon occupied (katéskhon) Cyprus, driving off the men with Kinyras, of whom the Amathousians are the remnants. [58]
One’s immediate reflex, conditioned as we are by the usual Homeric version of events, is to understand “the Greeks with Agamemnon” as a group who had fought beside the Mycenaean king at Troy, but then went on to Cyprus by themselves while he went home to Klytaimnestra. [59] By this view, hoi sỳn Agamémnoni would be an elliptical reference to other, better-attested migration legends like Teukros, Agapenor, and their bands of followers. Such further figures are certainly well encompassed by the expression. Yet the more natural reading of the Greek makes Agamemnon himself lead the showdown. [60]
We must therefore recognize, startling though it be, a tradition of the island’s invasion by the Mycenaean king, accompanied by some portion of the returning Greek host. [61] And there is a remarkable parallel: according to medieval Cypriot tradition, the Greek expedition against Troy gathered not Aulis but Paphos, as it was from here—not Sparta—that Helen had been abducted! [62] Such Cyprocentric variants obviously originated on the island itself, enduring into the fourth century and well beyond despite their inconsistency with the Panhellenic narrative of Homer.
R. Dussaud once suggested that Theopompos’ myth reflected an historical breach of etiquette between Mycenae and Alashiya, precipitating a Greek takeover of Cyprus at the end of the LBA. [63] Writing before the discovery of Kinnaru at Ugarit, Dussaud supposed that Kinyras was an actual Alashiyan king, and envisioned a Mycenaean rout of his followers; fleeing from Enkomi (which Dussaud regarded as the Alashiyan capital), they settled in Amathous and Paphos. [64] Since Kinyras was in all probability not an historical individual, Dussaud’s ‘rout of the Kinyradai’ must remain overly literal; and his political geography may be too specific. Nevertheless, if Kinyras was indeed a kind of royal persona in LBA Cyprus, as I shall argue (Chapter 15), the fate of the island would be very neatly mythologized as a decisive confrontation with Agamemnon.
Kinyras and Pre-Greek Social Topography
The Theopompos fragment unambiguously links Kinyras to the island’s pre-Greek population, and offers Amathous as its principal ‘stronghold’. The city’s partially non-Greek character is confirmed by ps.-Skylax, who called the Amathousians autochthonous. [65] As late as the fourth century (Theopompos’ own day) the Amathousian kings, despite their Greek names, commissioned political and funerary inscriptions in the undeciphered language conventionally known as Eteocypriot—which, in bilingual settings, even enjoyed “la place d’honneur” ahead of the Greek. [66] That Amathous was not founded until ca. 1100 need not conflict with the tradition of pre-Greek ‘origins’; compare the roughly contemporary transition from LBA Enkomi to nearby ‘Teukrid’ Salamis. [67] The city’s indigenous orientation will also explain its description as the (or a) “most ancient city of Cyprus,” and the (obviously erroneous) view that the island was originally called Amathousía. [68]
There must also have been communities outside of Amathous, of whatever size, that maintained some sense of pre-Greek identity. Ps.-Skylax, after calling several sites Greek, and Lapethos Phoenician, states that “there are also other non-Greek-speaking (bárbaroi) cities in the interior.” [69] While this can certainly include further Phoenician centers (Idalion; Kition is on the coast), it could equally embrace other pre-Greek groups within the póleis. Several Eteocypriot inscriptions have been found at Paphos, with probably another from Kourion. [70] At least a hundred more examples, interpretable as neither Greek nor Phoenician, have been found elsewhere on the island. [71] Of course, those who self-identified as neither Greek nor Phoenician need not themselves have been ethnically homogeneous: the Alashiyan onomasticon shows that the LBA island was already quite diverse. [72] Some hold, for instance, that a number of undeciphered inscriptions from Golgoi represent a pre-Greek language distinct from ‘Amathousian’. [73]
But these ethnic and linguistic intricacies in no way invalidate Kinyras’ function as a totalizing symbol of the pre-Greek island. And his connection with Amathous justifies extending this idea to his various toponymous relations. Kinyras is the trunk of a family tree whose roots and branches include a father Paphos and mother Paphos/Paphia; a mother Amathousa; sons Marieus (< Marion) and Koureus (< Kourion); and Kypros, either a son or daughter (the name is masculine in form, but islands are normally feminine). [74] It is probably significant that that these figures, in an arc Marion-Paphos-Kourion-Amathous, are concentrated in the southwestern part of the island; when the points are connected on a map, the area includes Alassa (with Kalavasos nearby) and the main distribution of Eteocypriot inscriptions.
The multiform clan of Kinyras neatly ‘opposes’ the Aegean migration legends. It does not follow, of course, that Greek and pre-Greek communities were always or ever strictly segregated. Thus, Aegean foundations appear side-by-side with Kinyras or his family at several sites (Paphos, Salamis, Kourion, and elsewhere). [75] It is unclear whether these Kinyrad toponyms were generated by pre-Greek communities, by the island’s Grecophone element, were fabricated by early ethnographers like Hellanikos, or some combination. Probably most lacked any real mythology (although an inventive poet or historian might weave them together, as did Nonnos; there is also the quasi-narrative treatment of ‘Cinaras’ and ‘Curio’ in Étienne de Lusignan). [76] They remain valuable nonetheless as ethno-historical ciphers.
A final topographical connection, which has presented a puzzle since antiquity, is the ‘Cinyria’ mentioned by Pliny as an abandoned site of uncertain location. I discuss this in Appendix E.
Salamis: Euagoras, Teukros, and the Daughter of Kinyras
We must now consider why Theopompos included Agamemnon’s unthroning of Kinyras in recounting the career of Euagoras. This was surely not gratuitous detail, but integral to the logic of his narrative. [77]
Kinyras’ defeat by Agamemnon, it has been suggested, made Cyprus “legitimately part of the Greek world” and “explains, if it does not justify, Euagoras the Greek’s claim to legitimate rulership over that of Abdymon, whose name sounds distinctly barbarian.” [78] That Theopompos himself developed such a polarized vision of Greeks versus others is not unlikely, given his treatment of Mopsos and the Meliac War in the same book. [79] And such a philhellenic Euagoras is found in Isokrates, whose eulogy of the king is decidedly anti-Persian in tone. [80]
Yet the traditional view that philhellenism was central to Euagoras’ own political agenda (as opposed to Isokrates’) has been well challenged by F. G. Maier, exposing as largely factoidal the assumption, omnipresent in older histories, that fifth-century Cyprus saw a general showdown between Greek-Cypriots and a Persian-Phoenician axis. [81] That idea is rather at odds with our current understanding of the island’s ethnic complexity and the fairly general dispersal and mutual acculturation of its three (or more) populations. [82] Cypriot kings of all backgrounds, Maier contends, generally acted in their own interests, and this sometimes led incidentally to confrontations between Greek- and Phoenician-Cypriots, and, following the Ionian revolt, with the Persians. [83]
The point is well taken. Nevertheless, we should not dismiss all ethnic distinctions on the island as meaningless. The very fact that communities cultivated legends about their past shows that such affiliations mattered to them. Such beliefs could therefore be politically exploited; and if this were to coincide with the interests of a Cypriot king, why would he have hesitated to do so?
I would like to take a middle position and argue that both tendencies—ethnic openness, and political rivalry articulated along ethnic lines—were variously operative in Euagoras’ bid for power and influence, and that Kinyras had an important role to play therein. A key passage comes from Diodoros:
[Euagoras] tried to make the whole island his own. Mastering some of the cities by force, adding others by persuasion, he soon gained leadership over the rest. But the men of Amathous, Soloi, and Kition, resisting under arms, sent ambassadors to Artaxerxes king of the Persians for help. [84]
The resistance of largely Greek-oriented Soloi clearly illustrates Maier’s principle of ethnically indifferent self-interest. But it can hardly be coincidence that Amathous and Kition were the island’s two sites with the most pronounced non-Greek cultural orientation (note that Amathous had not joined in defecting from Persia after the Ionian Revolt). [85] And once war was drawn along these lines, an aspect of ethnic disharmony may well have presented itself, even if political expediency played the leading part. [86] Kition served the Persians as their main naval base on the island, and the city probably flourished accordingly; no doubt this would perfectly suit its kings’ own aggressive ambitions. Still, this privileged position may have been due not only to Kition’s important harbor, but to its cultural ties with the mainland, making it somehow more familiar and manageable in Persian eyes. Similarly Phoenician/Tyrian political control of Kition had probably emerged in the late eighth century under Assyrian patronage. [87] It was here that Sargon erected his stele (ca. 707). [88]
Such intra-Cypriot issues might be dismissed as irrelevant to the interpretation of Theopompos himself, who was free to develop whatever historical framework he wished; on this view, Kinyras could enter his narrative as mere ornamentation, with no immediate connection to the realities of Euagoras’ career. Yet a crucial datum, preserved uniquely by Pausanias (second century CE), makes it quite likely that Theopompos’ Kinyras digression was intended to illuminate propaganda of the Salaminian king himself. Pausanias, it should be emphasized, drew regularly on Theopompos, and his familiarity with the book in question is shown by his discussion elsewhere of Mopsos’ expulsion of the Carians from Colophon. [89] This makes it very probable that Theopompos is also his source for the passage we are about to examine.
Pausanias, in his tour of Athens, refers to a statue of Euagoras, also known to Isokrates. [90] This the Athenians erected in gratitude for the king’s role in brokering a Cypro-Phoenician naval contingent, under the command of Konon who was in exile at his court, to support the Athenian fleet against the Spartans at Knidos:
Near the stoa stands Konon and his son Timotheos, and Euagoras, king of the Cypriots, who caused the Phoenician triremes to be given to Konon by King Artaxerxes. He acted as an Athenian (hōs Athēnaîos), since he traced his ancestry back to Salamis via Teukros and a daughter of Kinyras. [91]
With the victory at Knidos, Euagoras and his sons were awarded front-row seating at Athenian festivals in perpetuity. Euagoras had previously been granted Athenian citizenship (his friendly relations with the city are attested by inscriptions from ca. 410). [92] This accounts for hōs Athēnaîos in our passage. But Pausanias also shows that Euagoras’ honorary citizenship, though spurred by his benefactions (he is euergétēs in the inscriptions), was nevertheless grounded in a quasi-legal appeal to his alleged Teukrid ancestry, via a daughter of Kinyras (probably the Eue or Eune or Eunoe mentioned as Teukros’ bride elsewhere). [93] This must also be why Isokrates emphasizes Euagoras’ Teukrid descent, to which he attributes the virtues of the Salaminian royal line and the king’s admirable achievement in restoring it to power. [94]
Teukros, as an eponym of the ‘Teukrians’, is a multiform figure involved in a bewildering array of very early legends that connect him especially with the Troad and migrations thence. Homer’s Teukros is apparently but one special development. [95] An eponymous relationship between Teukros and the Tjekkeru of the Sea Peoples inscriptions remains very seductive, [96] given that Salamis arose in the eleventh century after several generations’ decline at Enkomi. [97] The contemporary (?) Tale of Wen-Amun paints a comparable picture, with the Tjekkeru pursuing the title character between Byblos and Cyprus, where Egyptian is no longer understood. [98] There is also Vergil’s picture of political disorder on Cyprus shortly after the Trojan War: Teukros was permitted to settle there by the grace of ‘Belos’, king of Sidon, who was in the process of ravaging the island. [99] Although clearly fictional in most respects, the atmosphere this passage evokes—war, hostile immigration, and political decentralization—is also ‘right’ to some extent, at least as a generalized popular memory. It is worth noting that Belos is sometimes made ruler of Egypt—in ps.-Apollodoros, for example, he is the son of Poseidon and the Egyptian princess ‘Libya’, while his twin brother Agenor moves to Phoenicia—probably reflecting popular recollection of NK expansion in the Levant. [100] Such a Belos, giving Teukros a place on Cyprus, would remind one of Ramses III’s ‘settlement’ of the Philistines, and his claimed conquest of Cypriot cities. [101]
An Athenocentric wrinkle was eventually introduced to the story. For Homer, Teukros was the half-brother of Ajax—sharing a father in king Telamon of Salamis in the Saronic Gulf, but having for his mother Hesione, daughter of Laomedon of Troy. In the Catalogue of Ships, Ajax stations twelve vessels alongside the Athenian phalanxes; a scholiast asserts that this was an interpolation by Solon (fl. ca. 600) to support the Athenian claim on Salamis, which was disputed with Aegina. [102] Later still, it seems, comes the story of Telamon banishing Teukros for failing to avenge Ajax’ death at Troy. Wandering east, Teukros came by various routes to Cyprus, landing by tradition at the ‘beach of the Achaeans’ on the Karpass peninsula, and so founded Salamis. [103] Gjerstad attractively argued that Teukros’ exile from Saronic Salamis grew from Athenian diplomatic relations with Cypriot Salamis, following Athenian intervention on the island after the Ionian Revolt (much as Akamas, Demophon, and Phaleros were linked with Soloi and Khytroi). [104] It remains slightly puzzling, however, that Pindar would present this version of events in a poem for an Aeginetan recipient. [105] It may be that the mythological link between the two Salamises is earlier and more complex than appears. [106]
However the Teukrid link between Saronic and Cypriot Salamis arose, it is certain that Euagoras, in using the ‘Athenian Teukros’ to promote his cause, was sensitive to the political advantages of mythical genealogy. It is therefore reasonable to suppose that he made comparable use of the “daughter of Kinyras.” But to what end? One must consider her potential appeal to two broad audiences, Athenian and Cypriot.
A maternal descent from Kinyras would seem, prima facie, to have little claim on Athenian affections. And yet a kind of ‘Athenian Kinyras’ is indeed found in two sources, partially cognate, which trace the Cypriot king’s ancestry back, through extraneous local traditions, to Kephalos son of Herse, daughter of Kekrops—that is, to the legendary royal house of Athens. [107] As these texts belong otherwise to a group allying Kinyras to Cilicia, I shall present them separately in Chapter 21. The important point here is that Euagoras, by backing a Kephalid descent for Kinyras, could have supported his Teukrid claim to Athenian citizenship—with a good dose of sophistry—on both sides of the family (a live issue since Perikles’ citizenship law of 451). [108] Moreover, the version of ps.-Apollodoros presents potential points of contact with Euagoras’ career and propaganda. The mythographer has Kinyras cross “with a host” from Cilicia to Cyprus, found Paphos, and marry Metharme, daughter of Pygmalion. [109] Just such a crossing launched Euagoras’ own career (noting that Cilicia too had traditions of Achaean and Teukrid settlement [110] ). The dynastic link to Pygmalion may also be significant (see below).
An Atthidographic source for the ‘Athenian’ Kinyras has long been suspected. [111] Hellanikos (ca. 480–395) has been suggested, though no reasons have been given. [112] It is a good guess, [113] but equally probable is Phileas, an Athenian geographer contemporary with Hellanikos, who treated the connection with Cyprus of a certain Aoios son of Kephalos; for this same Aoios is elsewhere brother of Paphos and uncle of Kinyras (see further Chapter 21). [114] It is perhaps hard to understand how such mythological concoctions could be made to carry any real political weight. Yet the pioneering synthesis of local myth with public inscriptions and archives by late fifth-century antiquarians will have seemed like cutting-edge historical science to many. [115] Under these conditions, an astute politician might readily turn such ‘discoveries’ to good account—just as Solon had exploited Homer to join Salamis to Athens.
However Euagoras may have presented matters to his Athenian allies, a professed Kinyrad ancestry will necessarily have carried greater weight on Cyprus. And since the island was itself ethnically heterogeneous, the ‘daughter of Kinyras’ will have spoken differently to different groups.
It must remain possible that earlier Salaminian kings had already Kinyradized their Teukrid ancestry for reasons now obscure. But if I am right that the Liar King portrait of Kinyras stems from regional rivalry between Paphos and Salamis in the Archaic period, [116] a Teukrid family relationship with Kinyras must have been a later development. It would then be most economical to suspect that Euagoras himself was responsible, both because he was clearly prepared to exploit ancient history, and because it is for him that the Kinyras connection is actually named. And, as it happens, a plausible political explanation has recently come to light.
A Phoenician inscription discovered at Larnaka/Kition in 1990 records a victory by king Milkyaton, in the first year of his reign (perhaps 392/391), over “our enemies and their Paphian allies (w‘zrnm hppym).” [117] It is quite certain that these enemies are the Salaminians, given that the date falls squarely within the decades of Euagoras’ expansionist undertakings, and that Kition is known to have resisted him by force. The real surprise is to find Paphos, about which virtually nothing was known for this period, in the position of Euagoras’ most noteworthy ally. [118] Clearly this was one of the cities he won over through “persuasion”; indeed the inscription suggests that the hēgemonía with which Diodoros credits Euagoras should be interpreted rather loosely, at least as regards Paphos.
This alliance might very well have been underpinned by a newly ‘discovered’ dynastic marriage between Teukros and the Kinyrad house. It was quite usual for political alignments to be expressed by grafting mythological limbs to family trees. [119] And yet it will have been an embarrassment, on my hypothesis, that Kinyras had once been smeared by Salaminian singers as a Liar King. Is it mere coincidence that Alkidamas presented his whitewashing ‘Defense of Kinyras’ right around this time? [120] While the tongue-in-cheek tone of that work hardly suggests propaganda, it would read well as a satiric response, following contemporary literary fashions, to some recent public visibility of Kinyras in Athens. Euagoras’ prominence there imposes itself as a promising stimulus.
Diodoros’ account of Euagoras prevailing over the Cypriot cities through persuasion or force indicates a two-stage policy in which he first attempted to win over all his insular peers by appealing to the political, economic, ethnic, or other ideological interests of each. Only when that failed would it be worth resorting to arms. One should therefore consider how Euagoras may have hoped that a claim of Kinyrad ancestry would ‘persuade’ not only Paphos, but the other cities as well. The explanation, I suggest, is that he wished to balance the Greek associations of his Teukrid ancestry with an appeal to other Cypriot populations. If the intensity of ethnic rivalries on the island has been overemphasized in the past, nonetheless for a king who aimed at island-wide control the value of cultivating universal appeal is obvious. Indeed Euagoras’ hybrid heritage may have been designed precisely to promote ethnic harmony, not the reverse. That Theopompos specifically dealt with the Amathousians as descendants of Kinyras’ men may even echo some of Euagoras’ rhetoric in trying to win that city over. A Cypro-Phoenician aspect would also be seen in Kinyras’ marriage into the house of Pygmalion, who clearly resonates with the dynastic names of Kition (Milkyaton’s son was Pumayyaton). Kinyras/Pygmalion might have served Euagoras equally well in his ephemeral holdings on the Phoenician coast, given the traditions of ‘Kinyras’ at Byblos and perhaps Sidon (Chapters 19 and 20).
Kinyras would also have admirably reflected Euagoras’ ambition to control the whole island, being remembered as the last king to have done so. [121] Note that many of the virtues that Isokrates ascribes to Euagoras can be paralleled with those attributed to Kinyras, which, I shall argue, perpetuate a memory of Alashiyan ideology. [122] Even if this is largely coincidental—wise and benevolent rulers are bound to share many characteristics [123] —one may at least say that Kinyras, as such a figure, would contribute positively to Euagoras’ pedigree and public image.
To conclude, on Cyprus itself Euagoras will have balanced any philhellenism he may have felt personally, or projected to his Athenian allies, with a more inclusive appeal to the island’s ancient traditions. This was evidently partially successful (Paphos and elsewhere), but in the end he could not overcome the political and/or ethnic disinclinations of Soloi, Amathous, Kition, and whatever other cities he was obliged to assail. Theopompos’ digression on the showdown of Kinyras and Agamemnon was probably intended to illuminate both the Kinyrad and Teukrid branches of Euagoras’ family tree—but perhaps especially the former, which will have been less immediately intelligible for an extra-Cypriot readership. Euagoras himself, however, is unlikely to have made divisive use of the Kinyras and Agamemnon myth, which would hardly have endeared him to Amathous, Paphos, or Kition. I suggest, therefore, that Theopompos inserted the Unthroning of Kinyras on his own initiative to explain the ‘daughter of Kinyras’ and provide ‘historical’ background for the arrival of Teukros himself. Nor is it unlikely that his account of the “men with Agamemnon” dealt with other migration figures—Agapenor, for instance.
Paphos: Agapenor, Laodike, and the Arcadian Connection
Agapenor appears in Homer’s Catalogue of Ships as the king of Tegea who led an Arcadian contingent to Troy. These mountain-bound landlubbers, lacking a fleet of their own, sailed in ships on loan from Agamemnon. [124] Such participation would naturally imply that Agapenor was one of Helen’s suitors, and we find him duly listed as such by ps.-Apollodoros. [125] Yet everything else we know about him concerns his migration to Cyprus. [126] The main ancient source is Pausanias (n.b.), who states all-too-briefly that the storm that scattered the returning Greeks drove the Arcadian squadron to the island, where Agapenor founded (New) Paphos and the temple to Aphrodite at Old Paphos. [127] The cryptic Lykophron does nothing to clarify matters, although he includes one point of considerable interest. It is only in Étienne de Lusignan that we find any further detail. I will discuss both of these passages below.
It might be suggested that Agapenor himself did not enter Cypriot legend before the island’s exposure to the mainstream epic tradition. But this is the wrong way around. An epichoric bid for Panhellenic integration would not have used such an obscure figure; rather:
The Arcadians are there [in the Catalogue of Ships] because they must be given a place in this (late!) Panhellenic pageant … The Homeric treatment is embarrassing … the Arcadians obviously know nothing about ships and sailing … [Agapenor] never takes part in any fighting: his presence at Troy is completely otiose. [128]
Here then is our clearest evidence of an early Cypriot migration legend that became known outside of the island, and earned a glancing notice in the Catalogue. One may guess that this is because the Paphian royal house enjoyed a comparatively high international profile in the Archaic period, thanks to its world-famous sanctuary.
The antiquity of the legend is confirmed by Agapenor’s Arcadian origin itself. This, given the kinship of the Cypriot dialects with those of historical Arcadia and the earlier Mycenaean of Linear B, must be essentially ‘right’, at least as a symbol of general population movement. [129] That Paphos is the area in which the island’s Arcado-Cypriot dialect is first attested (ca. 1050–950) is at least a striking coincidence. [130]
So Agapenor was a genuine and early Cypriot legend. More elusive is his position vis-à-vis the historical kings of Paphos, who proclaimed their descent from the pre-Greek Kinyras by the fifth century (Pindar) and probably well before, yet bore Greek names already in the seventh. [131] True, the monumental inscriptions of Archaic Amathous show that Greek royal names could coexist with public professions of pre-Greek identity. [132] And yet the connection in local legend of Amathous with the “remnants of the men around Kinyras” should equally imply a belief—at least in Amathous (Theopompos) and probably elsewhere (Lusignan: see below)—that Kinyras’ line had lost power at Paphos, whose historical kings were therefore not ‘really’ Kinyradai. And that Agapenor established his own dynasty at Paphos would be, after all, a natural inference from the legend, well paralleled by Teukros at Salamis.
An overlooked source here is Étienne de Lusignan, who offers a more expansive version of events than Pausanias:
Agapenore stopped in the area of Paffo, and there he was crowned king. He banished from the kingdom the kings who had descended from the gods; then he built a city called Paffo, in memory of the old royal city. The banished descendants of the gods, however, moved to the city of Curias [Kourion] and reigned there and in other Cypriot cities. [133]
As always with this remarkable historian, it is hard to know what has found its way from a lost ancient source, what from oral tradition, and what is his own imaginative interpretation or extrapolation (see Appendix G). But the present passage, on the whole, seems to have some ancient or traditional basis. Lusignan’s portrayal of Agapenor as a conquering king could be seen as heavy-handed historicism, were it not for the ‘rout’ of the former royal line, which cannot be dismissed so easily. The historian makes clear elsewhere that Paphos was the kingdom of “the god Cinaras,” father of ‘Curio’ (< Koureus < Kourion), whom in turn he makes the father of a younger, mortal ‘Cinaras’. [134] Even if this use of genealogy to disambiguate two Kinyrases is probably Lusignan’s own invention, his ‘rout of the Kinyradai’ is essentially what we find in Theopompos. And yet these two rout scenarios, though obviously cognate—and geographically quite compatible—are not identical: Lusignan overlooks Amathous, which is not even mentioned, to account for Kourion—midway between Paphos and Amathous (and not far from Limassol, where Lusignan was vicar from 1564–1568 [135] )—and “other Cypriot cities.” [136] So here too, I suggest, is a genuine popular tradition, about an explicitly Greek ‘takeover’ of the Kinyrad dynasty at Paphos. Note that elsewhere Lusignan specifies that Agapenor’s descendants continued to rule at Paphos. [137]
Of course Lusignan’s larger history is larded with artificial, anachronistic, and erroneous elements. Given a conquering Agapenor, there is little justification for building a new “Paffo in memory of the old royal city.” That this is a piece of Lusignan’s own illogic is suggested by his appeal elsewhere to earthquake damage as an explanation for the Arcadian’s new foundation. [138] Or perhaps he depends here on medieval tradition, since numerous historical earthquakes at Paphos are attested over the centuries, and they had a major impact on popular imagination. [139]
Ultimately, however, Agapenor’s association with Nea Paphos seems to go back to an historically false ‘tradition’ promoted in the Classical period. For this city was not formally founded until the late fourth century, when it was walled by Nikokles II (died ca. 310; henceforth ‘Nikokles’); nor has it produced much evidence of habitation earlier than the Archaic period—although tombs from Iskender, on the outskirts of Ktima (upper New Paphos), may go back to the tenth century. [140] This ‘new Agapenor’ is found in both Strabo and Pausanias. [141] T. B. Mitford plausibly suggested that Agapenor was purposefully redeployed to New Paphos at the time of Nikokles’ foundation, as a means of separating two putative royal lines. [142] If so, Agapenor’s landing and first settlement was probably said to be at this harbor, while Kinyras was associated with Old Paphos, where Nikokles himself held sway—the last of the Kinyrad kings, as it would prove (see Chapter 16). It is probably relevant that Nikokles promoted at least three cult-sites for Olympian deities at Nea Paphos. [143]
And yet any official use of the Agapenor legend presupposes his royal status, which is also assumed by the Catalogue of Ships. A priori then there must have existed traditions connecting Agapenor to Old Paphos. A trace of this ‘old Agapenor’ is found in Pausanias, who credits him with founding not only the new city, but also Aphrodite’s ancient sanctuary. [144] If Pausanias did indeed draw on Theopompos for Euagoras’ descent from a daughter of Kinyras, as I have argued, the historian could well have been his source also for the ‘old’ Agapenor—storm-tossed founder and temple-builder—and it would follow that Theopompos made Agapenor’s position at Paphos agree with the larger theme of Kinyras’ unthroning.
There can be no doubt that the alternative tradition of the sanctuary’s consecration by Kinyras goes back to the Paphian dynasty itself. [145] But how does this square with the ‘old Agapenor’? The dual tradition must be somehow related to the historical meeting of Greek and pre-Greek at Palaipaphos. But what exactly is implied? Karageorghis and Maier explained it thus:
The first Achaeans did not forcibly impose their rule upon the city but settled there after peaceful negotiations … The apparent contradiction between Cinyras and Agapenor conceals a complex historical situation: the existence of a pre-Greek Cypriote city and the impact of the first Achaean colonists. As regards the Sanctuary, Cinyras in a similar way may represent an already established fertility cult, Agapenor its adaptation by the Greeks through the building of a monumental shrine. [146]
This harmonizing approach clearly has merit, even if one questions the specific scenario proposed—as Maier himself did only two years later, stressing the lack of clear archaeological criteria, and arguing that the sanctuary’s monumentalization actually antedates the Greek influx. [147] The lack of Aegean architectural elements shows in any case that the outward image of the cult continued unbroken. [148] Thus whatever the ethnic orientation of those who held power in the EIA, it is likely that the older royal apparatus remained at least superficially intact, just as the Kinyrad tradition asserts. As M. Iacovou writes:
It is more than likely that [the Kouklia and Kition sanctuaries] continued to fulfill their original role. Monumentality defines power and, in the case of the Cypriot sanctuaries, it embodies the strength to control an economy traditionally based on the production and exchange of metal resources. [149]
Given such a scenario of Aegean adaptation to Cypriot cult and royal ideology, [150] a stray detail in Lykophron’s otherwise inane treatment of Agapenor takes on new importance—recalling that the poet drew upon Cypriot traditions via lost works of Eratosthenes and Philostephanos. Kassandra predicts that Agapenor “will dig for copper and … mine every pit with his pick.” [151] This has a realistic ring, since the island’s mineral resources must have been a major draw for Aegean settlement (recall Khalkanor seeking the rising sun at Idalion). [152] Given the LBA institutions of sacred metallurgy centered on the sanctuaries of the goddess, Agapenor here seems to be playing, or rather perpetuating, a truly Cypriot royal role: one may detect a ‘Kinyradized’ Agapenor, given Kinyras’ own legendary status as a metallurgical pioneer (Chapter 13). I have already contemplated a rather similar Greco-Cypriot fusion in the warrior-lyrist of the Kouklia kalathos. [153]
Given the persistent and awkward tension between a tradition of Arcadian kingship on the one hand, and the maintenance of a Kinyrad royal pose on the other, it is unsurprising that the evidence for Agapenor is relatively scarce, and that he was seemingly ‘banished’ to New Paphos. Nevertheless, the need to accommodate Arcadians within a Paphian royal framework has left several traces in legends about two women named Laodike.
Pausanias follows his terse notice of Agapenor’s voyage with this statement: “at a later time Laodike, born of Agapenor, sent a péplos to Athena Alea at Tegea.” [154] Pausanias had before him a garment purporting to be this relic, which bore the following inscription:
This péplos is Laodike’s: she devoted it to her Athena,
To her wide-spaced fatherland, from Cyprus most divine. [155]
To her wide-spaced fatherland, from Cyprus most divine. [155]
The verses are no older than the fourth century, the robe they graced probably replacing an older one destroyed by fire in 394 BCE. [156] Later, Pausanias, in describing the sacred structures of Tegea, credits the same Laodike with founding there the temple “of Aphrodite, called Paphian”; and he carefully notes that Paphos was Laodike’s own home. [157] Of course, even a votive péplos predating 394 can never have been ‘old enough’. But this does not prevent its being an authentic relic of an older mythmaking process, deriving ultimately from cultural memories of connections between Cyprus and Arcadia, even Tegea itself. [158] The diffusion of ‘Aphrodite’ cult must indeed have involved such westward ventures; yet it is quite striking that, despite the internationally renowned sanctuary at Paphos, nowhere in Greece besides Tegea was the goddess qualified as Paphian. [159] It is crucial that Arcadians of the Classical period had no difficultly believing in such early connections with Cyprus, just as some Cypriot communities claimed Arcadian origins. [160]
Ps.-Apollodoros cites another Arcadian legend involving a Laodike who also appears in the royal lineage, but much earlier—married to Elatos, son of the eponymous Arkas, and elder brother of Apheidas; “these sons divided up the land, but Elatos wielded all the power.” [161] Quite remarkably, this Laodike is said to be a daughter of Kinyras. This must make her a native of pre-Greek Cyprus, since Elatos lived five generations before Agapenor’s arrival to the island. Observe the deep antiquity this assigns to Kinyras, recalling his proverbial old age. [162] There is a curious paradox here. No doubt there were sporadic marriages between Greeks and Cypriots throughout the LBA. But in a mythological genealogy involving eponymous figures—Arkas, Amyklas, Stymphalos, and others—marriage to a ‘daughter of Kinyras’ should symbolize a quite general intermingling of Arcadian and Cypriot populations. Yet such a situation only makes sense following Aegean immigration to Cyprus, and only on the island—the more logical arrangement of Teukros and the daughter of Kinyras; or of Diodoros’ South Pacific scenario for the Dryopes, who, “sailing to the island of Cyprus, and ‘mixing it up’ (anamikhthéntes) with the locals, settled there.” [163] It appears, therefore, that with Elatos and the daughter of Kinyras, the fusion of Greek and Cypriot culture has been exported back up the migration path and pushed into the deep past. [164] Note that diasporas do often involve cyclic returns to the homeland. [165]
The two Laodikes, despite their considerable differences, must be mythological doublets. Both embody cultural relations between Cyprus and Arcadia, expressed at the royal level. Both involve movement from Cyprus to Arcadia, against the flow of the historical migrations. While Agapenor’s daughter could be imagined as sending the péplos back to Athena (so Pausanias), she would certainly have to return herself to build a temple to Paphian Aphrodite. That deed is much more logically assigned to the other Laodike, who did move from Cyprus to Arcadia: the ‘immigration’ of a daughter of Kinyras, priest-king of Aphrodite, would perfectly mirror the ‘importation’ of the Paphian goddess herself (historically cults were indeed transferred by dynastic marriages [166] ). Still, that Agapenor’s daughter might conceivably return to her fatherland is itself significant, since it allows for just the kind of continuing contacts that one must anyway suppose to account for the interdependence of Arcadian and Cypriot legends.
Both Laodikes may therefore be connected to the cult of the Cypriot goddess, whether explicitly (Agapenor’s daughter) or implicitly (Kinyras’ daughter). It must be significant that this most Cypriot of institutions, fundamental to political legitimacy at Paphos, is connected in both cases with a woman subordinate to an Arcadian king. This seems a powerful symbol of the appropriation and internalization of Cypriot royal ideology. ‘Laodike’ itself—‘Justice for the People’—points in the same direction, as do Kinyras’ other mythological children with such speaking-names. [167] Since all of these have Greek etymologies—and note that ‘Kinyras’ itself has a semi-Hellenic appearance [168] —they represent a cultural sharing of the ideas they express. But Laodike is unique among Kinyras’ children for illustrating this ‘translation’ in the context of a dynastic marriage.
M. Finkelberg has identified a recurring pattern in Greek mythology whereby princes marry into other royal houses while successive generations of princesses/queens remain in place; this seems to reflect a widespread pre-Greek custom, also operative in Anatolia, whereby a king’s power was contingent on a female line. [169] A similar point was made long ago by J. G. Frazer, vis-à-vis the myth of Kinyras coming to Paphos from Cilicia and marrying Metharme, daughter of Pygmalion. [170] Finkelberg argues that the practice led to the existence of double and even triple male dynastic lines, in order both to respect and control the hereditary female succession (she detects an historical example in the troubled royal successions of the Hittite OK). Could the dual kingship traditions at Paphos—Kinyradai and Agapenor, Kinyradai and Tamiradai [171] —reflect such a pattern?
In any case, marriage into a local royal establishment is one likely way that Aegean immigrant kings or chieftains renovated their power within their new insular environment, achieving royal legitimacy in the pre-Greek theological context of the goddess’s cult. [172] For Agapenor, such a scenario comes only if one may ‘pool the resources’ of the two Laodikes. Such a procedure is not completely gratuitous, given the nature of mythological doublets; we have already seen that the two Laodikes ‘traded’ certain attributes. In other words, ‘Laodike’ was a multivalent figure for whom we have but two ‘samples’. Her full mythological potential can be mapped by ‘multiplying’ the samples and redistributing the results between Agapenor and Elatos, the two Arcadian kings with whom they are connected. The results for Agapenor are as follows:
- If Agapenor marries Laodike, and Laodike = Kinyras’ daughter, then Agapenor marries Kinyras’ daughter;
- If Laodike = Kinyras’ daughter, and Agapenor = Laodike’s father, then Agapenor = Kinyras;
- If Agapenor = Kinyras, and Laodike is Kinyras’ daughter, then Agapenor/Kinyras marries his own daughter.
Is it coincidence that these gyrations not only connect Agapenor to Kinyras’ family line, and indeed make a Kinyras of him, but also generate the most famous episode of Kinyras’ own mythology—an incestuous union with his daughter? [173] Frazer saw in the myth of Myrrha/Smyrna a reflection of ritualized incest allowing continuous patrilineal control of an otherwise matrilineal royal line. [174]
Be this as it may, it remains significant that both Laodikes’ attested attributes concern the intersection of Arcadian and pre-Greek Cypriot kingship. [175] That this is precisely the crisis of Agapenor vis-à-vis the historical Kinyradai of Paphos cannot be accidental. It is all the more curious that, while Elatos’ marriage to Laodike ‘Kinyradizes’ the main branch of the Arcadian royal line, yet his nephew, the emigrant Agapenor, is excluded. While much remains uncertain, the multiform ‘Laodike’ does attest a tradition of mythological reflection upon these issues. ‘She’ certainly belongs to the ‘old’ Agapenor, and may indeed be very early, since the problem of accommodating Aegean dynasts to the Cypriot establishment must go back to the twelfth and eleventh centuries.
Conclusion
The material analyzed here and in Chapter 13 derives from of a multiform mythmaking tradition going back to sub-Mycenaean times on Cyprus. Not every sample is equally old: specific historical developments induced various modulations over time. Taken as a whole, however, the simple existence of such legends is clear evidence that many of the island’s communities maintained and cultivated a distinct sense of Greekness down through the centuries—a striking contrast to the thoroughly hybrid material record. But of course there must also have been extensive intermarriage with the pre-Greek population, whose contribution to IA Cypriot culture can hardly be overstated.
Greek ctistic and trade ventures of the ninth and eighth centuries caused some of the early Cypriot legends to be reinterpreted in more mainstream epic terms. Yet the ‘Greek colonization of Cyprus’ is no mere epic construct or scholarly fantasy. It is firmly rooted in ancient traditions, some of which are very early indeed (Agapenor and Teukros). It is a question rather of what is meant by ‘colonization’. [176] The Aegean immigrants’ common lot as parvenus probably intensified a sense of Greekness within the island’s already multiethnic culture. [177] Ironically, these ‘Greek-Cypriots’ were (and are) regarded as distinctly ‘Cypriot’ to Greeks of the Aegean. And, of course, on Cyprus itself there must have been numerous wrinkles in degree of acculturation, depending on such considerations as class and the variable demographics of each community.
Kinyras came to serve as a common mythological reference point for pre-Greek, Greek-Cypriot, and Cypro-Phoenician communities alike in their shared and sometimes contested history. Naturally, Greeks and pre-Greeks will have been at their most distinct at the time of heaviest Aegean immigration. And it was precisely this moment that was replayed in the various tales of Kinyras and the Achaeans. While Cypriot exposure to the Greek epic cycle may account for Kinyras’ encounters with Agamemnon, Menelaos, Odysseus, and Talthybios, it does not explain his dominant image as a pre-Greek culture-hero, which takes precedence. This virtuous, Golden Age Kinyras, however much the Paphian kings may have promoted him, was not theirs alone, but a tenacious contribution by pre-Greek communities generally to IA Cypriot mythmaking. It is all the more striking, therefore, that Kinyras unanimously symbolized the disjunction of cultures. This is also why Kinyras must have been introduced before the ninth-century Phoenician colonial ventures. [178] To be sure, Phoenician-Cypriots may have rightly insisted that ‘Kinyras’ was originally at home in the Levant before ever coming to Cyprus. [179] But while this might account for myths about Kinyras crossing to the island, and his mythological co-ordination with Pygmalion, it is insufficient to explain his ubiquitous association with the pre-Greek island. [180] The epicenter of any historicizing interpretation must be the assumption that Kinyras was already established as a potent figure on Cyprus at the time of Aegean immigration.
Footnotes
[ back ] 1. Cf. Franklin 2014:219–221, and p250–253.
[ back ] 2. Various subsets of the sources are collected and discussed by Engel 1841:210–229; Gjerstad 1944; Gjerstad 1948:428–429; CAH3 II.2:215–216; Khatzēiōannou 1971–2001 1:46–67; Fortin 1980; Maier 1986b; Vanschoonwinkel 1994; Franklin 2014:219–221.
[ back ] 3. We know of Κυπριακά by Hellanikos (FGH 4 F 57, 756 F 1), Palaiphatos of Abydos (FGH 44 T 3), Kreon (FGH 753), and Timomakhos (FGH 754 F 1–2); there were Περὶ Κύπρου by Philostephanos (FHG 3:30 fr. 10–14), Alexandros Polyhistor (FGH 273 F 31), and a certain Androkles (FGH 751 F 1; some would emend to Menandros [of Ephesus]: FHG 4:448 fr. 7; cf. Fraser 1979:335n2; note that Menandros dealt with relations between Tyre and Kition: FGH 783 F 4). Asklepiades of Cyprus (FGH 752) wrote a Περὶ Κύπρου καὶ Φοινίκης. Amathous was the subject of works by Eratosthenes (FGH 241 F 25: see below, p546) and Paion of Amathous (FGH 757). The Suda reports a Cypriot ἱστορικός named Xenophon as an author of a Κυπριακά (s.v. Ξενοφῶν = FGH 755): for this controversy, see p565–567. Of course many other works contained information about Cyprus, and other Cypriot or Cyprus-based authors (like Demetrios of Salamis: FGH 756 F 1) will have discussed the island. See further Engel 1841 1:3–11.
[ back ] 4. Gjerstad 1944:107.
[ back ] 5. Malkin 1998 (quotation 157; “proto-colonization” is also his term).
[ back ] 6. See with further references Franklin 2014:227–229, 232–233.
[ back ] 7. Janko 1982.
[ back ] 8. Homer Odyssey 4.83. See for now Franklin 2014:221–222n23, 231. I shall deal with the poetics of ‘Eastern Wandering’ more fully in Franklin forthcoming.
[ back ] 9. See Franklin 2014:221–224 et passim.
[ back ] 10. Nonnos Dionysiaka 13.432–433.
[ back ] 11. Seibert 1976:19–23; Greenfield 1987:395–396; Maier 1985:35 stresses the inadequate factual basis beneath repeated scholarly assertions of dynastic changes at Lapethos due to fifth-century Persian interventions. Lapethos is called a Phoenician city by [Skylax] 103 (GGM 1:78). Honeyman 1938:289 suggested that ‘Lapethos’ derives from a pre-Greek TN, given its divergent representation in Greek and Phoenician; but the correspondence of Gk. θ/Phoen. š is now known to be normal (Lipiński 2004:62).
[ back ] 12. HC:87n2.
[ back ] 13. Stephanos of Byzantium s.v. Ἰδάλιον, πόλις Κύπρου. χρησμὸς γὰρ ἐδόθη … ὅπου ἴδοι [sc. ὁ Χαλκήνωρ] τὸν ἥλιον ἀνίσχοντα, πόλιν κτίσαι, κτλ. The tale is repeated by Étienne de Lusignan Chorograffia p. 16a (§42), who attributes it to the time “before the gods existed.”
[ back ] 14. Stephanos of Byzantium s.v. Γολγοί· πόλις Κύπρου, ἀπὸ Γόλγου τοῦ ἡγησαμένου τῆς Σικυωνίων ἀποικίας. Cf. Gjerstad 1944:121. Sicyon is represented in the Catalogue of Ships: Homer Iliad 2.572. Or should we look instead to Eusebios’ primeval Sicyonian dynasty (Schoene 1967 1:173)? Étienne de Lusignan assigns the foundation to Pygmalion, here a Sicyonian (Description pp. 34–34a, 38, 91a–92); it is unclear how this squares with his being the son of Cilix (see further Appendix F)! For the Golgoi tablets, see p350.
[ back ] 15. See especially Herodotos 7.90, reporting Cypriots’ claims to know their origins—though here too history and myth are blended.
[ back ] 16. Herodotos 5.113; Strabo 14.6.3. While ‘Argives’ (Ἀργεῖοι) is used flexibly in Homer, a narrower connection with the Mycenaean royal house may be seen at Iliad 1.30, 79, 119, 2.107–108, 3.82–83, 11.154–155, etc.; according to [Apollodoros] Library 2.1.2, Argos named the Peloponnese after himself.
[ back ] 17. Lykophron Alexandra 586–591, with Σ 586 (= Philostephanos FHG 3:31 fr. 12); Strabo 14.6.3. Étienne de Lusignan calls Praxandros ‘Pixando’ (Chorograffia p. 36 [§180]), and places his origin in Thessaly, presumably for an etymology of Lapethos from the Lapiths.
[ back ] 18. Lykophron Alexandra 586–587 οὐ ναυκληρίας / λαῶν ἄνακτες, ἀλλ’ ἀνώνυμοι σποραί. A similar ‘scattering’ is found in Herodotos 7.91, of the followers of Amphilokhos and Kalkhas (Οἱ δὲ Πάμφυλοι οὗτοι εἰσὶ τῶν ἐκ Τροίης ἀποσκεδασθέντων ἅμα Ἀμφιλόχῳ καὶ Κάλχαντι); this is reprised by Strabo 14.4.3 (τινὰς δὲ σκεδασθῆναι πολλαχοῦ τῆς γῆς), where it anticipates the diaspora of Mopsos (for which cf. p252).
[ back ] 19. Lykophron’s sources: Fraser 1979, especially 335–341, seeing Eratosthenes as primary (his geographical work, the Amathousia [cf. p546], and perhaps the Hermes [cf. p505]), Philostephanos as secondary; cf. Pirenne-Delforge 1994:327.
[ back ] 20. Akamas, Demophon, and Phaleros at Soloi: Lykophron Alexandra 494–534; Strabo 14.6.3; Plutarch Solon 26; cf. [Apollodoros] Epitome 6.17.
[ back ] 21. Gjerstad 1944:120–121. For the political situation, see HC:121–125.
[ back ] 22. For which see HC:117.
[ back ] 23. Khytroi and Khytros: Xenagoras FGH 240 F 27 (= Harpokration Lexicon of the Ten Orators and Stephanos of Byzantium s.v. Χύτροι); Gjerstad 1944:120.
[ back ] 24. Fortin 1980:26–35.
[ back ] 25. See p1, 322.
[ back ] 26. Homer Odyssey 17.442–443: αὐτὰρ ἔμ’ ἐς Κύπρον ξείνῳ δόσαν ἀντιάσαντι, / Δμήτορι Ἰασίδῃ, ὃς Κύπρου ἶφι ἄνασσεν.
[ back ] 27. Ἀνάσσειν takes the dative of peoples ruled, but typically genitive of a place within which and over which one holds supreme power, including islands: Homer Iliad 1.38, 452 (Τενέδοιό τε ἶφι ἀνάσσεις, of Apollo), 6.478, Odyssey 4.602; Hesiod fr. 141.16 M-W; Homeric Hymn to Apollo 181 (Delos), Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite 112 (all Phrygia).
[ back ] 28. Eustathios on Homer Odyssey 17.442–443: εἰ δὲ Κινύρας ἐν Ἰλιάδι Κύπρου ἦν βασιλεὺς, ἀλλ’ ἐκείνου μηκέτ’ ὄντος ὁ ῥηθεὶς Δμήτωρ βασιλεῦσαι δοκεῖ (expanding the blunter statement of a scholiast ad loc.: Κινύρου ἀποθανόντος Δμήτωρ ἐβασίλευσε Κύπρου).
[ back ] 29. Cf. the astute comments of Serghidou 2006:171–173.
[ back ] 30. Hellanikos FGH 4 F 36; [Apollodoros] Library 2.1.3. Cf. HC:88.
[ back ] 31. [Apollodoros] Library 3.9.2.
[ back ] 32. Alkidamas Odysseus 20–21; [Apollodoros] Epitome 3.9; two versions in Eustathios on Homer Iliad 11.20. While the earliest text is the fourth-century Alkidamas, this is clearly a fashionable sophistic exercise comparable to the revisionist encomia of Helen by Gorgias and Isokrates, and Gorgias’ Defense of Palamedes (Gorgias DK 82 B 11 [Helen], 11a [Palamedes]; Isokrates 10; I assume the Gorgianic works are authentic: Untersteiner 1954:95; Segal 1962:100, 136–137n10 with further references). Alkidamas’ ‘Defense of Kinyras’ only makes sense as systematically correcting a traditional epic episode that cast the Cypriot king in a negative light, shifting all blame to Palamedes. I shall deal more fully with the interrelationships of these texts, and the episode’s position within a larger tradition of Eastern Wandering, in Franklin forthcoming. See for now Franklin 2014.
[ back ] 33. The text has the plural “breastplates.”
[ back ] 34. [Apollodoros] Epitome 3.9: Ὅτι Μενέλαος σὺν Ὀδυσσεῖ καὶ Ταλθυβίῳ πρὸς <Κινύραν εἰς (suppl. Wagner)> Κύπρον ἐλθόντες συμμαχεῖν ἔπειθον· ὁ δὲ Ἀγαμέμνονι μὲν οὐ παρόντι θώρακα[ς] ἐδωρήσατο, ὀμόσας δὲ πέμψειν πεντήκοντα ναῦς, μίαν πέμψας, ἧς ἦρχεν … ὁ Μυγδαλίωνος, καὶ τὰς λοιπὰς ἐκ γῆς πλάσας μεθῆκεν εἰς τὸ πέλαγος.
[ back ] 35. See p1n2, 211n139.
[ back ] 36. See p328.
[ back ] 37. Emendation: Wilamowitz-Möllendorff 1900:535n1; West 2003:72–73. Kinyras and the daughter of Pygmalion: [Apollodoros] Library 3.14.3; see further p498, 504.
[ back ] 38. KAI 32–33, cf. 34, 39, 41; for the new inscription, see p357. The proposal of Cross 1972 to see a similar pairing in the Nora Stone (Sardinia, ca. 800; KAI 46) has not been generally followed; most would see in pmy of line 8 a reference to the Cypriot/Phoenician god Pummay (whence Hesykhios s.v. Πυγμαίων· ὁ Ἄδωνις παρὰ Κυπρίοις). See Amadasi 1967:86; Lipiński 2004:236n52, 240. Phonological considerations indicate that the Pygmaion/Pummay (corresponding to the theophoric element in ‘Pygmalion’) goes back on Cyprus to a borrowing from Canaanite, i.e. before ninth-century Phoenician colonization: Cross 1972:18; Brown 1981:390n31. For Pygmaion and Pygmalion, see further p315 and n210.
[ back ] 39. Lewy 1895:238; Kapera 1971; Kapera 1972:197–199.
[ back ] 40. I owe this observation to G. Fawkes. Homer’s Phoenicians: Winter 1995; cf. Morris 1997:612.
[ back ] 41. Eustathios on Homer Iliad 11.20.
[ back ] 42. Aphrodite is “ruler of well-founded Salamis / And Cyprus on the sea” in Homeric Hymn 10.4. An early ‘epic environment’ has often been suggested on the basis of the royal tombs at Salamis: Karageorghis 1967:117–124; CAH2 III.3:60–62; Karageorghis 1999b. Cf. also Nonnos Dionys. 13.463: ἀειδομένην Σαλαμῖνα.
[ back ] 43. Pausanias 10.24.3: ἐπ’ ἀγροῦ … / νόσφι πολυκτεάνοιο … Σαλαμῖνος. This oracle accords with Hellanikos FGH 4 F 5b, where Εὐκλέης appears as the grandson of Orpheus, and thus a distant ancestor in a continuous line down to Homer. His name appears in a slightly different form in Pausanias (cf. 10.12.11, 10.14.6). For this important figure, see further below and Franklin 2014:227–228.
[ back ] 44. See p211.
[ back ] 45. See p1n2, 211n139.
[ back ] 46. Note that inscriptions to the Paphian goddess have been found at Khytroi, Golgoi, Ledroi and Keryneia: HC:87; NPHP:70 and n20; Kypris:167, 198, 200. For the Kinyradai of Paphos, see Chapter 16.
[ back ] 47. Eustathios on Homer Iliad 11.20: φασὶ δὲ αὐτὸν ἀμελήσαντα ἐπικατάρατον γενέσθαι ὑπὸ Ἀγαμέμνονος. Eustathios’ version is cited more fully on p187.
[ back ] 48. Flower 1994.
[ back ] 49. Theopompos FGH 115 F 25–26 and T 28a, with discussion of Flower 1994:18–19, cf. 201.
[ back ] 50. Photios Library 121a35–41 (FGH 115 T 31). Cf. Flower 1994:29 and 160–165 on Theopompos’ essentially Herodotean digressive technique. Cicero (On the Laws 1.5) refers to the “countless tales” of both authors (et apud Theopompum sunt innumerabiles fabulae); these included, besides the legends of Kinyras and Mopsos (see p252 and below), the myth of Midas and Seilenos (FGH 115 F 75).
[ back ] 51. Photios Library 120a6–14.
[ back ] 52. His epitome closes with the strong declaration ἃ μὲν οὖν ὁ ἠφανισμένος Μηνοφάνει δωδέκατος λόγος περιέχει ταῦτά ἐστιν (120b17–18). Against Photios’ claim in the prologue to have made his summaries solely from memory, T. Hägg, by comparing the extant Vita Apollonii of Philostratos with its epitome, showed that Photios sometimes worked with open book: episode sequences are repeated exactly and in detail, with even a textual problem taken over (Hägg 1973, especially 218; Hägg 1975:195–204). When Photios is indeed recollecting, sequences are slightly jumbled and extraneous material mistakenly inserted. Had he epitomized Book 12 of Theopompos so, one would expect an unbroken account of Euagoras’ career. Instead, it is ‘interrupted’ by the ‘digressions’ on Kinyras and Mopsos; and the obscure daughters of Mopsos would hardly have been recalled by name.
[ back ] 53. Theopompos FGH 115 F 103: Ἀβδύμονα … τὸν Κιτιέα ταύτης ἐπάρχοντα; Diodoros Siculus 14.98: Ἀβδήμονα τὸν Τύριον.
[ back ] 54. Isokrates 9.30–32; HC:126–127.
[ back ] 55. See generally RE 6 (1907), 820–828 (8); Spyridakis 1935; HC:125–143. The source for Euagoras’ Phoenician possessions is Diodoros Siculus 15.2.4: ἐκυρίευε … κατὰ δὲ τὴν Φοινίκην Τύρου καί τινων ἑτέρων.
[ back ] 56. For the battle and Euagoras’ role, see Xenophon Hellenika 4.3.10–12; Diodoros Siculus 14.39; HC:130–131; Maier 1985:39–40. Flower 1994:165 suggests that Theopompos’ treatment of Cyprus, Egypt, and Asia Minor served as background to Philip’s intended conquest of Asia.
[ back ] 57. The key evidence linking Theopompos FGH 115 F 103 (Photios Library 120b8–13) to the Meliac War is a Hellenistic inscription from Priene: FGH 115 F 305 and Hiller von Gaertringen et al. 1906 no. 37. See the discussion of Huxley 1960; cf. Huxley 1966:22.
[ back ] 58. Theopompos FGH 115 F 103 (Photios Library 120a20–22): ὅν τε τρόπον παρὰ δόξαν Εὐαγόρας τῆς Κυπρίων ἀρχῆς ἐπέβη Ἀβδύμονα κατασχὼν τὸν Κιτιέα ταύτης ἐπάρχοντα· τίνα τε τρόπον Ἕλληνες οἱ σὺν Ἀγαμέμνονι τὴν Κύπρον κατέσχον, ἀπελάσαντες τοὺς μετὰ Κιννύρου [sic] ὧν εἰσὶν ὑπολιπεῖς Ἀμαθούσιοι· ὅπως τε ὁ βασιλεὺς Εὐαγόρᾳ συνεπείσθη πολεμῆσαι. For the viable alternative spelling ‘Kinnyras’, see p214–215.
[ back ] 59. So Baurain 1984:111.
[ back ] 60. Thus, for example, in Neanthes FGH 84 F 31 (191), οἱ σὺν Εὐρυμένει is soon varied as τὸν μὲν Εὐρυμένην καὶ τοὺς σὺν αὐτῷ. The context is also clear in Philostephanos FHG 3:30 fr. 1: τῶν σὺν Μόψῳ ἀφικομένων. Other comparable and unambiguous expressions are e.g. Lucian A True Story 2.26: τοὺς δὲ ἀμφὶ τὸν Κινύραν; Eustathios on Dionysios the Periegete 11: οἱ περὶ τὸν Μενέλαον. Further parallels: Herodotos 5.58; Hellanikos FGH 4 F 31; Xenophon Anabasis 1.2.15, etc. Photios himself has Ἀδελφιὸς καὶ οἱ σὺν αὐτῷ, Library 12b30; Ἄτταλος καὶ οἱ σὺν αὐτῷ, 72a33. As a counterexample one might cite Xenophon Anabasis 4.1.1, οἱ σὺν Κύρῳ ἀναβάντες Ἕλληνες, where Cyrus is already dead; yet the aorist participle clarifies that σύν Κύρῳ was true in the past. Without such qualification, we must assume the presence of Agamemnon.
[ back ] 61. Agamemnon’s direct agency is rightly accepted by Stiehle 1853:73–74; Cesnola 1877:4–5; Wagner 1891:182; HC:68; Gjerstad 1948:428–429; Kapera 1969; Kapera 1971:132; Kapera 1972:192; Dussaud 1950:58; Shrimpton 1991:90–91; Flower 1994:163.
[ back ] 62. Reported by John Adorno (1470): “Helena while she was on her travels was captured at the temple [sc. of Venus at Paphos]” (SHC 8:173). There is a variant in Ludolf of Suchen (after 1350), De itinere terrae sanctae liber (Mas Latrie 1852–1861 1:211–212; SHC 8:169): In hoc templo primo de perdicione Troye tractatum est, nam Helena tendens ad templum istud in via capta est (“It was in this temple [of Venus at Old Paphos] that counsel was first taken regarding the destruction of Troy. For Helen was captured en route while journeying there”). Cf. Hogarth 1889:190.
[ back ] 63. Recall that some conflict between Alashiya and Ahhiyawa is attested by the Indictment of Madduwatta (KUB 14.1 rev. 84–90 = CTH 147); but this is now dated to the fifteenth century: see p13n64.
[ back ] 64. Dussaud 1950:58; cf. Baurain 1980b:299–300; Baurain 1984:111.
[ back ] 65. [Skylax] 103 (GGM 1:78): Ἀμαθοῦς αὐτόχθονές εἰσιν. This and the following material is treated with undue skepticism by Reyes 1994:13–17 and Given 1998, despite the latter’s excellent account of how the British colonial authority promoted the ‘Eteocypriots’ to undermine the Enosis movement. See the responses to Given by Petit 1999; Egetmeyer 2010; Steele 2011; Steele 2013:101 and n9.
[ back ] 66. ICS 190–196 (quotation p207); DGAC:580–590; Steele 2013:99–172. The case for Eteocypriot as a late Hurrian dialect is renewed by Fournet 2013; for Hurrian as the/a language of the LBA Cypro-Minoan tablets, see p440n110.
[ back ] 67. For Salamis, see p354. Cf. Papantonio 2012:281, “Such an autochthony legend could reinforce the anteriority of the Amathousians in Cyprus, and the mythological precedence of the local dynasty over the other Basileis.”
[ back ] 68. Herodian De prosodia catholica 242.34 Lentz (Ἀμαθοῦς πόλις Κύπρου ἀρχαιοτάτη, cf. Stephanos of Byzantium s.v. Ἀμαθοῦς) and p. 294.4 (Ἀμαθουσία. οὕτως ἐκαλεῖτο ἡ Κύπρος), cf. Pliny Natural History 5.35.129. Note also Étienne de Lusignan Chorograffia p. 9 (§12), where an indigenous horizon still older than ‘pre-Greek’ is envisioned: “Amathus was an ancient city, built before the gods came to the island.” That these “descendants of the gods” ruled on the pre-Greek island is shown by e.g. p. 36 (§180), on Paphos (cited below, p561).
[ back ] 69. [Skylax] 103 (GGM 1:78): εἰσὶ δὲ καὶ ἄλλαι πόλεις ἐν μεσογείᾳ βάρβαροι.
[ back ] 70. Paphos: DGAC no. 123, 148–149, 249; Egetmeyer 2010:72–73; Steele 2013 no. EC 19–22, cf. pp. 119–120. Kourion: ICS 183; DGAC no. 10; Steele 2013 no. EC 23.
[ back ] 71. Steele 2013:100–101.
[ back ] 72. See p440.
[ back ] 73. Egetmeyer 2010, 71, 73–74; Egetmeyer 2012; cf. Steele 2013:110–111; Fournet 2013:26–30.
[ back ] 74. Son/Daughter Kypros: Philostephanos FHG 3:30 fr. 11; Istros FGH 334 F 45; Herodian De prosodia catholica 204.4 Lentz; Stephanos of Byzantium s.v. Κύπρος; Eustathios on Dionysios the Periegete 508–512; Constantine Porphyrogenitos On the Themes 1.15. Father/mother Paphos/Paphia: Σ Pindar Pythian 2.27a (father Paphos), 2.28 (mother Paphia or perhaps ‘a Paphian nymph’; of course ‘Paphia’ was an epithet of the goddess herself); Ovid Metamorphoses 10.297–298 (Paphos, apparently feminine); Σ Dionysios the Periegete 509 (father Paphos); Hyginus Fabulae 242, 270, 275 (father Paphos); Theodontius in Boccaccio Genealogy of the Pagan Gods 2.50–51 had father Paphos, apparently misinterpreting Ovid (whence Bustron and Chorograffia/Description): see p499. Son Koureus: Herodian De prosodia catholica 200.2 and 358.19 Lentz; Stephanos of Byzantium s.v. Κούριον. Mother Amathousa: Herodian De prosodia catholica 242.34 Lentz; cf. Stephanos of Byzantium s.v. Ἀμαθοῦς. Son Marieus: Stephanos of Byzantium s.v. Μάριον. These sources are conveniently tabulated in Baurain 1980b. There is another probable reference to Paphos as the father of Kinyras in lines 4–13 of Pap.Oxy. 2688 (early third century CE): see further p499n30.
[ back ] 75. That is, Agapenor versus the Kinyradai at Paphos (cf. p359–368); Teukros and the daughter of Kinyras at Salamis (see below); Argives versus Koureus son of Kinyras at Kourion. Presumably something similar is implied by Kinyras’ associations with Lapethos and Tamassos (see p325), and perhaps indirectly with Idalion through his son ‘Amaracus’ (p331–332).
[ back ] 76. Nonnos Dionysiaka 13.432–463. For Étienne de Lusignan, see Appendix G.
[ back ] 77. Not only did it survive the epitomizer’s cuts, but, as Shrimpton 1991:91 points out, the digression (“if digression is the correct word”) differed from others in not falling at a natural narrative break.
[ back ] 78. So Shrimpton 1991, quotations from 73 and 91; similarly Baurain 1984:112.
[ back ] 79. See p347.
[ back ] 80. See e.g. Isokrates 9.19–20 (addressed to Nikokles I, 374–ca. 360). One may note here the biographical tradition that makes Theopompos a student of Isokrates; but Flower 1994:42–62 argues that this is a Hellenistic fiction.
[ back ] 81. Maier 1985.
[ back ] 82. Seibert 1976.
[ back ] 83. Cf. Seibert 1976:26.
[ back ] 84. Diodoros Siculus 14.98: ἐπεχείρησεν ἅπασαν τὴν νῆσον σφετερίσασθαι. τῶν δὲ πόλεων ἃς μὲν βίᾳ χειρωσάμενος, ἃς δὲ πειθοῖ προσλαβόμενος, τῶν μὲν ἄλλων πόλεων ταχὺ τὴν ἡγεμονίαν παρέλαβεν, Ἀμαθούσιοι δὲ καὶ Σόλιοι καὶ Κιτιεῖς ἀντέχοντες τῷ πολέμῳ πρέσβεις ἀπέστειλαν πρὸς Ἀρταξέρξην τὸν τῶν Περσῶν βασιλέα περὶ βοηθείας.
[ back ] 85. Cf. Tuplin 1996:75–76 (Amathous “is a case history which discloses that it is not simply ridiculous to think Cypriot politics and international relations to have had some ethnic component”).
[ back ] 86. So rightly Tuplin 1996:76 §4(a).
[ back ] 87. For further observations on the relationship with Persia, see Smith 2008:261, 264–278.
[ back ] 88. Sargon stele: ARAB 2:102 §186; Reyes 1994:24, 51, with further literature.
[ back ] 89. Pausanias 7.3.1–2 must derive from Theopompos’ use of the Mopsos legend in connection with the Meliac War: see p347n57.
[ back ] 90. Isokrates 9.57.
[ back ] 91. Pausanias 1.3.2: πλησίον δὲ τῆς στοᾶς Κόνων ἕστηκε καὶ Τιμόθεος υἱὸς Κόνωνος καὶ βασιλεὺς Κυπρίων Εὐαγόρας, ὃς καὶ τὰς τριήρεις τὰς Φοινίσσας ἔπραξε παρὰ βασιλέως Ἀρταξέρξου δοθῆναι Κόνωνι· ἔπραξε δὲ ὡς Ἀθηναῖος καὶ τὸ ἀνέκαθεν ἐκ Σαλαμῖνος, ἐπεὶ καὶ γενεαλογῶν ἐς προγόνους ἀνέβαινε Τεῦκρον καὶ Κινύρου θυγατέρα.
[ back ] 92. Isokrates 9.54; cf. Demosthenes 12.10. The relevant inscriptions are IG I³ no. 113 (SEG 34:24), ca. 410; IG II² no. 20 (ca. 393/392) no. 716. Cf. HC:128–129, 131.
[ back ] 93. Σ Lykophron Alexandra 450: Τεῦκρος … ἐλθὼν ἐν Κύπρῳ Σαλαμῖνα κτίσας ᾤκησε καὶ γήμας Εὔην τὴν Κύπρου Ἀστερίαν ἐγέννησεν, with variants in Scheer’s ap. crit. This identification, requiring minor emendation (τὴν Κινύρου or τὴν Κινύρου τοῦ βασιλέως Κύπρου, vel sim.), goes back to Engel 1841 2:125; cf. Stoll in Roscher Lex. s.v. Kinyras col. 1191; Cayla 2005:230.
[ back ] 94. Isokrates 9.18–19.
[ back ] 95. See Gjerstad 1944:114–120 with further references.
[ back ] 96. Gjerstad 1944:119–120; Giuffrida 1996:285. For the inscription, see p13.
[ back ] 97. Salamis: Karageorghis 1969:21. For the gradual abandonment of Enkomi, Webb 2001.
[ back ] 98. CS 1 no. 41. Cf. above p14.
[ back ] 99. Vergil Aeneid 1.619–622: Atque equidem Teucrum memini Sidona venire
/ finibus expulsum patriis, nova regna petentem / auxilio Beli; genitor tum Belus opimam /
vastabat Cyprum, et victor dicione tenebat.
[ back ] 100. [Apollodoros] Library 2.1.4.
[ back ] 101. See p14.
[ back ] 102. Homer Iliad 2.557–558; Σ Homer Iliad 2.494–877: Σόλων τὴν Σαλαμῖνα Ἀθηναίοις ἀπένειμε διὰ τὸ “Αἴας δ’ ἐκ Σαλαμῖνος ἄγεν δυοκαίδεκα νῆας.”
[ back ] 103. Aiskhylos Persians 895; Pindar Nemean 4.46–47 with Σ; Euripides Helen 144–150; Isokrates 9.18; [Aristotle] Peplos (fr. 640 §8 Rose); Klearkhos fr. 19 Wehrli (= Athenaios 256b), a Cypriot native; Lykophron Alexandra 450–478; Parian Marble A 26; Vergil Aeneid 1.619–622; Strabo 14.6.3 (with ‘beach of the Achaeans’ as the landing place of Teukros); Tacitus 3.62; Pausanias 1.3.2; Nonnos Dionysiaka 13.461–462; John Malalas Chronography 5.29 Thurn. Sources in Chavane and Yon 1978:33–91; cf. HC:85. Herodotos 7.90 is also relevant. A good account of the evidence is Gantz 1993:694–695.
[ back ] 104. Gjerstad 1944:119–120.
[ back ] 105. Pindar Nemean 4.46–47.
[ back ] 106. Engel 1841 2:126–127 speculated on deeper links between the myth cycles of Saronic and Cypriot Salamis.
[ back ] 107. Σ Dionysios the Periegete 509 = FGH 758 F 3a; [Apollodoros] Library 3.14.3. The Athenian dimension of these constructions was recognized by Engel 1841 1:183–186, 2:130–133; Robert 1883:441; Baurain 1975–1976:525; Baurain 1980a:9; Baurain 1980b:282.
[ back ] 108. Aristotle Constitution of the Athenians 26.3; Plutarch Perikles 37.2–5.
[ back ] 109. [Apollodoros] Library 3.14.3.
[ back ] 110. Ajax son of Teukros was said to have initiated a hereditary Teukrid priesthood at Olbe: Strabo 14.5.10; cf. 14.5.8, Cilician Soloi founded by Achaeans and Rhodians.
[ back ] 111. This was supposed by Robert 1883:441.
[ back ] 112. Giuffrida 1996:292n51.
[ back ] 113. The Lesbian historian, who must have traveled widely in collecting material for his regional histories (Dionysios of Halicarnassus On Thucydides 5.1), composed a Kypriaka, the one certain fragment of which relates to Pygmalion’s founding of Karpasia—close to where one might naturally land when crossing from Cilicia (see p345 and n3, with Chuvin’s proposed connection of [Apollodoros] Library 3.14.3 and Hellanikos FGH 4 F 57). Hellanikos, whose later career was much occupied with fabricating an Athenian past, was a master of devising early genealogies out of legendary materials and tailoring them to local interests (Franklin 2012). A hitherto unnoticed Cypriot example should be registered here: Hellanikos, in making Euklees/Euklous older than Homer in an ultimate descent from Orpheus, probably followed an insular tradition for the Cypriot prophet-poet of this name (Hellanikos FGH 4 F 5b). Finally, the time of Hellanikos’ professional activity substantially overlaps Athens’ alliance with Euagoras.
[ back ] 114. Etymologicum Genuinum s.v. Ἀῷος; Etymologicum Magnum s.v. Ἀῶος (sic); Σ Dionysios the Periegete 509 (GGM 2:450) = FGH 758 F 3a.
[ back ] 115. Criticism of their methods was not long in coming from some quarters: see for instance Philokhoros FGH 328 F 92 on Hellanikos.
[ back ] 116. See p345.
[ back ] 117. Yon and Sznycer 1991:799–800 et passim; Yon 2004:201 no. 1144 with further references, cf. 142 no. 180; Lipiński 2004:94–95 and n331.
[ back ] 118. The root sense of the Phoenician word is ‘help’: see Krahmalkov 2000:363–364.
[ back ] 119. This can be seen, for instance, in the Lydian royal line, where the intrusion of Belos and Ninos represented the client relationship with Assyria in the seventh century; the alleged descent from Herakles probably reflects alliance with Sparta in the sixth: Burkert 1995:144–145; Franklin 2008:195.
[ back ] 120. See p343n32. A. Chaniotis compares the roughly contemporary rehabilitation of Minos as a wise lawgiver, apparently connected with the publication of the Laws of Minos by Kharon of Lampsakos (communication, December 19, 2011).
[ back ] 121. But recall the possible tradition of ‘Argive’ overlordship associated with the figure of Dmetor (p342–343), seconded by the elaborations of Étienne de Lusignan (see p558n8, 561n32), and perhaps related somehow to Agamemnon’s invasion of the island.
[ back ] 122. See p381–383.
[ back ] 123. Isokrates lavished similar praise on Nikokles I in the Ad Nicoclem (Isokrates 2).
[ back ] 124. Homer Iliad 2.603–614; cf. Thucydides 1.9; Pausanias 8.1.3; [Apollodoros] Epitome 3.12.
[ back ] 125. [Apollodoros] Library 3.10.8.
[ back ] 126. [Aristotle] Peplos (fr. 640 §30 Rose); Lykophron Alexandra 479–493; Strabo 14.6.3; Pausanias 8.5.2 (see next note), 8.53.7; [Apollodoros] Epitome 6.15; cf. Herodotos 7.90 (Arcadians, Agapenor not mentioned).
[ back ] 127. Pausanias 8.5.2, where Πάφου οἰκιστής must correspond to Nea Paphos by contrast with ἐν Παλαιπάφῳ τὸ ἱερόν.
[ back ] 128. A. Cassio (communication, February 2012). I thank him for his useful discussion of these points.
[ back ] 129. ‘Arcadian’ in these traditions may be shorthand for ‘culture and language of the pre-Doric Peloponnese surviving only in Arcadia, whose linguistic and cultural affinities with Cyprus were still recognized’. But for Agapenor’s specific link to Tegea, see further below.
[ back ] 130. Cf. Voyatzis 1985:161; Coldstream 1989:331; Pirenne-Delforge 1994:326; Hall 1997:135–136. For the Opheltas obelós, see p14.
[ back ] 131. See further p407–409. The first named Paphian king, found in the Esarhaddon prism inscription (673/672), is ‘Ituandar’ = Etewandros: ARAB 2:266 §690 (cf. above p14).
[ back ] 132. See p349.
[ back ] 133. Étienne de Lusignan Chorograffia p. 36 (§180).
[ back ] 134. Chorograffia p. 20a (§71, 73, cf. Description pp. 38a–39). See further Appendix G.
[ back ] 135. Grivaud in Papadopoulos 2004 2:iv.
[ back ] 136. Lusignan’s failure to mention Amathous suffices to show that he has not simply adapted the Photian epitome (see p346) for his own purposes.
[ back ] 137. Chorograffia p. 6a (§6).
[ back ] 138. Description, p. 15a.
[ back ] 139. Earthquakes that affected Paphos are recorded for 15 BCE, 77/76 CE, 332, and the twelfth century; another destroyed Salamis in 322, while some of the eight shocks documented for Antioch between 458–561 are likely to have been felt on Cyprus. See HC:232, 245, 279n4, 311. These events are mentioned very often in ancient, and especially Byzantine, sources, as one can see by going through the texts in SHC. Note e.g. John Adorno (1470): “Paphos that now is almost destroyed” (SHC 8:173).
[ back ] 140. Paphos:20; NPHP:67–85.
[ back ] 141. See p359n126. Lusignan acknowledges Strabo as a source elsewhere, although he also makes the unparalleled assertion that Strabo himself had been a student of the Cypriot historian Xenophon: see further p564–567.
[ back ] 142. Mitford 1960b:198.
[ back ] 143. See p409.
[ back ] 144. See p359 and n127 above.
[ back ] 145. See p401–406.
[ back ] 146. Paphos: 79–80, 101. Similarly Gjerstad 1944:110–112; Maier 1983:229n6; Voyatzis 1985:154; Karageorghis 1998:32.
[ back ] 147. Maier 1986b. The Paphian cult per se was of course much older: Heubner 1963–1982 2:34; Masson 1973:113; Maier 1974; J. Karageorghis 1977:30, 223–224; Maier 1979:234; Fortin 1980:37; CAH2 III.1:514; Paphos:81–102; Maier 1986a:313; Karageorghis 1998:32–33; Webb 1999:63–64; Kypris:26–29.
[ back ] 148. Cf. Iacovou 2005:132.
[ back ] 149. Iacovou 2005:132; cf. Iacovou 2006b:46.
[ back ] 150. This has seemed plausible to Karageorghis 1980a:122–123; Fortin 1980:35–39, 44; Voyatzis 1985; Maier 1986b. A similar situation vis-à-vis Aegean settlement in North Syria and Philistia is suggested by the stories of Mopsos/Moxos and Askalos—respectively drowning and marrying a local woman, one of whom is definitely a goddess-figure, Atargatis. Mopsos/Moxos: Xanthos FGH 765 F 17a = Athenaios 346e, cf. Mnaseas FHG 3:155 fr. 32. Askalos: Xanthos FGH 765 F 8 = Nikolaos of Damascus FGH 90 F 18 = Stephanos of Byzantium s.v. Ἀσκάλων. Cf. Finkelberg 2005:158, “Xanthos’ story seems to imply that Mopsos was regarded as the founder of the cult of the ‘Askalon goddess’.”
[ back ] 151. Lykophron Alexandra 484–485: χαλκωρυχήσει καὶ … / … δικέλλῃ πᾶν μεταλλεύων γνύθος (cf. Σ).
[ back ] 152. Coldstream 1994:145; Iacovou 2006a; PPC:285. Khalkanor: see p339.
[ back ] 153. See p253–255.
[ back ] 154. Pausanias 8.5.3: χρόνῳ δὲ ὕστερον Λαοδίκη γεγονυῖα ἀπὸ Ἀγαπήνορος ἔπεμψεν ἐς Τεγέαν τῇ Ἀθηνᾷ τῇ Ἀλέᾳ πέπλον. For the local Arcadian goddess Alea, who began to be identified with Athena in the Archaic period, see Jost 1985:368–385.
[ back ] 155. Pausanias 8.5.3: Λαοδίκης ὅδε πέπλος· ἑᾷ δ’ ἀνέθηκεν Ἀθηνᾷ / πατρίδ’ ἐς εὐρύχορον Κύπρου ἀπὸ ζαθέας.
[ back ] 156. Roy 1987.
[ back ] 157. Pausanias 8.53.7, cf. 8.5.2.
[ back ] 158. See the good discussion of Pirenne-Delforge 1994:328–329.
[ back ] 159. Gjerstad 1944:111 is surgically incisive: “It is possible to explain the legend of Agapenor’s foundation of Paphos without reference to the temple of the Paphian Aphrodite in Tegea, but it is absolutely impossible, so far as I see, to explain that a temple of the Paphian Aphrodite existed on the Greek mainland, only in the remote inland country of Arcadia and only in Tegea, if we do not bring this fact into relation with the legend of the Tegean king Agapenor’s foundation of Paphos. We may thus infer that the legend is primary, the temple secondary in their mutual relations.” (The historical sequence Gjerstad goes on to develop, however, is rather inconclusive.) Jost 1985:148 is also open to seeing a genuine tradition behind Laodike’s foundation, although she is agnostic as to its date.
[ back ] 160. Herodotos 7.90.
[ back ] 161. [Apollodoros] Library 3.9.1: οὗτοι τὴν γῆν ἐμερίσαντο, τὸ δὲ πᾶν κράτος εἶχεν Ἔλατος.
[ back ] 162. See p329.
[ back ] 163. Diodoros Siculus 4.37.2: εἰς Κύπρον τὴν νῆσον πλεύσαντες
καὶ τοῖς ἐγχωρίοις ἀναμιχθέντες ἐνταῦθα κατῴκησαν. The generalizing masculine τοῖς ἐγχωρίοις is counteracted by the sexual connotations of ἀναμιχθέντες; indeed one might well emend to ταῖς ἐγχωρίοις.
[ back ] 164. Cf. Engel 1841 2:125.
[ back ] 165. PPC:49–50 et passim. For Cyprus itself, note that in one variant Teukros tried to return home after Telamon died: Pompeius Trogus in Justin Epitome 44.3. There is also the case of the Gerginoi (Athenaios 256b–c): see p457–458.
[ back ] 166. See p154.
[ back ] 167. See p333.
[ back ] 168. See p432–436.
[ back ] 169. Finkelberg 1991; Finkelberg 2005:65–108.
[ back ] 170. Frazer 1914 1:41–42: “These legends seem to contain reminiscences of kingdoms in Cilicia and Cyprus which passed in the female line, and were held by men, sometimes foreigners, who married the hereditary princesses.” Frazer includes here Kinyras’ father Sandokos, who immigrates from Syria to marry Pharnake: see p504.
[ back ] 171. For the latter juxtaposition, see p401–406.
[ back ] 172. Cf. Finkelberg 2005:88, “the position of the queen can be satisfactorily accounted for if we assume that she was priestess of the goddess of the land,” etc.
[ back ] 173. See further p282–289.
[ back ] 174. Frazer 1914 1:43–44.
[ back ] 175. In the case of Agapenor’s daughter, the connection with pre-Greek kingship is implicit in her efforts on behalf of Paphian ‘Aphrodite’.
[ back ] 176. For this crux, see recently Iacovou 2008.
[ back ] 177. For this phenomenon outside of Cyprus, see Hall 1989 (65 and n37, 73 on Lydia); Morris 1992:362–386; Georges 1994:76–114; Raaflaub 2000, with further literature in n7; Burkert 2004:11.
[ back ] 178. Kinyras as a first-millennium Phoenician import: Drexler, Roscher Lex. s.v. Kinyras; HC:69 (ambivalent); Lorimer 1950:208; Bunnens 1979:354–356. The phonology of Kinyras/kinýra provides no definite support for this view: see p272–276.
[ back ] 179. It would be fair to say, therefore, that Kinyras, perhaps like Pygmalion, stands for Canaanite cultural presence on the LBA island: cf. Kroll, RE 11 (1922):484–486; Baurain 1980b:278.
[ back ] 180. Cf. Engel 1841 1:203: “Sein Name ist phönikisch. Das ist aber auch das einzige Phönikische an ihm geblieben, und wurde in der Mythenbildung gänzlich vergessen.”