DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.9184#0189
Chap. VI.]
Ancient Cyprus.
167
cool airs. But during the Ptolemaic and Roman periods
corn and wine were the chief produce of the island. The
great central plain was covered with waving fields of
barley; the valley of the Pediaeus contributed almost as
richly as the valley of the Nile and the plains of Sicily
towards the great distributions of bread among the lower
classes of Rome, which made that city, under the Empire,
the lazy and hungry stomach of the civilised world. The
wine of Cyprus was proverbial. Possibly it would have
seemed somewhat rough to a modern taste ; but for gene-
rosity and richness it had few equals.
We hear very little, after the Greek colonists of Cyprus
had become in a few generations acclimatised, of any of
them having become distinguished in literature and art.
While Rhodes, a day's sail to the west, enjoyed a lofty
political career, exhibited the best phases of Greek culture,
and was filled with splendid statuary produced by local
artists, Cyprus was remarkable only for the luxury, the
prodigality, and the dissoluteness of its inhabitants. When
Greek fabulists and philosophers wished to bring forward
an example of effeminate self-indulgence they quoted or
invented a king of Cyprus. The wealth which generous
nature heaped upon the inhabitants they spent in elaborate
self-indulgence; the faculties with which the Greek race
was so abundantly endowed they exercised only in the
invention of new and abominable forms of sensuality. The
moral is no new one. There are spoilt children of nature
as well as of society; and just as the child whom his
parents have indulged begins by slighting them and de-
spising their wishes, so the race spoilt by nature begins by
violating the ordinances of nature. And yet Cyprus gave
birth to the Stoic Philosophy. Zeno of Citium owed his
education to Athens, but he must have owed the nature
which moulded that education to his native place. In him
the Cyprian spirit, after sounding every deep of profligacy.
Ancient Cyprus.
167
cool airs. But during the Ptolemaic and Roman periods
corn and wine were the chief produce of the island. The
great central plain was covered with waving fields of
barley; the valley of the Pediaeus contributed almost as
richly as the valley of the Nile and the plains of Sicily
towards the great distributions of bread among the lower
classes of Rome, which made that city, under the Empire,
the lazy and hungry stomach of the civilised world. The
wine of Cyprus was proverbial. Possibly it would have
seemed somewhat rough to a modern taste ; but for gene-
rosity and richness it had few equals.
We hear very little, after the Greek colonists of Cyprus
had become in a few generations acclimatised, of any of
them having become distinguished in literature and art.
While Rhodes, a day's sail to the west, enjoyed a lofty
political career, exhibited the best phases of Greek culture,
and was filled with splendid statuary produced by local
artists, Cyprus was remarkable only for the luxury, the
prodigality, and the dissoluteness of its inhabitants. When
Greek fabulists and philosophers wished to bring forward
an example of effeminate self-indulgence they quoted or
invented a king of Cyprus. The wealth which generous
nature heaped upon the inhabitants they spent in elaborate
self-indulgence; the faculties with which the Greek race
was so abundantly endowed they exercised only in the
invention of new and abominable forms of sensuality. The
moral is no new one. There are spoilt children of nature
as well as of society; and just as the child whom his
parents have indulged begins by slighting them and de-
spising their wishes, so the race spoilt by nature begins by
violating the ordinances of nature. And yet Cyprus gave
birth to the Stoic Philosophy. Zeno of Citium owed his
education to Athens, but he must have owed the nature
which moulded that education to his native place. In him
the Cyprian spirit, after sounding every deep of profligacy.