Page:History of Art in Phœnicia and Its Dependencies Vol 1.djvu/319

THE TEMPLE IN CYPRUS. 29; nowhere have been greater than in Cyprus ; nowhere can these exhibitions, as we may fairly call them, have offered a greater variety than in the shrines of an island which the Greeks began to frequent at a very early period, shrines which were thus loaded for centuries with the gifts of two different races. Egypt, Chaldrea, and Assyria had no secrets from the Phoenicians ; in their countless voyages, the latter must have become acquainted with everything those countries produced which could by any means be turned to the honour of their own gods, and a little later, when the originality of the Greek genius began to assert itself, visitors from Greece came in their turn to offer the best works of their native artisans to those gods w r hom they were seeking to appropriate to their own use. If the treasure of the great Paphian sanctuary had, by some happy chance, been preserved to us, what a variety of styles, what a number of curious and even marvellous works of art we should have found! It would have sufficed to arrange the objects in some kind of order, to have before us a history of ancient art, as told by the monuments themselves, which would have enabled us to follow the happy borrowings and fertile contacts which so greatly helped the task of the Greeks, and saved them so much priceless time. This good fortune has been denied us. The temple whose treasure was recovered by General di Cesnola was less celebrated and therefore less rich than that of Paphos. Perhaps it w?s not even the principal temple of Curium. That city could boast of a sanctuary of Apollo which, according to what Strabo says of it, must have enjoyed a certain importance ; l but according to the evidence gathered by General di Cesnola, it is not unlikely that its site was at a different point in the area occupied by the city, and far enough from the ruins the subtructures of which had such a delightful surprise in store. 2 In that case we do not even know the character and name of the god to whom Cesnola's temple was consecrated. We are told that Curium was a Greek city, an Argive colony ; 3 it is certain that the Greek element won the upper hand there in time ; but tradition said that its founder was a son of Cineras, 4 and to Greek annalists Cineras was a personifi- cation of the Phoenician race. It would seem possible, therefore, 1 STRABO, xiv. vi. 3. 2 CESXOLA, Cyprus, pp. 342, 343. 3 STRABO, xiv. vi. 3 HERODOTUS, v. 113. 4 STEFHANVS BVZANTINUS, s. v. Km'pior. VOL. I. Q Q