Page:History of Greece Vol X.djvu/36

M HISTORY OF GKEECE. refulsed the Persians, the Egyptian king Akoras is found between 390-380 B. c., 1 sending aid to Evagoras in Cyprus against the same enemy. And in spite of farther efforts made afterwards by Artaxerxes to reconquer Egypt, the native kings in that country maintained their independence for about sixty years in all, until the reign of his successor Ochus. But it was a Grecian enemy, of means inferior, yet of qual- ities much superior, to any of these Egyptians, who occupied the chief attention of the Persians immediately after the peace of Antalkidas ; Evagoras, despot of Salamis in Cyprus. Respecting that prince we possess a discourse of the most glowing and super- abundant eulogy, composed after his death for the satisfaction (and probably paid for with the money) of his son and successor Niko- kles, by the contemporary Isokrates. Allowing as we must do for exaggeration and partiality, even the trustworthy features of the picture are sufficiently interesting. Evagoras belonged to a Salaminian stock of Gens called the Teukridae, which numbered among its ancestors the splendid le- gendary names of Teukrus, Telamon, and ^Eakus ; taking its de- parture, through them, from the divine name of Zeus. It was believed that the archer Teukrus, after returning from the siege of Troy to (the Athenian) Salamis, had emigrated under a harsh order from his father Telamon, and given commencement to the city of that name on the eastern coast of Cyprus. 2 As in Sicily, so in Cyprus, the Greek and Phoenician elements were found in near contact, though in very different proportions. Of the nine or ten separate city communities, which divided among them the whole sea-coast, the inferior towns being all dependent upon one Chabriie, et Timothei, Epimetr. ii, pp. 241, 242) on very probable grounds, principally from Isokrates, Orat. iv, (Panegyr.) s. 161, 162. 1 Diodor. xv, 2, 3. 2 Isokrates, Or. iii, (Nikokl.) s. 50; Or. ix, (Evagoras) s. 21 ; Pausanias, ii, 29, 4 ; Diodor. xir, 98. The historian Theopompus, when entering upon the history of Evagoras. seems to have related many legendary tales respecting the Greek Gentes in Cyprus, and to have represented Agamemnon himself as ultimately mi- grating to it (Theopompus, Frag. Ill, ed. Wichers : and ed. Didot. ap. Photium). The tomb of the archer Teukrus was shown at Salamis in Cyprus. See the Epigram of Aristotle, Antholog. i, 8, 112.