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.

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: 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).

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: 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.

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: 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.

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, 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.

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.

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:

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: 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.

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: 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: 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: 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:

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: 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:

1. If Agapenor marries Laodike, and Laodike = Kinyras’ daughter, then Agapenor marries Kinyras’ daughter;
2. If Laodike = Kinyras’ daughter, and Agapenor = Laodike’s father, then Agapenor = Kinyras;
3. 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.

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.