§§ 47 — 50.
παραλαβὼν τὴν πόλιν ἐκβ ‘When the city (Salamis) came into his hands, it had been reduced to barbarism; owing to the domination of the Phoenicians, it had no intercourse with Greeks, no knowledge of the useful arts, no commerce, no harbour: but he supplied all these deficiencies’, etc.
διὰ τὴν τῶν Φοινίκων ἀρχ The earliest Greek immigrants into Cyprus seem to have found Phoenicians already established. The Greek settlements traced their origin to Athens, Salamis, Arcadia, Cythnus (one of the Cyclades):
Her. VII. 90. Long after the time at which Isocrates is writing the Phoenician element in Cyprus greatly preponderated over the Hellenic: thus Scylax in his
Περίπλους, p. 97 (written in the time of Philip of Macedon, 359 — 336 B.C.), calls the inhabitants of the interior collectively ‘barbarians’. Of the Greek cities on the coast, the chief in the time of Scylax seem to have been Salamis, Soli and Marium. (See Rawlinson on
Her. v. 104.)
In 500 B.C. the Cyprian Salamis was ruled by a dynasty of Greek princes tributary to Persia (
Her. v. 104, 114). Acc. to Isocr., this Greek dynasty — which claimed descent from Teucrus — was dispossessed by a Phoenician adventurer (
ἐκ Φοινίκης ἀνὴρ φυγάς, § 19), whose descendants (
ἔκγονοι, § 21) held the throne until it was again taken from them by Evagoras, the heir of the old Greek kings.
Grote would place the Phoenician usurpation about 450 B.C. (X. 21), with good reason: though Isocr. at least seems to have conceived it as occurring much earlier. The restoration of the Greek ‘Teucrid’ dynasty by Evagoras cannot have been later than 411 B.C., in which year Andocides visited Cyprus, and found Evagoras reigning at Salamis, [Lys.]
In Andoc. § 28. And Evagoras must have been ‘not merely established, but powerful’ (Grote X. 25) when he ventured to harbour Conon after Aegospotami (405 B.C.). At the time of his death in 374 B.C. Evagoras was an old man (§ 71).
οὔτ᾽ ἐμπορίῳ χρωμ i.e. Salamis did not afford an
ἐμπόριον, a centre or seat of commerce, to foreign traders. At Athens the
ἐμπόριον was the ‘Exchange’. It is unnecessary to read
ἐμπορίᾳ.
τείχη προσπεριεβάλετο κ.τ.λ. ‘protected his city with new fortifications’, in addition to its old
τείχη. — ἐναυπηγήσατο, ‘caused to be built’. Her. and Thuc. always use the midd.
ταῖς ἄλλαις κατασκευαῖς ‘and, further, so embellished the city with public buildings that it is surpassed by no other in Hellas’. For
ταῖς ἄλλαις cp.
Nicocles § 22,
ταῖς ἄλλαις θεραπείαις, note. The term
κατασκευαί might perhaps include
τείχη, but not
τριήρεις. Cp.
Thuc. I. 10,
οὔτε ξυνοικισθείσης τῆς πόλεως (Sparta)
οὔτε ἱεροῖς καὶ κατασκευαῖς πολυτελέσι χρησαμένης, ‘costly public buildings’. A Greek would think of temples,
στοαί, theatre,
πρυτανεῖον, gymnasium, baths.
