Aphrodite and St. Andrew
By LORD KINROSS APHRODITE came from Land's End, the blunt nose of the island of Cyprus, pointing west towards Crete. The road here descends to a beach where the mountains have hurled two monstrous rocks, one round, one conical, into the sea. Satellite rocks surround and cling to them, and a white cliff rises steeply to the broom-scattered hillside. Here Aphrodite rose from the foam. The place might be Lulworth Cove, but with a southern translucency which alone could inspire such fantasies. A great, smouldering ball of sun falls slowly beneath the horizon, washing the rocks flesh-pink in a sea of jade, while the white foam breaks, like lace, upon lava-coloured sands. Its peculiar properties, as the modern scientist records, are due to "disintegration of animal and vegetable marine organisms."
At the turning which leads to Aphrodite's village the bus unloads a large aunt or grandmother and her possessions, four upright chairs, an iron four-poster with brass knobs and a large quantity of bundles and baskets. Two children, as fair as Franks, and some turkeys and geese cluster around her as she sits squarely on one of the chairs. Peasants and their families, riding home on donkeys towards Aphrodite's temple, call greet- ings from across the road.
The temple is on the hillside at Kouklia, the mediaeval Covocle, an ill-favoured village, recently freed from centuries of malaria but not yet from its psychological effects. A police- man and two peasants with moustachios sit listlessly under a vine. A broken Roman capital sprawls neglected in the dust of the square. Dogs lie torpid on the cobbles, obliging vehicles to drive around them. A notice indicates "Temple of Venus." and underneath, " D.D.T. 22/2/47." Where the Greeks loved the British disinfect.
Pilgrims came to Paphos from all parts of the Greek and Roman world to worship Aphrodite's image and practise the licentious rites of her cult. They landed at the harbour, where there are now few ships, but where, diving on a calm day from the breakwater, one can still sec classical columns spread beneath the sea. From here, after some days of bathing, sports and sacrifices, the pilgrims proceeded to the temple through groves of Aphrodite's favourite flowers—myrtles, roses and pome- granates – lingering in Hicroskepos. the Sacred Garden of Venus, where, in the precincts of a Byzantine church with a huddle of domes, St. Paraskes i is now honoured instead with annual Bank Holidayish rejoicings. The goddess was worshipped in the form pf a large conical stone, which was anointed with oil. Christianity, and then an earthquake, finally killed the cult. But the transition was painless, indeed in a sense imperceptible. Up to the present century the inhabitants of Kouklia anointed annually with olive oil the stones of Aphrodite's temple, just as the pilgrims used to anoint her conical image, but now in the name of the Virgin Mary. Moreover, in 1845 a priest from Pissouri, referring to the Blessed Virgin, assured a traveller that "now they do not call her Aphroditissa ; now they call her Chrysopolitissa."
As for Aphrodite, her modern counterpart hangs in every restaurant and hotel—a blonde British pin-up girl, posed against rocks in a Technicolor bathing-costume, on a calendar distri- buted by the manufacturers of Aphrodite wine. Her name survives also, appropriately. in Aphrodite Street, in the shadier Turkish quarter of Famagusta ; also in an occasional news item, such as the following from the Cyprus Mail:
" Afroditi Constantinou, of Karmi . . . was fined £.10 and was bound over in the sum of £20 for one year. She was charged with stealing a handbag, a pair of ladies' shoes. clothing, &c. . . ."
As the cult of Aphrodite once flourished at the head of the island, so the cult of St. Andrew now flourishes at the tail. Where the last rocks jut into a swirling sea is, as it were, John o' Groats, and in the foreground the buildings of St. Andrew's Monastery. St. Andrew has become popular in Cyprus only in recent times. Thus his monastery, built around an older, mediaeval chapel, is garish and modern, and in its forecourt is a nineteenth-century bust of the cleric who popu- larised the cult. The saint's visit to Cyprus was accidental and brief. He put in here in search of water on his way to Greece, miraculously discovered three springs, and proceeded on his journey without further delay. But during the last fifty years or so his interest in the island seems to have revived and his miracles are frequent.
Though St. Andrew cannot claim profits on the scale of Aphrodite, he makes for the monastery a steady income of £17,000 a year from the contributions of visitors alone. In his church stands a vast collecting-box, like the cagnotte of a casino, stuffed with banknotes. At Easter and on other feast-days, when week-end visitors in cars and buses flock to the monastery in thousands, the money overflows into a large hamper placed beside it. Hanging around the embossed, silvered ikon of the saint are festoons or offerings left by pilgrims who hope to be cured of some disease or to obtain some wish—crosses made from shillings, personal trinkets, silver models of themselves or their babies or their injured limbs. In an adjoining vitrine are jewellery and other objects of greater value which are periodically melted down or sold by auction. The saint is popular even with Moslems, who come to him to be cured of their maladies. He earns a good income, besides, in the insurance business. Cypriot insurance agents are reluctant to insure both the cargo and the hull of a ship, knowing that it is all too easy for a mariner deliberately to run it aground. So ship-owners often insure their cargoes with an insurance company and their hulls with St. Andrew, paying him a small premium to start with and promising him a bonus at the end of the year if the ship remains undamaged.
In a coffee-shop by the car-park, under the brilliant arc-lights which were the monastery's latest investment, we drink ouzo and cat wild thistles tasting of artichokes. Brandy and sweet red wine flow, throughout the dinner which follows. The walls of the dining-room are decorated with portraits of St. Andrew, King Constantine of Greece and his Queen, surrounded by embroidered Greek flags, and a previous abbot. Five servants in shirt-sleeves serve the meal, which starts with cheese and brandy, and continues, while the meat-course cools on the side- board, with a mountain of spaghetti. A sheep , and some chickens follow, with potatoes and salad, and, when we have eaten our fill of them, the main course, a sucking-pig, appears. The meal ends, as it began, with cheese and brandy. I sleep heavily to the sound of the thundering sea, and am awakened by the crooning of a frieze of pigeons above my doorway. Breakfast is a repetition of the meal of the night before, starting again with cheese and brandy, and including the sucking-pig, hotted up. The abbot bids us a warm farewell, urging us to return for Easter, when there is sure to be a jolly crowd of pilgrims.
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