It seemed that Aphrodite was lost, gone after the easy money. These days, I lamented to George Demetriades, rotund proprietor of the superb Seven St Georges taverna at Yeriskopos, the mystery was all gone.
“You reckon?” he slurred, pouring out a jug of home-made wine. “You should get off your arse and take a look out there.” He pointed a slightly drunken finger in no particular direction. “Aphrodite is here, my friend. This is her home. You just have to know where to find her.”
Fortunately, the Cyprus Tourism Organisation (CTO) could help. It has created Aphrodite’s Cultural Route, a self-guided tour “in the footsteps of the goddess”. Waymarkers and information boards — the thieves of imagination — have been erected, but you’ll have some of Europe’s most evocative ancient sites all to yourself. And there’s no bloody podcast either.
Grabbing a wad of the CTO’s free maps, I set out to explore the Mediterranean home of the goddess.
Aphrodite’s Bath lies on the north coast of the Akamas peninsula, which juts out of western Cyprus like a rhinoceros horn. Sparsely populated, bone-dry and dusty, this remote promontory covers just 88 square miles, yet is of archeological and ecological importance out of all proportion to its size. Hundreds of endemic species of flora and fauna thrive in a semi-desert landscape of unspoilt natural beauty — it’s little wonder locals are campaigning to have the area protected as a national park.
The bathroom lay at the foot of a crag and overlooked the sparkling sea. As grottoes go, it was grotty — time and human desperation had seen to that — but I could see its potential.
“Aphrodite’s Bath,” announced a guide to a pair of sightseers. “Ladies who drink here lose 20 years of life.” She probably meant they looked two decades younger, but, studying the bathwater, I couldn’t be sure. Somewhere nearby, Aphrodite’s young lover died in an act of cold-blooded violence. Locals say the killing ended the goddess’s life of carefree abandon, others that the murder robbed her of the only mortal she ever loved — and they all talk as though it happened yesterday.
The victim’s name was Adonis. Ill-starred from the start, he was conceived after his mother developed an unhealthy interest in her own father. Pregnant and devastated by shame, she begged Aphrodite to turn her into a tree. Ten months later, the trunk split and Adonis was born — and if you think that’s dysfunctional, you haven’t heard Aphrodite’s tale. She emerged from a frothing sea, whipped up by the severed genitals of Uranus, which had been cut off and tossed into the briny by his own son. A plotline worthy of a Channel 4 soap, it was the start of a religion that lasted 2,000 years.
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Her birthplace is half an hour south of Paphos at Petra Tou Romiou, or Aphrodite’s Rock. You’ll know it by the crowds of women stripping off nearby. Legend says if they swim thrice around the rock they’ll find true love, and if they do it beneath a full moon they’ll never age, just like Aphrodite. Eastern Europeans seem particularly enamoured of this story, yet the notes tied to the trees are Greek, Hebrew, French and, unexpectedly, Turkish, proving love is a desperate jeu sans frontière.
On the edge of the nearby village of Kouklia lie the ruins of her temple. The sun-blasted remnants of a few columns are still standing, while, underfoot, the white rubble mixes with remains of earthenware offerings brought over 20 centuries.
As temple cults go, Aphrodite’s was benign, a kind of classical Playboy Mansion that became the leading tourist attraction of the ancient world. Hashish and opium were sold, and every Cypriot woman was required to give herself once to the service of Aphrodite, in a custom called temple prostitution. “Tall, handsome women soon manage to get home again,” notes Herodotus, “but the ugly ones stay as much as three or four years.”
