Sir Harry Luke, writing about Kyrenia in the 1930s, expressed himself in a most emotional way:
The Kyrenia coast recalls the richness of Italy, but that Italy which is half Greek both in name and scene, Magna Graecia; even more does it resemble certain regions of Sicily. Here, as at Agrigento and in the parts about Taranto, sea and sky are of a sharp, clear blue, olives silvery, cypresses of the deepest green. Anemone and cyclamen carpet the ground, gladiolus and wild iris and tulips mingle with the growing corn, rosemary and thyme and cistus perfume the air. Elsewhere the oleander never blows so red. Beneath a stone pine, on a slope ablaze with the rich yellows of wattle and broom and flowering fennel, the goatherd plays the pan-pipe to his flock, plays doleful strains in the Dorian manner; from the myrtle-scented hillside is heard, as if in echo, the cadence of the peasant’s mélopée. Eκεί χάριτες, εκεί δε πόθος.
Sir Harry Luke: Cyprus, A Portrait and an Appreciation, 1957:104; Euripides, Bacchae ii 400 sqq
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