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THE SANCTUARY OF APOLLO NEAR "THE ANCIENT CITY SITE" OF CURIUM IN CYPRUS
In the spring of 1934 and of 1935, the University Museum, Philadelphia, carried on excavations in Cyprus on the ancient site of the city of Curium, on the south coast about ten miles west of the modern town of Limassol and about three miles west of the promontary of Curias. Curium is situated on an imposing bluff rising out of a wide cultivated plain that lies between Limassol and Curium. The ancient city looked east on the plain, south on the sea, and north over a valley toward the mountains that rise to a height of some six to seven thousand feet in the centre of the island. The only good approach to this naturally fortified site is from the west where the valley penetrates the higher table land beyond Curium. (Fig. 1).
Two miles further west of Curium, along the sea, on another imposing site, is the ancient Sanctuary of Apollo. This sanctuary was known to Strabo who writes in his Geography (xiv, 683) that the impious who touched the altar of the god were hurled headlong from a promontary into the sea (Fig. 2). As one goes along the modern road from Curium to the site of the Sanctuary, one passes a large hippodrome some 1300 by 80 feet in dimension. Just south and west of it are traces of an ancient Greek aquaduct. Cesnola writes that when he investigated the place
65 figures hard to readstruck struck outadded written in above” jug ditto, and what it repeatsword reading not certain