Kourion Complex Palace

Continued from scan 2

… tains some very interesting Christian mosaic inscriptions. The interpretation of these has been somewhat changed by the discovery of the baths. As baths were noted for their immorality, I consider that the inscription

Handwritten: Ἐξέσρν Θάλαμον Τε Καὶ Θῶν Τε Καὶ Κοσμέουειν ελφαι

[handwritten: Αἰώνις ωφροσυνη] is a Christian proclamation that in these baths at least, the standards of morality were upheld. Whether they alternated the hours of bathing for each sex or whether, they excluded women altogether, it is not possible to decide. Cert­ainly mixed bathing continued to be practiced in Cyprus. To the east of this room lay another room with a mosaic before the entrance to which was an in­scription, unfortunately now fragmentary. However since the words [handwritten: ὡς λουτρὰ] are preserved, there can be no doubt that this walk was connected with the baths. It is not by chance that there is a piscina or fish-pond in the garden, for the water for it could be drawn from the same source as that of the baths. The rooms outside this walk on the east and south looked out over an abrupt­ly falling cliff to fields and the sea. Seneca castigated the men of his time for considering such a view necessary for the site of a bath.

Completing the square is the side whose floor was largely bed-rock and which contained the staircase leading up to the baths. This is the part part of wood, for the lower steps are lacking but there are stone supports on the east side which have cuttings, presumably for wooden beams. At the head of this stairway, lay an expanse of mosaic at the end of and on either side of which, lay the baths themselves. Photographs of this mosaic accompany the text. The outside borders of the mosaic on the longitudinal, eastern and western sides are of different patterns. On the west, there is a series of straight diagonal lines forming squares and within each square another square composed of nine smaller squares; on the east, a series of intersecting circles. Neither of the patterns continue along the northern or southern ends; in the north, the mosaic meets the foot bath of the frigidarium; in the south, extending to the