Kourion: the Department's excavations at the city site (Loulloupis)

In 1967 the Department of Antiquities uncovered two mosaic panels of named gladiators in a Roman villa at Kourion; the excavation report calls them the first appearance of gladiators on a mosaic in Cyprus¹. The villa, called the House of the Gladiators, was still being dug in 1971².

Opening the city site

The Department took up unexplored parts of the city site once it had finished its work at the stadium (1963 to 1966) and the University Museum's excavations had been tied up, and the 1967 campaign was exploratory in character^3,4. Michael Loulloupis, Archaeological Officer of the Department of Antiquities, directed it¹. The annual reports document seven campaigns, 1967 to 1973^5,6; Costello writes that the series lasted until 1974⁴.

In 1967 a limited area was cleared about 30 m south-east of the House of Achilles. It held a small Roman villa, which must have been built about the end of the 3rd century AD, with baths, hypocausts, water tanks and drains, and polychrome mosaics. Coins of Constantine lay in the destruction debris, and the report dates the destruction after his time; a later set of rooms was built over the ruins, largely from the old materials¹. In one panel two armed gladiators have Greek names written above them. In the second, two gladiators named Lytras and E... flank an unarmed figure named Dareios, whom the report suggests may be the umpire or trainer; it links the subject to the conversion of Kourion's theatre into an arena¹. A nearly life-size head of a young satyr in white Parian marble came from the same season; the report dates it probably to the 1st century AD and thinks it may come from a building earlier than the villa¹.

A large late Roman house

From 1968 the work became a large-scale clearing of a late Roman habitation, possibly a villa or a public building. A spacious hall with a trithyron entrance lay in the west part, and a new mosaic panel appeared at the north end of the gladiator room⁷. An east corridor with intact stratification yielded statues described in the report as the first near life-size statues from Kourion: Hermes with a lamb and Asklepios, both in Parian marble, with heads of Aphrodite and Hygieia⁷. The 1969 campaign, of nearly two months, found a long corridor along the north of the inner court with six rectangular rooms opening on it, evidence of destruction followed by reoccupation, and a wall leaning at 30 degrees⁸. Finds included the lower part of an Aphrodite Anadyomene with a dolphin, a replica of the Farnese Herakles, a marble bust of an emperor and a limestone lion head⁸.

In 1970 the west sector produced two square rooms in line and a west corridor with a drain leading to a small reservoir, and east of the mosaic-paved corridor in the east sector lay a bath suite with praefurnium, frigidarium, caldarium and tepidarium. A marble statue base with a cock, a pair of birds, a phallus (?) and a piece of chain in relief was built into the wall of the bath antechamber^9,10. The 1971 campaign had two stated aims, the baths of the House of the Gladiators and the city wall nearby². The whole bath complex was exposed and found wrecked. A 12 m stretch of north-south wall was cleared, two faces of cut stone with rubble fill and two small buttresses; the report infers that it was built in peacetime, from the absence of reused column parts and thinks a real wall stood only on this side of the city².

The destruction of the house is dated differently in the reports. The 1967 report assigns it to the earthquakes of 332 and 342, and the 1971 report speaks of a severe earthquake in the first half of the 4th century^1,2.

The apsed hall and the street

The sixth campaign, in 1972, worked in the east sector beyond the baths. It cleared a large open space paved with white tesserae and a central apsed hall with a mosaic of bands with geometric and floral motifs and marble wall revetment, flanked by smaller rooms; the report left its relation to the Villa of the Gladiators for later campaigns. Finds included a marble head of Eros asleep⁵.

In 1973 the Department uncovered a late Roman building of 15.60 by 18.50 m on the west side of a north-south street, 4.50 m wide and cleared for 30 m, which the report calls the first street found on the Kourion town site. The building had a vestibule, a colonnaded courtyard with Ionic bases and an apsed hall whose mosaic is centred on two emblems, a rosette and a bird about to peck a pomegranate⁶. Three pits reaching 9 m deep, originally quarry workings, were cleaned; finds included Arretine ware, lamps, coins, figurines and clay masks^6,11.

Publication and finds

Loulloupis published the 1967 to 1970 dig in Greek in RDAC 1971 (pp. 86 to 116)¹². Costello describes the project as uncovering the House of the Gladiators and the House of the Apsed Triclinium, elite structures with fine architecture, marble revetment and elaborate mosaic pavements, and notes that the portable finds are described only cursorily⁴. Hermary notes that the sculptures from the Gladiators house have been only very partially published, and writes that the marble works she discusses are kept in the Episkopi museum¹³.