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Modern Description: Famous in Antiquity as the island of Aphrodite. A glance at the map of Greece reveals why Kythera has had an enduring importance throughout history: it is the first refuge for ships heading into the eastern Mediterranean after rounding the often perilous waters off Cape Matapan, and is the obvious provisioning stop before the crossing to Crete and points further east. Kythera's most remarkable heritage lies in its numerous Byzantine remains and paintings.
As might be expected of an island as close to the Peloponnese as Kythera, archaeological evidence (from the southern cave of Aghia Sophia in particular) bears witness to settlement as early as the 6th millennium BC, becoming more widespread in the 4th millennium. Kythera was already subject to Minoan settlement early in the 2nd millennium BC. By the end of the 15th century BC the island had been abandoned by Minoan settlement, and a Mycenaean presence proliferates in its place. The name “Kutira” appears in a list of Aegean place-names dating from the reign of Amenhotep III (c. 1400 BC): but Aristotle remarks that, in remote antiquity, the island is said to have been called Porphyrousa (‘the purple one') from the abundant murex-bearing molluscs in its waters. The Phoenicians (c.1100 BC) developed the island's purple industry and also may have introduced the worship of Syrian Aphrodite, as Herodotus suggests. This might explain Hesiod's account of the birth of Aphrodite as occurring just by Kythera. The island figures in the Iliad as the home of of the two Achaean warriors, Amphidamas and Lycophron: the latter was killed by Hector, the former was one of those hidden within the wooden horse. The 5th c. BC dithyrambic poet, Philoxenos, was also born on Kythera.
In c. 550 BC, Sparta seized Kythera from Argos, and during the Peloponnesian War the island guarded the southern seaboard of Lacedaimonia until it was subdued by Nikias for Athens in 424 BC. In 195 BC it was under Spartan dominion once again; but in 21 BC it was gifted to C. Iulius Eurycles by Augustus in gratitude for his support at the Battle of Actium, later being returned once more to Sparta by Hadrian.
Christianity may have come to the island in the person of the martyr, Aghia Elessa, in the 4th century. Archaeological evidence suggests well-established Christian communities in the 6th century, which were later given considerable impetus by the arrival of the Blessed Theodoros in the 10th century. After the 4th Crusade, Kythera, mostly under the control of the Venetian family of the Venieri, suffered many invasions – the worst in 1537, when the capital was destroyed and the inhabitants sold into slavery by Khaireddin Barbarossa. The island remained a Venetian possession, however, referred to by its Italian name Cerigo, up until the dissolution of the Serene Republic in 1797, except for a brief interlude of 3 years of Turkish sovereignty, 1715-18. In church matters, however, the Orthodox Church maintained an almost absolute dominance.
After 1797, briefly captured by the French, then seized by the Russians, left in anarchy, and returned by treaty again to the French, it was eventually taken by the British in 1809, who administered Kythera together with the Ionian islands until their union with Greece in 1864. Kythera was the first piece of Greek territory to be liberated by Allied forces in September 1944.
It is on the hill called Palaiokastro that the probable site of the ancient sanctuary of Aphrodite, mentioned by Herodotus, is to be sought. Pausanias, who remarks (III.23.1) that the sanctuary was the oldest place of the cult of Aphrodite in the Greek world and that the goddess here was figured fully armed, estimates that it was at a distance of 10 stades (approximately 1.8 km) from Skandeia. The exact site has never been definitively located, even though it has attracted the attentions of great archaeologists – foremost amongst them, Heinrich Schliemann, who came here to dig in 1887 together with Valerios Staïs. (At the junction in the road just west of Palaiopolis on the coast, take the right-hand fork for Fratsia. The road climbs and, after 3.3 km, levels out before beginning to descend a little, just as the view of the interior of the island opens before you; at this point, to the right (north), an unsigned track leads up the hill of Palaiokastro. From this point of departure, however, Ag. Kosmás itself is not clearly visible; by taking the asphalt road 500m further towards Fratsia and looking back, you now see the profile of the hill clearly, with the tiny church of Ag. Giorgios crowning the summit, and Ag. Kosmás – the object of this visit – on the shoulder of the hill below and to the east. Access is not always easy and lies partly through dense undergrowth: a stick and good boots are advisable. The walk can take 50 minutes each way from the main road.)
The track ends after 400m in a flat area just below a small, deserted stone house. On the ground here is an ancient carved stone basin and well. Beneath the dense undergrowth all around are the collapsed walls and numerous terraces of an area which was densely inhabited in antiquity, probably the acropolis of the ancient city. Some recent archaeologists (Coldstream & Huxley, 1973) have suggested that the temple of Aphrodite was located ‘on a terrace mid-way between Aghios Kosmás and the chapel of Aghios Giorgios at the summit of the mountain'. This is just above where you are now standing. Aghios Kosmás is clearly visible from here, and is best approached by continuing on the level towards the east, and striking uphill to the church at the very last moment.
This is a tiny, abandoned, isolated and cramped church with no external embellishment or grace whatsoever; but few churches in all of Greece give more poignant expression to the period of turmoil after the collapse of the Graeco-Roman world, when pagan temples were unheedingly pulled down and their elements used in new buildings to the new Deity. The crude exterior of Aghios Kosmás consists mostly of uniform rectangular blocks taken from ancient buildings, with some few truncated columns also incorporated, and supplemented with rough stone filling. Inside, it is dark, and has the feel of a prehistoric cave. The *interior structure of the church dates in all probability from the 6th century AD – although it has been reinforced, retouched and redecorated many times since then. The narthex appears also to have been added at a later date. It is divided (almost as an ancient temple might be) into three successive zones, and the tiny interior space is dominated by the four supporting Doric columns and the disproportionate blocks of ancient masonry on all sides. Schliemann found that two of these columns had not been moved from their original position, and concluded that the church had therefore been built directly over a pagan temple. A couple of the capitals are well preserved, and these, together with the fact that the columns are monolithic, would suggest an early (Archaic) date for the temple to which they belonged. The lintel block over the passage between the narthex-area and the central part of the church is a re-used and inverted piece of ancient architrave: on its inside (east) face, the decorative dentils are still visible. Both long walls and the area above and between the two apses have the very eroded remains of paintings, but with their colours still quite fresh in places. A design with two (as opposed to one or three) apses side by side at the east end is not particularly usual, and in this church it may reflect the dedication to the two Anargyri, or ‘money-less' saints – SS. Cosmas and Damian, who travelled in Syria and in Asia Minor offering their medical services gratis. This particular dedication may also be reflected in the presence of a long, low stone “bench” along the inside walls of the church: part of the early cult of these two saints involved the practice – adopted from pagan forebears – of ‘incubation', in which the sick would sleep in the church hoping for a dream in which the saints would visit them to cure them of their infirmity.
At the summit of the hill of Palaiokastro is the church of Aghios Giorgios. (There is no clear path and a visit is only for those with stamina and determination.) The whitewash of the interior of the church has flaked away to reveal only small traces of wall-painting in the conch of the apse, depicting the Virgin. On the plateau to the west of the church, however, the foundations of a sanctuary to a female deity have been identified; and finds on the site indicate that it was frequented continuously from the 8th century BC through until Hellenistic times. The views which the site commands are magnificent and worthy of any great, Ancient Greek acropolis.
Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cythera_(ancient_town)
Wikidata ID: Q11855334
Trismegistos Geo: 3356

Info: McGilchrist's Greek Islands

(From McGilchrist’s Greek Islands, © Nigel McGilchrist 2010, excerpted with his gracious permission. Click for the books)

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