Day 7 in Cyprus started with us checking out of our hotel in Limassol and then headed to Petra tou Romiou or Aphrodite’s Rock which is considered to be the location that the Greek goddess was born. She is the goddess of Love and Beauty. On the bus ride to the location, our tour guide Dimitra explained that her father made her marry an ugly man because it was the man he chose for her. Aphrodite is said to have agreed but wasn’t happy and used it as an excuse to have many lovers in her life. One of her most famous lovers was a mortal man who was a prince and very handsome. She spent a lot of her time with him until he was killed in a hunting accident. Once we got to the location we took stairs down to the beach to see the rock. It was unfortunately very windy today and cloudy today, but the water was still so beautiful and crystal clear.

Our second stop of the day was the town of Paphos and the archeological ruins. We visited the House of Dionysus who is the Greek god of wine. The house was named this due to the mosaics covering the floors of the house many of which feature the god of wine. The first mosaic Dimitra taught us about was one that was found 1 meter below the rest of the mosaics and was later brought up to be even with the rest of the mosaics. It is from the Hellenistic period and it is of the monster Scylla. The mosaic is made up of black and white pebbles that were collected from the sea. Scylla was a Greek mythological creature that was female with 5 dog heads with a monster’s tail. In the mosaic below only 3 are shown because when you would look at her you could only see three because the other two were behind her. She also appears to be holding a cross, but this was well before Christianity. She is actually holding the mast of a ship that she had just sunk.

A second mosaic we saw in the room was one with four seasons. This one along with the rest of the mosaics in the house were from late 2nd and early 3rd century A.D all based off Roman designs. The mosaic, shown below, consists of a man, most likely Dionysus, in the center and the four seasons in each corner of the four corners. The other four squares of the 3×3 design consist of what appears to be animals to separate the different human personifications of each season. Another unique aspect of this mosaic is that there is a 3D aspect which was difficult to get in paintings, but was much easier to show geometrically in mosaics. I personally have never seen the geometric design in a mosaic before and found it a really unique and beautiful addition to the artwork. In this mosaic the artist uses a variety of geometric techniques in order to create depth. They most likely used stones that they found and were able to cut and position in order to turn the room into a unique display of beautiful art.

In the mosaic below, is a man from Greek mythology known as Narcissus who is said to have been a very handsome man. He was so handsome that he fell in love with his own reflection. It is hard to see in the picture, but he is staring down and admiring his own reflection. The story in Greek mythology is that one day he was staring at his reflection in the river one day and fell in and drowned. The story is meant to be a lesson to humans to not be too self obsessed.

After exploring and learning all about the mosaics in the House of Dionysus, we were allowed to explore the rest of the town of pathos. A small group of us went down the strip of restaurants and experienced a very unique situation. All of the restaurants had a person standing outside with the sole purpose of trying to convince people to eat at their restaurant. I had personally never experienced this and found it interesting to see how a competitive market was created since so many restaurants and shops were all right next to each other. We ended up going to a restaurant where the man offered us a 10% discount off of our food since we were a group larger than 4. I ended up getting chicken al penne which was very good. The restaurant was right on the water as shown in the picture below. We then left the restaurant and caught up with a different group of students and wandered around the various shops. I did not end up buying anything but found the stores interesting to explore with their various merchandise.