Hellenistic

After Alexander’s death Cyprus becomes a prize in the wars of his successors. Everyone wants it: ship timber, copper and good harbours on the road to Egypt. The contest between Ptolemy and Antigonos ends in 294 BC — Cyprus passes firmly to the Ptolemies and stays Egyptian for nearly three centuries.

The end of the kingdoms

The Ptolemies had no intention of tolerating a dozen kings. Marion was destroyed in 312 BC and its people moved to Paphos; Arsinoe was later founded on the same spot. Nikokreon, the last king of Salamis, killed himself along with his whole family in 311 BC when accused of treason. In a few years a political order seven centuries old simply vanished.

For the first time the island is governed from a single place. The capital becomes Nea Paphos — today’s Kato Paphos Archaeological Park, seat of the Ptolemaic governor.

What remains

The Tombs of the Kings at Paphos are the finest monument of the age, though no king lies there. They are the rock-cut burial places of the Ptolemaic elite: underground peristyle courts copied from Alexandrian models. The Agia Solomoni catacombs in the same city date from the same period and were later turned into a Christian chapel.

On the east coast the Makronissos cemetery survives — nineteen chamber tombs cut into the rock.

Hellenistic Cyprus also gave the Mediterranean something entirely immaterial: Zeno, founder of the Stoic school, came from Kition.

In 58 BC Rome annexes the island, and it becomes a Roman province for good in 30 BC with the fall of the Ptolemaic kingdom. The Roman period begins.