It was somewhere about this time that the reigning princes of Salamis, who at the time of the Ionic revolt had been Greeks of the Teukrid Gens,[35] were supplanted and dethroned by a Phœnician exile who gained their confidence and made himself despot in their place.[36] To insure his own sceptre, this usurper did everything in his power to multiply and strengthen the Phœnician population, as well as to discourage and degrade the Hellenic. The same policy was not only continued by his successor at Salamis, but seems also to have been imitated in several of the other towns; insomuch that during most part of the Peloponnesian war, Cyprus became sensibly dis-hellenized. The Greeks in the island were harshly oppressed; new Greek visitors and merchants were kept off by the most repulsive treatment, as well as by threats of those cruel mutilations of the body which were habitually employed as penalties by the Orientals; while Grecian arts, education, music, poetry, and intelligence, were rapidly on the decline.[37] [35] One of these princes, however, is mentioned as bearing the Phœnician name of Siromus (Herod. v, 104). [36] We may gather this by putting together Herodot. iv, 102; v, 104-114, with Isokrates, Or. ix, (Evagoras) s. 22. [37] Isokrates, Or. ix, (Evag.) s. 23, 55, 58. Παραλαβὼν γὰρ (Evagoras) ~τὴν πόλιν ἐκβεβαρβαρωμένην~, καὶ διὰ τὴν τῶν Φοινίκων ἀρχὴν οὔτε τοὺς Ἕλληνας προσδεχομένην, οὔτε τέχνας ἐπισταμένην, οὔτ’ ἐμπορίῳ χρωμένην, οὔτε λιμένα κεκτημένην, etc. Πρὶν μὲν γὰρ λαβεῖν Εὐαγόραν τὴν ἀρχὴν, οὕτως ἀπροσοίστως καὶ χαλεπῶς εἶχον, ὥστε καὶ τῶν ἀρχόντων τούτους ἐνόμιζον εἶναι βελτίστους οἵ ~τινες ὠμότατα πρὸς τοὺς Ἕλληνας διακείμενοι~ τυγχάνοιεν, etc. This last passage receives remarkable illustration from the oration of Lysias against Andokides, in which he alludes to the visit of the latter to Cyprus—μετὰ δὲ ταῦτα ἔπλευσεν ὡς τὸν Κιτιέων βασιλέα, καὶ προδιδοὺς ληφθεὶς ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ ἐδέθη, καὶ οὐ μόνον τὸν θάνατον ἐφοβεῖτο ἀλλὰ τὰ καθ’ ἡμέραν αἰκίσματα, ~οἰόμενος τὰ ἀκρωτήρια ζῶντος~ ἀποτμηθήσεσθαι (s. 26). Engel (Kypros, vol. i, p. 286) impugns the general correctness of this narrative of Isokrates. He produces no adequate reasons, nor do I myself see any, for this contradiction. Not only Konon, but also his friend Nikophemus, had a wife and family at Cyprus, besides another family in Athens (Lysias, De Bonis Aristophanis, Or. xix, s. 38).