There is another sign, which strongly tends to connect Cyprus with the Pelasgian races, especially those which belong to Asia. It is the worship of Venus, who had in that island her especial sanctuary, and who, upon her detection in the Odyssey[351], takes refuge there. In the war, she is keenly interested on the Trojan side: and the Trojan history is too plainly marked with the influence of the idea, that exalted her to Olympian rank. That Venus was known mythologically among the Hellenic tribes, we see from the lay of Demodocus. That she was worshipped among them, seems to be rendered extremely improbable by the fact, that Diomed wounds her in his ἀριστεῖα[352]. We must consider her as a peculiarly, and perhaps in Homer’s time almost exclusively Pelasgian deity; and her local abode at Paphos may be taken as a marked sign, accordingly, of the Pelasgianism of Cyprus. We have already seen Agapenor, a stranger, placed by Agamemnon in command of the Pelasgian forces of Arcadia; and Minos, a stranger, acquire dominion over the partially, and perhaps mainly, Pelasgian population of Crete. It seems probable, that Cyprus in this too affords us a parallel. We have the following considerations to guide us in the question. First, the Pelasgians, not being a maritime, were consequently not a mercantile people. Secondly, from the description of the gift sent by Cinyres, we must understand it, on account of the preciousness of its materials and its ornaments, to have been a first rate example of the skill of the workers in metal of the period. Such things were not produced by Pelasgians; and we must, to be consistent with all the other Homeric indications, suppose this breastplate to have been of Sidonian or Phœnician workmanship. This supposition connects Cinyres himself with Phœnicia, while his people were Pelasgian. Again, on examining his name we find in it no Pelasgian characteristics; but it appears to be Asiatic, and to signify a musical instrument with strings, which was used in Asia[353]. All this makes it likely, upon Homeric presumptions, that he was a Phœnician, or a person of Phœnician connections, and that into his hands the old Pelasgic sovereignty of Minos had passed over from the Iasid family, which had reigned there shortly before the _Troica_.