We have seen Cyprus, at a very early age, from a Phœnician, become a Grecian island, and Salamis the first Grecian city founded there. We have then observed the Cyprian Greeks yielding to the Persian power. The ruin of the marine, the inertness of the court, and the distraction in the councils of Persia, which followed, would afford opportunity and temptation for the Cypriots, beyond other subjects of the empire, again to revolt; and the Persian interest, and the Greek, and the Phœnician, and the tyrannic, and the oligarchal, and the democratical, would be likely to fall into various contest. Such, as far as may be gathered, was the state of things which first invited Athenian ambition to direct its view to Cyprus, when the Athenian navy, rising on the ruins of the Persian, was extending dominion for Athens on all sides, under the first administration of Pericles. This view, quickly diverted to other objects, was however, after a change in the Athenian administration, resumed; and Cimon, as we have seen, died in command in Cyprus. The policy of Athens would of course propose to hold dominion, there as elsewhere, through support given to the democratical interest. But after the death of Cimon wars so engaged the Athenian government as to prevent the extension of any considerable exertion to such a distance; and the Cyprian cities were mostly governed by their several princes or tyrants, under the paramount sovereignty of Persia. Among the fugitive Greeks was Evagoras, a youth who claimed descent from the ancient princes of Salamis, of the race of Teucer. Informed of the state of things, this young man formed the bold resolution, with only about fifty fellow-sufferers in exile, devoted to his cause, to attempt the recovery of what he claimed as his paternal principality. From Soli in Cilicia, their place of refuge, they passed to the Cyprian shore, and proceeded to Salamis by night. Knowing the place well, they forced a small gate, probably as in peace, unguarded, marched directly to the palace, and, after a severe conflict, overcoming the tyrant’s guard, while the people mostly kept aloof, they remained masters of the city, and Evagoras resumed the sovereignty.