1 “It was Always Far Away”: Cyprus in Ancient Greek Comedy Antonis K. Petrides 1. Between Self and Other: Cyprus in the Greek imaginary Political mythology has it that in August 1974, faced with the dilemma whether Greece should send troops to Cyprus to ward off the second wave of the Turkish invasion, a phrase by Prime Minister Konstantinos Karamanlis encapsulated the collapse of any lingering illusions about Greece as the proverbial ‘National Centre’: “Ἡ Κύπρος κεῖται μακράν” (“Cyprus is far away”). In reality, Karamanlis’ reaction in this occasion, 1 and his political thought at large, were much more nuanced. Nonetheless, the incident and its distortion are suggestive of the ambiguity of Cyprus in the modern Greek imaginary as a locus in-between Self and Other, an imperative of national pride, which remains geographically remote and, thus unprioritised. The feeling recurs frequently in modern Greek literature, too. With the provocative Cavafyan concoction ἐν μέρει ἑλληνίζων 2 as title of his Cypriot trilogy’s first instalment (2009), Miltiades Hatzopoulos 3 ironized, all at once, the furiously polemical constructions of Cypriot identity and the bemusement of the Greek state vis-à-vis the increasingly pressing Cypriot demand for Enosis during the British colonial rule. In his ‘hidden’ poem “Returning from Greece” (“Ἐπάνοδος ἀπὸ τὴν Ἑλλάδα”), 4 written a century earlier (1911), Cavafy himself had evoked this off-centeredness, even centrifugality, of Cyprus from the perspective of two Hellenistic Cypriots (one of them with a glaringly Greek name, Hermippos, the other anonymous). The duo is glad to be returning from Greece ‘to the fatherland’ and even gladder to be rid of pretences, such as ‘their kings’ entertained, about their special brand of Greekness: Εἴμεθα Ἕλληνες κ᾽ ἐμεῖς —τί ἄλλο εἴμεθα;— ἀλλὰ μὲ ἀγάπες καὶ μὲ συγκινήσεις τῆς Ἀσίας, ἀλλὰ μὲ ἀγάπες καὶ μὲ συγκινήσεις ποὺ κάποτε ξενίζουν τὸν ἑλληνισμό. We are Greeks, as well—what else are we?— But with Asiatic tastes and emotions, With tastes and emotions Sometimes alien to Hellenism. Such otherings of Cyprus are not exclusively modern. Classical Greek authors were just as ambivalent regarding the Cypriots. 5 Aeschylus, Suppliant Women, 282–283, for 1 On the events, Hatzivassiliou 2011. 2 C. P. Cavafy, “Τα επικίνδυνα”: “ἐν μέρει ἐθνικὸς κ᾽ ἐν μέρει χριστιανίζων)…” (Cavafy 1991, 50). 3 Hatzopoulos 2009. 4 Cavafy 1993, 96–97. 5 References to Cyprus by ancient authors are collected in Hadjioannou 1971.