Nestled next to a small harbor and castle on the southern Mediterranean sea is Paphos Archaeological Park (a UNESCO World Heritage Site).
The area is easily accessible and comprises ruins of villas, theaters, tombs, and palaces. The House of Dionysos, Aion, Theseus and Orpheus present preserved mosaic floors that illuminate ancient Greek mythology.
Having written about the ancient Greeks in my forthcoming book, "Mechanisms and the Contingency of Social Causality," theater was not only of great importance to the Greeks, but it symbolized and fostered understandings of social reality. According to some, the Greeks were the first to articulate the concept of an immortal soul due to ideas put forward by noteworthy figures such as Pythagoras who thought that souls were in themselves gods and were imprisoned in human beings’ body (as if in a tomb) and were heading towards rebirth. Other contributions can be observed in the works of Parmenides, Herodotus, and Empedocles (Endsjø 2009, 106). The Ancient Greek conception of an immortal soul came at a time (750-350 BC) in which most of the world’s greatest faiths formed (Watson 2005, 107). For our purposes, the salience of this historical period can be observed in the fact that populations who articulated and held on to these faiths did so via the attribution of theistic powers to nature and the phenomenal world.
The emergence of theater came about at a time of prosperity in Ancient Greece and an age where Dionysus (the God of the vine) was widely worshiped. In rituals where citizens would gather together to worship Dionysus, a goat would be sacrificed and as Watson (2005) points out, there was a direct link between sacrifice and tragedy because this “primitive ritual lives in our most powerful form of theater” (Watson 2005, 139). Interestingly enough, the word tragedy has etymological roots in the Greek “trag-odia” which meant religious celebration that was narrated by a single person called the Responder. The Responder was supported by a chorus who sang and danced. As time went on, narratives expanded and gods other than Dionysus were represented in such rituals alongside robust and attractive dialogues. This led to a common understanding that a voice that would represent different characters and a new complexity in narratives.
The area's construction began in the 2nd century (A.D.) and was inhabited until the 7th century. The significance of the area was that the Roman governor of Cyprus held his official seat here, which is not surprising considering Cyprus has always held an immensely important geo-strategic meaning to different civilizations and empires for more than 5000 years. Just a few centuries earlier, in 45 AD, the Apostles Paul and Barnabas visited the island and the then capital of Cyprus. Accompanied by the Evangelist John Mark on their missionary journey, both Paul and Barnabas faced difficulties in preaching the gospel to the gentiles.
