Of the three factors, race, language and religion, which contribute to the sense of Cypriote nationality, the first, paradoxical as it may seem, is the least important. From ancient times there was extensive colonization of the island from Greece proper. In the dialect of Greek which was thus naturalized in the island there have survived, it is alleged, more elements of ancient Greek than in other parts of the old Hellenic area. Should this be so, it would be due to the very fact that Cyprus was remote from the Hellenic centre; had it been nearer, the language would have gone the same way to decay as it did elsewhere.

But at no time has the island been a constituent part of Hellenic Greece. It was absorbed, along with, but not as an integral part of, Greece proper and the Aegean area, by the Byzantine Empire. Its Church was an autocephalous member of the Holy Eastern Orthodox Church, and thus religion combined with language to foster the idea that the Cypriotes were Greek in origin. That there was real racial affinity with the Hellenic stock there is nothing to prove; the anthropological evidence, so far as it goes, seems on the whole to favour the contrary view. And the only evidence from the literature of ancient Hellas is conclusively to the effect that there, in the fifth century, the Cypriote type was regarded as alien. But all this is of little more than academic importance. ‘A nation,’ it has been well said, ‘when considered from its earliest to its latest days, is much more a body of ideas than a race of men.’