In ancient tradition, Aphrodite had her great sanctuary at Paphos, because it was here that she ‘rose from the sea.’ And there is a very good reason why she should have been supposed to have ‘risen from the sea’ at Paphos; a natural occurrence which it was possible to study and to explain during a spell of very stormy weather in December 1913.

The edge of the plateau, on which the Paphian Temple stands, approaches the coast a little south of the outfall of the Xylino stream, whose ravine bounds the sanctuary to the eastward. From this point north-westwards to New Paphos (Ktima), where a similar plateau-spur shelters a precarious anchorage—the Roman, mediaeval, and modern port—is a single slightly-bayed stretch of steep shingle with level fields inland, the ‘fertile plain stretching down to the sea’ in the sketch-map, JHS IX pl. vii.