Kythira

According to Hesiod, Aphrodite rose from the sea foam off Kythira’s coast before drifting on to Cyprus, which got the temples and the tourism. Kythira got a smaller footnote and, eventually, a population problem.

The island peaked at about 14,500 residents in 1864. Today it hovers around 3,650. Most of the difference went to Australia, where thousands of Kytherians settled in the early 20th century, followed by thousands more after the Second World War. Descendants now number somewhere between 60,000 and 80,000, which means Kythira’s largest population center is a country on the other side of the planet.

The diaspora didn’t forget where it came from. In the early 1950s, Greek-Americans ran a fundraising campaign to build the island’s first hospital, the Trifylleion. One of the biggest contributors was Mihalis Semitekolos, a New York City restaurateur who gave enough to earn the Order of the Phoenix from King Paul of Greece. The hospital opened in 1953 and remains the island’s only one. An island that gave the world a goddess now depends on the love of its own emigrants.