Adonis and Aphrodite

Adonis was a beautiful young man loved by the goddess Aphrodite, and by Persephone as well. In Apollodorus he is born from the myrrh tree into which his mother had been turned, and Zeus divides the year between the two goddesses and Adonis himself. He was killed by a boar while hunting, and in Ovid the anemone grows from his blood. The story is one of Aphrodite’s few tragic love affairs.

The Background

Cenchreis

The sources disagree about who Adonis’ parents were. Hesiod made him the son of Phoenix and Alphesiboea; Panyassis called him the son of Thias, king of Assyria, and of Thias’ daughter Smyrna; and Apollodorus himself gives Cinyras, king of Cyprus, and Metharme, daughter of Pygmalion, as his parents (Apollodorus, Library 3.14.3–4). The best-known version, followed by Ovid, makes him the son of Cinyras by his own daughter Myrrha (Ovid, Metamorphoses 10.298–502). In Ovid, Cinyras’ wife is Cenchreis; the nurse of Myrrha found her chance during a festival of Ceres, when the women observed nine nights of chastity and Cenchreis was away at the rites (Metamorphoses 10.431–438).

Myrrha

Why Myrrha, also called Smyrna, fell in love with her father is explained in two ways. Apollodorus, following Panyassis, says that it was the anger of Aphrodite, because Smyrna did not honor the goddess (Library 3.14.4). Ovid denies that Venus was responsible and blames a Fury (Metamorphoses 10.311–315). With her nurse’s help, Myrrha slept with her father in the dark, for twelve nights according to Apollodorus. When he learned who she was, he drew his sword and chased her (Library 3.14.4; Metamorphoses 10.438–475).

In Ovid, Myrrha, already pregnant, wandered for nine months, until she prayed to the gods to be neither among the living nor among the dead. In pity they changed her into a tree, the myrrh tree, whose gum was said to be her tears (Metamorphoses 10.476–502). Apollodorus gives the same outcome: the gods turned her into the tree called smyrna, myrrh (Library 3.14.4).

The Birth of Adonis

Apollodorus says that ten months later the tree burst open and Adonis was born (Library 3.14.4). In Ovid, Lucina, the goddess of childbirth, helped the tree to deliver, and the Naiads laid the baby on soft grass and anointed him with his mother’s tears (Metamorphoses 10.503–518). Even as a baby he was so beautiful that Envy herself would have praised him.

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Aphrodite and Persephone

Loved by Two Goddesses

For the sake of the child’s beauty, Aphrodite hid him in a chest without telling the other gods and gave the chest to Persephone to keep. When Persephone saw him, she would not give him back (Apollodorus, Library 3.14.4). Adonis grew into a youth whom Aphrodite loved above all others; Ovid says that she preferred him even to heaven (Metamorphoses 10.519–532). In Lucian’s Dialogues of the Gods, Aphrodite complains to Selene that Eros made her love Anchises and Adonis, and then made Persephone fall in love with the boy and robbed her of half her sweetheart; Lucian calls Adonis the Assyrian lad of Mount Libanus. She says she has threatened Eros many times to smash his bow and arrows and strip off his wings if he does not stop (Dialogues of the Gods, Aphrodite and Selene, 19 in the standard numbering, 11 in older editions).

Zeus’ Verdict

The two goddesses took their quarrel to Zeus, and the case was tried before him (Apollodorus, Library 3.14.4). According to Apollodorus, the year was divided into three parts: Adonis was to stay by himself for one part of the year, with Persephone for another part, and with Aphrodite for the remainder (Library 3.14.4). Adonis then gave his own share to Aphrodite as well.

The Succession of the Seasons

The surviving sources do not say that the division of the year was meant to explain the seasons. Apollodorus states only the arrangement of the three parts and that Adonis added his own part to Aphrodite’s (Library 3.14.4). The ancient texts also give no months for each period; the common claim of four months each is a modern calculation from the three parts.

Adonis and Aphrodite

Aphrodite, the Hunter

In Ovid, Venus was so smitten with Adonis that she neglected heaven and Cythera, Paphos and Amathus, and followed him over the hills and through the woods. She dressed like Diana, with her robe tucked up to her knees, and she urged on the hounds and hunted harmless animals such as hares and deer. She kept away from boars, wolves and bears and lions, and warned Adonis to do the same (Metamorphoses 10.519–559). She told him to be bold against timid animals but not to attack the ones armed by nature: neither his youth nor his beauty, she said, moves lions or bristling boars, and she feared and hated them all (Metamorphoses 10.542–552). To make the warning stronger she told him the story of Atalanta and Hippomenes: Hippomenes won the race with the help of Venus, forgot to thank her, and was angrily made to desecrate a sacred cave of Cybele, after which he and Atalanta were turned into lions (Metamorphoses 10.560–707). Then Venus drove away in her swan-drawn chariot.

The Wild Boar

Adonis did not heed the warning. In Ovid, his hounds roused a boar from its lair, and Adonis wounded it with his spear. The boar shook off the weapon, chased him, and buried its tusks in his groin, leaving him dying on the yellow sand (Metamorphoses 10.708–716). Apollodorus says that he was still a boy when he was wounded and killed by a boar through the anger of Artemis, but gives no reason (Library 3.14.4). In Euripides’ Hippolytus, Artemis promises that, to avenge Hippolytus, she will with her own arrows kill the mortal dearest to Aphrodite (1416–1422); the ancient commentators and translators identify him as Adonis. In Nonnus, the boar that kills Adonis is Ares himself in disguise, acting out of jealousy (Dionysiaca 41; the same idea is alluded to in Book 29).

The Red Rose and the Anemone

In Ovid, Aphrodite was crossing the sky in her chariot drawn by swans when she heard Adonis groaning, and turned back. She found him dead, tore her hair and beat her breast, and blamed the Fates. Then she said that his death would be remembered every year in a mourning rite, and that his blood would be changed into a flower. She sprinkled the blood with fragrant nectar, and it swelled up as bubbles rise in rainy weather. In an hour a flower sprang up, blood-red like the fruit of a pomegranate. It is short-lived: it clings so weakly that the winds which give it its name, the anemone, shake it off (Metamorphoses 10.717–739). The story that the red rose grew from Aphrodite’s blood as she ran to Adonis does not appear in Ovid, Apollodorus or the other ancient sources.

Mourning for Adonis

Ovid’s Venus says that she will institute a yearly mourning rite for Adonis (Metamorphoses 10.725–726). Plato mentions the “gardens of Adonis”, seeds planted in the heat of summer that sprang up in eight days (Phaedrus 276b). At Byblos, Lucian says, the people beat their breasts and mourned Adonis every year, believing that he had been wounded there by the boar, and then made offerings to him as to a dead man, and on the next day declared that he lived. The river Adonis, running from Lebanon into the sea, turned red each year, and the people of Byblos said it was Adonis’ blood (Lucian, On the Syrian Goddess 6–8; Strabo 16.2.18–19 for the river and the city, sacred to Adonis).

Adonis and Aphrodite Sources

The most famous retelling of the story of Adonis and Aphrodite is in Ovid, Metamorphoses 10.298–739 (Myrrha 298–502, birth 503–514, Venus and Adonis 519–739). Ovid does not mention the dispute between Persephone and Aphrodite, which is told in Apollodorus’ Library 3.14.3–4, along with the versions of Hesiod and Panyassis. Other sources used: Euripides, Hippolytus 1416–1422; Lucian, Dialogues of the Gods 19 (Aphrodite and Selene) and On the Syrian Goddess 6–8; Plato, Phaedrus 276b; Strabo 16.2.18–19; Nonnus, Dionysiaca 29 and 41.