Love Stories from Mythology

Adonis

According to the earliest mention of Adonis (Ἄδωνις) in the Catalogues of Women (attributed to Hesiod), as well as in Apollodorus'Library, Adonis was the son of Phoenix and Alphesiboea. But the Catalogues of Women doesn't speak of his life and death.

Apollodorus also mentioned other possible parents for Adonis. Adonis could possibly be the son of Cinyras, son of Megassares, and of Metharme, daughter of Pygmalion. Adonis also has a brother, named Oxyporos, and three sisters - Orsedice, Laogore and Braisia. His sisters slept with foreigners and lived their lives in Egypt, as punishment from Aphrodite.

But Apollodorus favoured Theias, king of Assyria, being his father, while his mother was Smyrna, Theias' own daughter. The Roman poet, Ovid, called his father Cinyras, and his mother Myrrha, who was Cinyras' daughter. The names of Smyrna and Myrrha are the same, and means "myrrha tree". Whoever was Adonis' parents, the tales of Apollodorus and Ovid were the same: his daughter had slept with her own father, and the gods hid her from her father's murderous rage by changing her into a myrrh tree. 

According to Apollodorus, Aphrodite punished Smyrna because of her failure to honour her, so the goddess made the girl fall in love with her own father. With the help of a nurse, Smyrna slept with her father.

When the father discovered that the girl he had being sleeping with, was his own daughter, in both grief and anger, she pursued his daughter with a sword. The gods save the girl (Myrrha or Smyrna), pregnant from her father's seed, by changing her into myrrha tree.

Ten months later, the myrrh tree split opened, revealing a child. The goddess Aphrodite (Venus), who was most likely responsible for Myrrha's incestuous passion for her father, fell in love with the newborn boy, whom she named Adonis. She secretly hid the child in the chest from the gods, giving the infant to Persephone to care for.

However, Persephone also fell in love with child, when she opened the chest, and refused to give the boy up to Aphrodite. Their father, Zeus, settled the bitter dispute between the two goddesses. Zeus judged that Adonis would live a third of his life as he wished; a third in the Underworld with Persephone, and the other third with Aphrodite. Adonis actually spends his free time with the other third with Aphrodite.

According to another Roman author, Hyginus, Zeus had the Muse Calliope as the judge in the dispute between Aphrodite and Persephone, who decreed that Adonis should spend half of the year with each goddess. Aphrodite was furious with the decision, stirred trouble among the Maenads, who murdered the Thracian singer, Orpheus, Calliope's son.

When he grew into a beautiful young man, Adonis spent most of his time, out hunting in the woods, with Aphrodite as his companion. Apollodorus mentioned that Artemis was angry with Adonis, and had sent a wild boar to kill Adonis, while he was still a boy, probably because Aphrodite had caused the death of Hippolytus, son of Theseus. But later Apollodorus mentioned that he was killed when he was a young man.

Ovid elaborated further the second scenario. Eros or Cupid had accidentally nicked Aphrodite with one of his arrows her white breast, which caused her to fall in love with Adonis. Aphrodite followed Adonis in his hunting trip, often tried to dissuade him from hunting wild animals in the woods. Aphrodite left the youth, in her chariot pulled by swans, heading towards Cyprus. But the young man refused to heed her warning.

Adonis tracked down a boar, wounding it with a spear. Enraged at being wounded, the wild boar pursued and fatally wounded Adonis in the groins with its slashing tusks. Before Aphrodite reached her island, she heard Adonis dying groan. Distraught, Aphrodite returned quickly to her young lover, but couldn't save Adonis. She found him lying in a pool of blood.

To ensure that Adonis will not be forgotten, she decreed that a festival, Adonia, would be held that will re-enact his death. Aphrodite had also caused blood-red flower, called anemone, to spring from the Adonis' blood.

It has been speculated that the wild boar was actually either Aphrodite's jealous husband Hephaestus or lover Ares.