The Mythology Book

(Chris Devlin) #1

88


SHE WANTS ADONIS


MORE THAN SHE


DOES HEAVEN ITSELF


APHRODITE AND ADONIS


E


ven Aphrodite, the great
goddess of love, was not
immune to the darts of
desire. One day, as Eros played in
his mother’s arms, one of his arrows
brushed against her breast. When
she looked up, the first person that
Aphrodite chanced to see was the
beautiful Adonis, as he sprinted
past with his pack of hounds in
pursuit of a lone deer.

Aphrodite was instantly smitten.
Adonis, Myrrha’s son, was not only
the fairest youth of all—to this day
his name is a byword for male
beauty—but also the least

Adonis rejects Aphrodite as he
hurries off to hunt. In Titian’s Venus
and Adonis (1554), this is no time for
love—Eros is asleep, dawn is breaking,
and the hounds yearn to leave.

IN BRIEF


THEME
Unrequited love

SOURCES
Metamorphoses, Ovid, 8 ce;
Library, Pseudo-Apollodorus,
ca. 10 0 ce.

SETTING
Ancient Greece.

KEY FIGURES
Aphrodite Goddess of love;
known as Venus in Roman
myth, she pursued Adonis
relentlessly.

Eros Son of Aphrodite; god
of sexual attraction.

Cinyras King of Cyprus;
deceived and seduced by his
daughter, then disgusted by
her.

Myrrha Daughter of Cinyras;
pitying her, the gods later
turned her into a myrrh tree.

Adonis Son of Cinyras and
Myrrha; a beautiful and
chaste youth.

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89
See also: Orpheus and Eurydice 53 ■ Perseus and Medusa 82–83 ■ Cupid and Psyche 112–13 ■
Echo and Narcissus 114 ■ Pomona and Vertumnus 122–123 ■ Pyramus and Thisbe 124

ANCIENT GREECE


attainable. Resolutely chaste, he
had no interest in romantic love—
hunting was the only passion that
stirred his cold heart. Day and night,
he ran through dense dark forest in
search of every sort of quarry.
Inflamed by desire, Aphrodite
set off in pursuit of Adonis, her long
hair streaming behind, and her
garments flying open as she ran.
Each time she caught Adonis, he
struggled free. He would not submit
to her embraces, however much
she called after him to stay.

Unheeded warnings
Pursuing Adonis through the
woods, Aphrodite took care to steer
clear of savage boars and other wild
animals that might attack, and
urged Adonis to do the same.
Adonis dismissed Aphrodite’s
fears, rejected her pleas and
caresses, and returned to his
hunt—only to be charged by a
giant and ferocious wild boar. Its
sharp tusk sliced into his groin—a
symbolic castration regarded by
some scholars as punishment for
his rejection of sexual love. As

Adonis lay dying in the arms of the
weeping Aphrodite, his blood
spilled out. At her command, the
bloody drops stained the lovely
petals of the anemone a deep red,
and the flower sprung up afresh
each year.

Adonis and the seasons
Athenian women held an annual
festival in memory of Adonis, called
the Adonia. Plato disapproved, but
otherwise the overwhelmingly male
official chroniclers of Greek life said
little about this festival of female

sexuality. Women openly celebrated
male physical beauty and mourned
its fleeting nature. They and their
daughters made miniature gardens
in pots packed with fast-growing
plants and carried them up to the
rooftops. When the Adonia’s eight
days of dance and song ended, the
plants were thrown into streams
or the ocean—a symbolic act seen
by some scholars as an attempt
to generate plentiful rain for the
coming harvest.
In myths and festivals alike,
Adonis was not only remembered for
his cold beauty but linked to fertility,
the seasons, and the cycle of decay
and regeneration. One myth, for
example, tells of a conflict between
Aphrodite and Persephone over who
should be allowed to keep the
infant Adonis. Zeus ordered Adonis
to divide his time equally between
the two, spending spring and
summer with Aphrodite (among the
living) and fall and winter with
Persephone (in the Underworld). This
tale emphasizes Adonis’s
connection to fertility and the cycle
of death and revival in crops. ■

Myrrha


Adonis was conceived through
his mother Myrrha’s unnatural
desire for her father Cinyras,
king of Cyprus. This happened
when Myrrha slipped into his
bed one night, after he had
drunk too much wine, tricking
him into believing she was her
mother. Her incestuous passion
was punishment from the
Furies, Cinyras’s unwitting
involvement an act of spite by
Aphrodite, who had taken great
offense when Myrrha’s mother,
Kenkhreis, had boasted about

her daughter’s beauty. Fleeing
her outraged father, Myrrha was
turned into a tree at her own
request, after praying for
transformation from the gods
as a punishment for her actions.
Shedding tears of myrrh, she
gave birth to Adonis, who was
perversely chaste. Classical
writers wrote that Myrrha’s lust
for her father came from an
obsession with her virginity.

Myrrha hides her face in shame as
the poets Dante and Virgil journey
through Hell, in an illustration by
Gustave Doré (1885).

My dear Adonis,
keep away from
savage beasts.
Metamorphoses

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