Adonis: Aphrodite and the Boar

Catalogue ID: 05-local-and-lesser/005-adonis-aphrodite-boar-apollodorus

Cycle: Local and lesser — Cypriot / Levantine cult myth in Greek dress

Version line: Apollodorean (birth from Myrrha/Smyrna; Aphrodite; Persephone; boar death); Bion’s *Lament*

Sources: Apollodorus, *Library* 3.14.3–4; Bion, *Lament for Adonis*; Pausanias 2.20.5, 6.24.7, 9.16.4 (cult notices); Sappho fr. 140 (Adonis ritual cry)

Source file: /workspace/greek-myth-catalogue/05-local-and-lesser/005-adonis-aphrodite-boar-apollodorus.md

Characters

Adonis — beautiful youth; shared between Aphrodite and Persephone; killed by a boar
Artemis — lover and protector; mourns Adonis
Boar — agent of Adonis’s death
Cinyras — father of Smyrna; grandfather of Adonis (Apollodorean strand)
Hades — foster-guardian who claims Adonis for part of the year
Myrrha — mother; becomes the myrrh tree
Philotes — arbiter of the shared year (common strand)

Places

Cyprus — Cinyras’s kingdom; Adonis’s birth region
Greek cities — women’s mourning rites
Underworld — Adonis’s portion of the year
Wilds where Adonis hunts — scene of the boar attack

Themes

Narrative

Apollodorus recounts that Cinyras of Cyprus (or related Near Eastern genealogies) had a daughter Smyrna (Myrrha) who conceived an unlawful passion for her father (Aphrodite’s punishment in fuller tellings). Discovered, she was transformed into the myrrh tree; in due time the tree split and Adonis was born. Aphrodite hid the infant in a chest and entrusted him to Persephone; Persephone, seeing his beauty, would not give him back. Zeus (or Calliope as arbiter in some strands) settled that Adonis should divide the year between the two goddesses—or spend part with each and a third portion as he chose, which he gave to Aphrodite. Adonis grew into a hunter. Ares (or Artemis, or a jealous Hephaestus—motives vary), or simply the chance of the hunt, sent or caused a wild boar that gored him to death in Aphrodite’s arms. From his blood sprang anemones (poetic etiology). Women of Greece and the East mourned him in the Adonia with gardens that withered quickly and ritual lament—“woe for Adonis”—attested already in Sappho. The myth joins Cypriot-Phoenician cult to Greek divine rivalry (Aphrodite vs. Persephone), seasonal death and return, and the doomed mortal beloved of a goddess.