Adonis

For other uses, see Adonis (disambiguation).

Adonis, originally a Phoenician god, also known in Greek mythology as a favorite of Aphrodite (Greek Αδωνις, Adōnis, "lord") is a figure with Northwest Semitic antecedents, where he is a central cult figure in various mystery religions, who entered Greek mythology. He is closely related to the Cypriot Gauas or Aos, Egyptian Osiris, the Semitic Tammuz and Baal Hadad, the Etruscan Atunis and the Phrygian Attis, all of whom are deities of rebirth and vegetation. His cult belonged to women: the cult of dying Adonis was fully-developed in the circle of young girls around the poet Sappho from the island of Lesbos, about 600 BCE, as revealed in a fragment of Sappho's surviving poetry.

Adonis was the young lover of Venus. He was gored by a wild boar in the hunt and died in her arms after she came to him when hearing his groans. Upon death, she sprinkled his blood with nectar; and the short-lived windflower, anemone, which takes its name from the wind which so easily makes it fall, was produced. The city Berytos (Beirut) in Lebanon was named after their daughter, Beroe, whom both Dionysus and Poseidon fell in love with. It is said that the blood of Adonis is what turns the Adonis River (modern Nahr Ibrahim in Lebanon) red each spring. Afqa is the sacred source where the waters of the river emerge from a huge grotto in a cliff 200 meters high. It is there that the myth of Astarte (Venus) and Adonis was born.

Origin of the cult

Adonis, a naked Roman torso, restored and completed by François Duquesnoy, formerly in the collection of Cardinal Mazarin (Louvre Museum).

Adonis was worshipped in unspoken mystery religions: not until Imperial Roman times (in Lucian of Samosata, De Dea Syria, ch. 6 ) does any written source mention that the women were consoled by a revived Adonis. The third century BCE poet Euphorion of Chalcis in his Hyacinth wrote "Only Cocytus washed the wounds of Adonis". Women in Athens would plant "gardens of Adonis" quick-growing herbs that sprang up from seed and died. The Festival of Adonis was celebrated by women at midsummer by sowing fennel and lettuce, and grains of wheat and barley. The plants sprang up soon, and withered quickly, and women mourned for the death of the vegetation god (Detienne 1972).

Cultural references to the rebirth mythology

Death of Adonis, by Luca Giordano.

The myth of the death and rebirth of Adonis has featured prominently in a variety of cultural and artistic works. Giovan Battista Marino's masterpiece, Adone, published in 1623, is a long, sensual poem, which elaborates the myth of Adonis, and represents the transition in Italian literature from Mannerism to the Baroque. Percy Bysshe Shelley wrote the poem Adonais for John Keats, and uses the myth as an extended metaphor for Keats' death.

Such allusions have continued to the present day. Adonis (an Arabic transliteration of the same name, أدونيس) is the pen name of a famous Syrian poet, Ali Ahmad Said Asbar, who was nominated more than once for a Nobel Prize for literature, including in 2006. His choice of name relates especially to the rebirth element of the myth of Adonis (also called "Tammuz" in Arabic), which was an important theme in mid-20th century Arabic poetry, chiefly amongst followers of the "Free Verse" (الشعر الحر) movement founded by Iraqi poet Badr Shakir al-Sayyab. Adunis has used the myth of his namesake in many of his poems, for example in "Wave I", from his most recent book "Start of the Body, End of the Sea" (Saqi, 2002), which includes a complete retelling of the birth of the god.

Modern association with physical beauty and youth

A 19th-century reproduction of a Greek bronze of Adonis found at Pompeii.

An extremely attractive, youthful male is often called an Adonis, often with a connotation of deserved vanity: "the office Adonis". The legendary attractiveness of the figure is referenced in Sarrasine by Honoré de Balzac, which describes an unrequited love of the main character, Sarrasine for the image in a painting of an Adonis and a castrato. The allusion to extreme physical attractiveness is apparent in the psychoanalytical Adonis Complex which refers to a body image obsession with improving one's physique and youthful appearance.

Bodybuilders use the expression "Adonis belt" to refer to the two shallow grooves of the surface anatomy of the human abdomen running from the iliac crest (hip bone) to the pubis.

Church of the Nativity and Shrine of Adonis-Tammuz

According to some scholars, the Church of the Nativity in Bethlemen is built over a cave that was originally a shrine to Adonis-Tammuz.

The Church Father Jerome, who died in Bethlehem in 420, reports in addition that the holy cave was at one point consecrated by the heathen to the worship of Adonis, and a pleasant sacred grove planted before it, to wipe out the memory of Jesus. Modern mythologists, however, reverse the supposition, insisting that the cult of Adonis-Tammuz originated the shrine and that it was the Christians who took it over, substituting the worship of their own god.

See also

• Adonia, feasts celebrating Adonis
• Adonis interpreted by R. Segal; a Jungian interpretation of the Adonis myth.
• Adonism
• Apheca
• Muscle dysmorphia, as part of Adonis Complex
• Myrrha, mother of Adonis per Greek mythology