22 Facts About Adonis

Adonis was the mortal lover of the goddess Aphrodite in Greek mythology.

One day, Adonis was gored by a wild boar during a hunting trip and died in Aphrodite's arms as she wept.

Adonis's blood mingled with her tears and became the anemone flower.

Adonis's name comes from a Canaanite word meaning "lord" and most modern scholars consider the story of Aphrodite and Adonis to be derived from the earlier Mesopotamian myth of Inanna and Dumuzid (Tammuz).

In late 19th and early 20th century scholarship of religion, Adonis was widely seen as a prime example of the archetypal dying-and-rising god.

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Adonis's name is often applied in modern times to handsome youths, of whom he is the archetype.

Worship of Aphrodite and Adonis is probably a Greek continuation of the ancient Sumerian worship of Inanna and Dumuzid.

The cult of Adonis has been described as corresponding to the cult of the Phoenician god Baal.

Exact date when the worship of Adonis became integrated into Greek culture is still disputed.

Walter Burkert questions whether Adonis had not from the very beginning come to Greece along with Aphrodite.

Worship of Adonis is associated with the festival of the Adonia, which was celebrated by Greek women every year in midsummer.

Adonis's returned for him once he was grown and discovered him to be strikingly handsome.

Thus was Adonis' life divided between Aphrodite and Persephone, one goddess who loved him beneath the earth, the other above it.

Adonis was said to have been loved by other gods such as Apollo, Heracles and Dionysus.

Adonis was described as androgynous for he acted like a man in his affections for Aphrodite but as a woman for Apollo.

The text states that due to his love of Adonis, Aphrodite taught Nessos the centaur the trap to ensnare him.

In Idyll 15 by the early third-century BC Greek bucolic poet Theocritus, Adonis is described as a still an adolescent with down on his cheeks at the time of his love affair with Aphrodite, in contrast to Ovid's Metamorphoses in which he is portrayed as a fully mature man.

Ovid's portrayal of Venus's desperate love for Adonis became the inspiration for many literary portrayals in Elizabethan literature of both male and female courtship.

William Shakespeare's erotic narrative poem Venus and Adonis, a retelling of the courtship of Aphrodite and Adonis from Ovid's Metamorphoses, was the most popular of all his works published within his own lifetime.

Story of Adonis was the inspiration for the Italian poet Giambattista Marino to write his mythological epic L'Adone, which outsold Shakespeare's First Folio.

Frazer claimed that Adonis was just one example of the archetype of a "dying-and-rising god" found throughout all cultures.

Biblical scholars Eddy and Boyd applied this rationale to Adonis based on the fact that his portion of the year spent in the Underworld with Persephone is not really a death and resurrection, but merely an instance of a living person staying in the Underworld.