ADONIS, in classical mythology, a youth of remarkable beauty, the favourite of Aphrodite. According to one account, he was the son of the Syrian king, Theias, by his daughter Smyr na (Myrrha), who had been inspired by Aphrodite with unnat ural love. When Theias discovered the truth he would have slain his daughter, but the gods in pity changed her into a tree of the same name. After ten months the tree burst asunder, and from it came forth Adonis. Aphrodite, charmed by his beauty, hid the infant in a box and handed him over to the care of Per sephone, who afterwards refused to give him up. When an appeal was made to Zeus, he decided that Adonis should spend a third of the year with Persephone and a third with Aphrodite, the remaining third being at his own disposal. In another ver sion (see Ovid, Metam., x. 298) he was killed by a boar, and this version was followed by Shakespeare. Apollodorus (iii. 185) clumsily combines the two; numerous other variants exist. The name is generally supposed to be of Phoenician origin (from adon, "lord"), Adonis himself being identified with Tammuz, although this is not certain. (See also Arris.) Annual festivals, called Adonia, were held in his honour at Byblus, and also, from the 5th century B.C. onwards, at different places in Greece. The central feature was the mourning for Adonis, generally represented by an effigy, which was afterwards flung into the water. The very elaborate Alexandrian festival is described by Theocritus (Idyll xv.).
It is now generally agreed that Adonis is a vegetation spirit, whose death and return to life represent the decay of nature in winter and its revival in spring. A special feature of the Atheni an festival was the "Adonis gardens," small pots of seeds forced to grow artificially, which rapidly faded. The dispute between Aphrodite and Persephone for the possession of Adonis finds a parallel in the story of Tammuz and Ishtar (see APHRODITE). In other words, Aphrodite is the Oriental mother-goddess, Ado nis her lover; the details have been influenced by the legend of Demeter, (q.v.). The ceremony of the Adonia was intended as a charm to promote the growth of vegetation, the throwing of the gardens and images into the water being supposed to procure a supply of rain (for European parallels see Mannhardt). It is suggested (Frazer) that Adonis is not a god of vegetation gen erally, but specially a corn spirit, and that the lamentation is not for the decay of vegetation in winter, but for the cruel treatment of the corn by the reaper and miller (cf. . Robert Burns's John Barleycorn).
An important element in the story is the connection of Adonis with the boar; possibly Adonis himself was looked upon as in carnate in the swine. For a god sacrificed to himself as his own enemy, cf . the sacrifice of the goat and bull to Dionysus. It has been observed that whenever sacrifices of swine occur in the ritual of Aphrodite there is ref erence to Adonis. In any case, the conception of Adonis as a swine-god does not contradict the idea of him as a vegetation or corn spirit, which in many parts of Europe appears in the form of a boar or sow.