ADONIS. — A mythical hero, lover of Aphrodite, whose legend, despite various divergences, may be summarized in the following cycle: 1) his death while hunting, at the hands of a boar; 2) the dispute between Aphrodite and Proserpina, who vie for him because of his beauty and who, by the arbitration of Calliope, ordained by Zeus, each obtain him for half the year; 3) his return to the earth. Thus the poet Panyassis (5th cent. B.C.) and Pseudo-Apollodorus, III, 14, 4; cf. Ovid, Metam. X, 299 ff.
The myth of A. represents the agricultural cycle. This is apparent from the birth of A. from a plant (myrrh?), into which his mother Smyrna had been transformed, and even more from the Adonia celebrated every year at the summer solstice (Greeks), or at the end of the agricultural year (Serniti), symbolizing the death of vegetation beneath the scorching heat, in expectation of its revival in spring. Like the lamentations for Tammuz, the Adonia are essentially funereal. The most precise description of the cult of A. among the Alexandrians (under Ptolemy Philadelphus) is that of Theocritus (Idyll XV); of the cult among the Syrian-Greek Romans of the Empire, that of Lucian (De dea syria, 6. V. SYRIA DEA).
Theocritus describes the festival celebrated in Alexandria around 273 B.C. Around the images of A. and Astarte, ripe fruits, cakes, and Syrian perfumes in alabaster vessels were arranged in good order, followed, in silver baskets, by clods of earth in flower. These are the gardens of A. (cf. Is. 17, 10), generally earthen vessels sown with rapidly growing and short-lived plants (wheat, fennel, lettuce), which were then thrown into the waters of the sea or of the nearest river. This first day, a day of joy, was followed by a second, more characteristic one, of mourning, during which the women wept over the god’s swift departure, as he alternately passed from the earth to Hades; they concluded by praying him to be propitious and to return with the new year, bearer of renewed joy.
A. was an Eastern demigod of Syrian origin, as is demonstrated by: his being the son of Cinyras, king of Paphos on the island of Cyprus, or of Theias, a Syrian king; the correspondence of his attributes Tammuz (v.), (cf. Ez. 8, 14, where the Vulgate translates «plangentes Adonidem»), the god of vegetation who died young, husband or son of Istar; and his very name, which is the Phoenician invocation Adonai («my lord» and «my husband»), often repeated in the lamentations in his honor and adopted by the Greeks as a proper name (‘Adonis’). The identification A. = Tammuz has not yet been demonstrated; it is found among the Fathers, beginning with Origen (Selecta in Ez.: PG 13, 797), in the exegesis of Ez. 8, 14 (St. Jerome, In Ez., 8: PL 25, 82), but it is highly probable. The Sumerian Dumuzi (v. TAMMUZ) is the well-known god of vegetation, who descended into the underworld and after whom the month of June was named.
The cult of A., which spread from Cyprus to Phoenicia, whence it was carried to all the coasts of the Mediterranean, Byblos (v.), where the god, according to some called Elmun, a relative of Astarte (Damascius, Vita Isidori, 302), corresponded to Hay-Tau of the Egyptian texts, and perhaps also to Osiris. In the vicinity of Byblos, the waters of the Adonis River (present-day Nahr Ibrahim), periodically reddening for chemical reasons, were believed by the faithful to be the blood of the slain young god.
The Syrian Baal of Byblos, Adôn-Elmun, is not mentioned in the Bible, but allusions to his cult, which must have attracted the Israelites, are perhaps found in Dan. 11, 36, and almost certainly in Is. 17, 10. For Zach. 12, 11, V. ADADREMOM.