ADONIS. - Mythical hero, lover of Aphrodite, whose legend, despite various divergences, is summarized in the following cycle: 1) death during the hunt by a boar; 2) the dispute between Aphrodite and Proserpina, who contend for him because of his beauty and who, by the arbitration of Calliope, sought by Zeus, obtain him for half a year each; 3) the return to earth. Thus the poet Panyassis (5th century B.C.) and Pseudo-Apollodorus, III, 14, 4; cf. Ovid, Metam. X, 299 ff.
The myth of A. represents the agricultural cycle. This results from the birth of A. from a plant (myrrh?) into which his mother Smyrna had been transformed, and more from the Adonia festivals celebrated every year at the summer solstice (Greeks), or at the end of the agricultural year (Semites), symbolizing the death of vegetation under the dog-day heat in awaiting the spring revival. Like the lamentations for Tammuz, the Adonia are essentially funerary. 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 Syro-Greco-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 simulacra of A. and Astarte, there stood in good order ripe fruits, cakes, Syrian ointments in alabaster vessels and then, within silver baskets, flowering clods of earth. These are the gardens of A. (cf. Is. 17, 10), generally clay vessels sown with plants of rapid growth and brief duration (wheat, fennel, lettuce) which were then thrown into the water of the sea or of the nearest river. This first day, of joy, was followed by a second, more characteristic, of mourning in which the women wept for the rapid departure of the god who with alternating vicissitude passes from the earth to Hades, and ended by praying him to be propitious and to return with the new year, bringer of new joy.
A. was an oriental semi-god, of Syrian origin, as demonstrated by: his being the son of Cinyras, king of Paphos on the island of Cyprus or of Theias king of Syria; the correspondence of his elements with the Syro-Mesopotamian Tammuz (v.) (cf. Ez. 8, 14, where the Vulgate translates "plangentes Adonidem"), god of vegetation who died at a young age, spouse or son of Ishtar; his very name which is the Phoenician invocation Adon ("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 is not yet demonstrated, which, since Origen (Selecta in Ez.: PG 13, 797) is found among the Fathers in the exegesis of Ez. 8, 14 (St. Jerome, In Ez., 8: PL 25, 82), but it is quite probable. The Sumerian Dumuzi (v. TAMMUZ) is the well-known god of vegetation, who descended into the underworld and from whom the month of June took its name.
The cult of A., from Cyprus spread to Phoenicia, whence it was made to pass over all the Mediterranean coasts, was especially celebrated at Byblos (v.), where the god, according to some called Elmun, a relative of Astarte (Damascius, Vita Isidori, 302), corresponded to the Hay-Tau of the Egyptian texts, and perhaps also to Osiris. In the vicinity of Byblos the waters of the river Adonis (present-day Nahr Ibrahim) periodically reddening for chemical causes, were believed by the faithful to be the blood of the young god killed.
The Syrian Baal of Byblos, Adôn-Elmun, is not named in the Bible, but allusions to his cult, which must have attracted the Israelites, are perhaps found in Dan. 11, 36, almost certainly in Is. 17, 10. For Zach. 12, 11, v. ADADREMOM.
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Faustino Salvoni