Parentage and Birth
Adonis' birth is shrouded in confusion for those who require a single, authoritative version, for various peripheral stories circulated concerning Adonis' parentage. The patriarchal Hellenes sought a father for the god, and found him in Byblos and Cyprus, which scholars take to indicate the direction from which Adonis' had come to the Greeks. Pseudo-Apollodorus, (Bibliotheke, 3.182) considered Adonis to be the son of Cinyras, of Paphos on Cyprus, and Metharme. According to pseudo-Apollodorus' Bibliotheke, Hesiod, in an unknown work that does not survive, made of him the son of Phoenix and the otherwise unidentified Alphesiboea.
In Cyprus, Adonis gradually superseded that of Cinyras. Hesiod made him the son of Phoenix, eponym of the Phoenicians, thus a figure of Phoenician origin; his association with Cyprus is not attested before the classical era. W. Atallah suggests that the later Hellenistic myth of Adonis represents the conflation of two independent traditions.
Alternatively the late source Bibliotheke calls him the son of Cinyras and Metharme. The more widely accepted version, recounted in Ovid's Metamorphoses, is that Aphrodite compelled Myrrha (or Smyrna) to commit incest with her father Theias, the king of Assyria. Fleeing his wrath, Myrrha was turned into a myrrh tree. Theias struck the tree with an arrow, whereupon it burst open and Adonis emerged. Another version has a wild boar tear open the tree with its tusks, thus foreshadowing Adonis' death.
The city Berytos (Beirut) in Lebanon was named after the daughter of Adonis and Aphrodite, Beroe. Both Dionysus and Poseidon fell in love with her.
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