The Anemones of Adonis

Adonis (Άǒωviç) was a Greek god changed into an anemone by goddess of love Aphrodite after being mortally wounded by a wild boar.

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Expanding on this, the Roman poet Ovid’s Metamorphoses describes in depth and passion the circumstances leading up to the death of Adonis. The story commences in Syria of less tumultuous times. There, Theias, the King of Syria, has a daughter Smyma who by incest tricks him into impregnating her. Discovering this, the king wishes to kill her but the gods take pity on the girl, transforming her into a myrrh tree. Nine months pass and a baby boy, Adonis, emerges from the tree. Aphrodite, goddess of love and beauty, daughter of Zeus and Dione, foreseeing the baby to grow into a handsome youth, allowed him to be raised by Persephone, her half-sister by Zeus and Demeter and goddess of the nether regions. But, like her half-sister, Persephone fell in love with Adonis and refused to return him. The argument was settled by their father, Zeus. He decreed that Adonis must spend a third of each year with Persephone and a third with Aphrodite. The remaining third he could spend with which ever goddess he wished. Adonis decided on Aphrodite, she was born of the sea foam, so it was said, coming ashore on the island of Cythera south of Greece. Adonis met his end while out hunting, savaged by a wild boar. There are various theories as to who dispatched the fierce creature. Was it Aphrodite’s lover Ares, jealous of her affection for Adonis? Perhaps it was Artemis, goddess of the hunt, envious of his hunting skills. Some said it was Apollo in retaliation for the blinding his son Erymanthus. In mortal agony, the cries of Adonis were heard by Aphrodite. She rushed to his side, cradling him in her arms as he died. Where his blood fell on the earth, red anemones were sprung forth. And every spring, the rushing Adonis River in modern Lebanon turns red with the same blood – or so some say. The flower involved was probably Anemone blanda. Hybrids of another wild anemone, A. coronaria, known as the de Caen Group after the ancient Norman cathedral city, were planted in gardens by widows of Canadians killed in the fierce fighting there during World War II.

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