Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-4rdpn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-17T19:22:02.397Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Ritual Background of the Dying God in Cyprus and Syro-Palestine

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 June 2011

Noel Robertson
Noel Robertson
Affiliation:
Brock University
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

In Frazer's Golden Bough the leading instance of the central figure whom he called “the dying god” was Adonis, famous from Greco-Roman literature and art but firmly localized in Semitic Phoenicia, Syria, and Cyprus. Since Frazer wrote, his other Near Eastern instances have been so transformed by increasing knowledge that it can be doubted whether they severally belong to the same type or indeed whether any general type exists. Adonis has hardly shared in these discoveries and debates, for research has emphasized instead the large developments which overtook his worship within the Greco-Roman world. Most of this research does not bear at all on the origins of Adonis, but scholars have sometimes been so bemused by the Greek elements as to forget or deny the Semitic. Everything has been called into question at different times. Such features of his myth as the boar and the myrrh tree and the incest are discounted as Greek embroidery; his peculiar festival, with mourning women and miniature gardens of lettuce, is traced to the preoccupations of Greek urban society; even the Semitic derivation derivation of his name is disputed. This Greek exclusivism cannot be sustained. All accounts of Adonis' life and lineage, and all analogies for his worship converge in the Levant — not in a single site or land, but in Phoenicia, coastal Syria and Cyprus together, lands which from the Late Bronze Age onward display a distinctive common culture, above all with respect to religion. This is where Adonis is at home, and where we may look for evidence to explain the figure of the dying god.

Type
Research Article
Information
Harvard Theological Review , Volume 75 , Issue 3 , July 1982 , pp. 313 - 359
Copyright
Copyright © President and Fellows of Harvard College 1982

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 See Frankfort, H., Kingship and the Gods (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1948) 284–94Google Scholar; idem, The Problem of Similarity in Ancient Near Eastern Religions (Oxford: Clarendon, 1951)Google Scholar; idem, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 21 (1958) 141–51CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Gurney, O., JSS 7 (1962) 147–60Google Scholar; Lücken, G. von, Forschungen und Fortschritte 26 (1965) 240–45Google Scholar; Colpe, C. in Liŝān miththurti: Festschrift W. Frh. von Soden (Kevelaer: Butzon and Bercker, 1969) 23–44Google Scholar; Burkert, W., Structure and History in Greek Mythology and Ritual (Berkeley: University of California, 1979) 99–122.Google Scholar

1 Will, Ernest (Syria 52 [1975] 93–105)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, who argues that the worship of Adonis was fairly constant and uniform throughout the Greco-Roman world, leaves the question open (p. 104) how far this worship resembled the Semitic. On the other hand, O. Eissfeldt (Adonis und Adonaj [Sitzungsberichte der sächsischen Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Leipzig, Phil.-hist. K1. 115/4, 1970]) equates Greek and Semitic worship much too readily, while adducing such disparate things as the amorous Adonis of Etruscan mirrors (pp. 11–13) and the Late Roman temple at Dura-Europus (pp. 22–23).

3 So, e.g., Atallah, W., Adonis dans la Littérature et l'Art Grecs (Paris: Klincksieck, 1966) 52, 69–70, 85, 88Google Scholar; but he takes a different view of the myrrh tree at pp. 325–27.

4 Detienne, M. (The Gardens of Adonis [London: Harvester, 1977; French ed., 1972])Google Scholar regards Adonis as a symbol of unfruitful seduction, and contrasts his worship, supposedly by concubines and prostitutes, with the worship of Demeter by wives and mothers; but this is to misrepresent the Greek milieu as well as to ignore Semitic origins.

5 So Kretschmer, P., Glotta 7 (1916) 29–39Google Scholar; Pisani, V., Rendiconti della R. Accademia dei Lincei ser. 6 vol. 5 (1929) 5–6.Google Scholar Eissfeldt (Adonis und Adonaj, 5–6, 15–19) gives a more reasonable view.

6 Some scholars, however, say little about ritual. According to Helck, W. (Betrachtungen zur Grossen Göttin und den ihr Verbundenen Gottheiten [Munich: Oldenbourg, 1971] 78–83)Google Scholar, the dying god began as the Grunderlebnis of a young hunter killed in the hunt, who was afterwards connected for some reason with “the great goddess,” herself the Urerlebnis of women's lot in the days of roving predatory hordes. Oddly similar, though proceeding from different doctrinal presuppositions, is G. Piccaluga's view of Adonis as a “failed hunter,” whose story goes back to the period of transition from a hunting to an agricultural economy: see her Minutal: Saggi di Storia delle Religioni (Rome: Ateneo, 1974) 77–98Google Scholar; reprinted in II Mito Greco (ed. Gentili, B. and Paioni, G.; Rome: Ateneo, 1977) 33–48.Google Scholar

7 W. Burkert is partly responsible, in a series of papers on different Greek rites and in his book Homo Necans (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1972).Google Scholar For the intricate relationship between myth and ritual, which I must assert briefly and dogmatically, see Burkert's remarks and bibliographical references at Hermes 94 (1966) 10Google Scholar, 18–19; CQ 64 (1970) 1–2Google Scholar, 13–16; ZRGG 22 (1970) 356–57Google Scholar; and Homo Necans, 39–45. (In his recent book Structure, the chapter on “The Great Goddess, Adonis, and Hippolytus” is concerned rather with the transmission of rites and myths from the Near East to Greece.) It is ignorance of ritual that has caused the relationship to be overlooked or undervalued so often, even in the latest fulldress studies of ancient myth.

8 So W. Fauth, Aphrodite Parakyptusa (Abhandlungen der Akad. der Wiss.und der Lit. in Mainz, Geistes- und Sozialwiss. Kl. 1966 no. 6) 3–11; Fauth is contradicted by Helck, Betrachtungen, 226–27; Fauth replies at Gnomon 46 (1974) 690.Google Scholar

9 Fraser, P. M. (Ptolemaic Alexandria [Oxford: Clarendon, 1972] 2. 883n. 61)Google Scholar shows reason for dating the Leontium of Hermesianax no earlier than 280–270 B.C.; one also expects a certain interval between the death of Nicocreon and Hermesianax' fanciful account of his daughter.

10 Fauth (Aphrodite Pazakyptusa, 10) suggested a stone relief. Helck (Betrachtungen, 226–27) thought that the whole story was inspired by a certain form of Hathor capital, “perhaps from a building of Amasis”!

11 The type has often been discussed, notably by Herbig, R., OLZ 30/31 (1927/1928) 917–22Google Scholar, and by Barnett, R. D., Iraq 2 (1935) 182CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 203, and A Catalogue of the Nimrud Ivories (London: British Museum Trustee, 1957) 145–51Google Scholar; recently by Fauth (with copious references, but no illustrations) and Helck.

12 Nimrud: Barnett, Nimrud Ivories, nos. C 12–21. Khorsabad: Loud, G., Khorsabad II (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1938) pls. 51–55.Google Scholar Arslan Tash: Thureau-Dangin, F. et al., Arslan-Tash (Paris: Geuthner, 1931) pls. 34–35.Google Scholar Sultan Tepe: Barnett, , Anatolian Studies 3 (1953) pl. 5b.Google Scholar Samaria: , J. W. and Crowfoot, G., Early Ivories from Samaria (London: Palestine Exploration Fund, 1938) pl. 13.2.Google Scholar

13 It is sometimes suggested that the subject was copied by the Phoenicians from the art of some other region —the Aegean or Egypt or Mesopotamia —but as we shall see the subject is native only to the Levant, Frankfort, H. (The Art and Architecture of the Ancient Orient [London: Penguin Books, 1970] 321–22)Google Scholar, while regarding most Phoenician ivory designs as derivative, makes an exception of the lady at the window, which is to be “interpreted in terms of a local cult.”

14 Murray, A. S. et al., Excavations in Cyprus (London: British Museum Trustees, 1900)Google Scholar 10 fig. 18; Catling, H. W., Cypriot Bronzework in the Mycenaean World (Oxford: Clarendon, 1964) 204–5Google Scholar no. 32, pl. 33c; idem in Schaeffer, C. F.-A. et al., Alasia 1 (Paris: Klinksieck, 1971) 21–23 figs. 6–7.Google Scholar

15 The lower half of each side has three horizontal bars, which Catling (Cypriot Bronzework, 204) took to be either timber beams or large ashlar blocks; courses of ashlar masonry or of brick might also be suggested. It would be impossible to represent the balustrade in this medium; as it is, the stand is by far the most intricate and costly of all such works. “The labour involved in making this stand was enormous; it consists of about 150 separate pieces, each of which had to be brazed once, sometimes twice to adjoining pieces” (Catling).

16 The Bronze-Age “goddess on the ingot” stands behind another Hellenistic aition as interpreted in Report of the Department of Antiquities of Cyprus (1978) 202–5 pl. 51.Google Scholar

17 Fauth (Aphrodite Parakyptusa, 47–48, 51, 54, 68) linked Jezebel with the pictorial type of the lady at the window, but it was very fanciful of him to suppose that Jezebel was actually performing a certain ritual action required of the female kin of a Phoenician ruler, namely, to assume the guise of “the hierodule–goddess” and to bestow alluring glances on the prince as he impersonated “the divine parhedros (Baal)” —all this an old “rite of catascopy”!

18 The names are interpreted as ritual acclamation Schaeffer et al., Ugaritica 6 (Paris: Geuthner, 1969) 300–301.Google Scholar

19 Two other OT passages are often cited, e.g., by Fauth (Aphrodite Parakyptusa, 48) and J. B. Pritchard (ANEP2, 265 no. 131) as bearing on the type of the lady at the window—Judg 5:28, Sisera's mother looking out from a window, and Jer 22:14, a prohibition on building great houses with upper windows; neither seems apposite.

20 As noted by Fauth, Aphrodite Parakyptusat 48, following Riemschneider, M., Fragen zur Vorgeschichtlichen Religion 1: Augengott und Heilige Hochzeit (Leipzig: Koehler und Amelang, 1953) 266.Google Scholar

21 The tablets are cited after Herdner, A., Corpus des Tablettes en Cunéiformes Alphabétiques (Paris: Geuthner, 1963) 1. 20–43Google Scholar, with figs. 7–27. CTA 4–6 are from the hand of Ilimilku, who signed himself at the end. CTA 2 and 3 are “doubtless,” CTA 1 “probably,” from his hand (so Herdner). In view of their similar format and content, CTA 1–3 are generally assigned to the same series; Moor, J. C. de (The Seasonal Pattern in the Ugaritic Myth of Ba˓clu [Kevelaer: Butzon and Bercker, 1971] 1–2, 36–43, 67–115)Google Scholar argues for the order CTA 3, 1–2, 4–6. (The order adopted by H. L. Ginsberg at ANET3, 129–41 —CTA 1–2, 4, 3, 5–6—must be given up in any case.)

22 CTA 3 IV–VI also speaks of a palace for Baal, CTA 2 of another for Yamm, and CTA 1 of one or the other. It may be the same story, or an alternative aition for the same ritual business.

23 Cf. de Moor, Seasonal Pattern, 152–54, 159–63.

24 Cf. Fauth, Aphrodite Parakyptusa, 44–46. Before taking up with Simon, Helen may or may not have been a common prostitute, as her Christian detractors predictably assert; if she was, it had nothing to do with her appearance at the window, nor did “the old Wesensdualismus of the heavenly and earthly nature-goddess Astarte-Aphrodite” (Fauth). Indeed [Clem.] proves just the opposite of Fauth's inference: had it been commonplace for prostitutes to gaze alluringly from the upper windows of Astarte temples, to do so once more would not have advanced Helen's pretensions to divinity or even have called for remark.

25 It is of course a further step to say that the original inspiration came from some such region; this step has been taken recently by Catling (Cypriot Bronzework, 205), who looks to the Aegean, and by Helck (Betrachtungen, 226–27), who looks to Egypt (but his treatment is cavalier in the extreme).

26 Fauth (Aphrodite Parakyptusa) is particularly indiscriminate and ends by equating the lady in the window, as a kind of fertility symbol, with all the other types of Astarte, Hathor, etc. His notion of the buhlerische or hetärische goddess is presented again at Rheinisches Museum für Philologie 112 (1970) 37–42.Google Scholar

27 In some ivories the lady wears a head-dress secured with a cord, and this has been compared with the cord which, according to Herodotus 1.199.2, was tied around the heads of women who offered themselves to strangers in the sanctuary of Mylitta at Babylon; see, e.g., Frankfort, Art and Architecture, 321, and Akurgal, E., The Birth of Greek Art (London: Methuen, 1966) 147.Google Scholar Herodotus' cord, however, is a simple cord worn as a badge, not part of a head-dress; and at Babylon the women did not stand at windows but sat in rows. The Babylonian custom, which Herodotus also ascribes to Cyprus (conformably with other evidence), is in any case ritual defloration rather than the service of hierodules.

28 Fauth (Aphrodite Parakyptusa, 31–32) adduces passages of Aristophanes where παρακύπτειν is used of loose women; cf. Page's note on Praxilla frg. 754 (Poetae Melici Graeci, 390).

29 Perhaps Tammuz of Byblus can be recognized, in a form closer to the Sumerian original, in the god “Damu” named by the local potentate Rib-Addi in Amarna letter no. 84, lines 31–35, as Albright, W. F. suggests in Yahweh and the Gods of Canaan (London: Athlone, 1968) 128.Google Scholar But it seems quite willful to say (ibid., 127–29) that Tammuz and Adonis were identified with Kothar.

30 “Queen Astarte” excludes the suggestion, cited and maintained by Oden, R. A. (Studies in Lucian's De Syria Dea [Missoula: Scholars, 1977] 77–78)Google Scholar that the chief goddess of Byblus was not Astarte but Asherah.

31 See Dunand, M., Fouilles de Byblos 1 (Paris: Geuthner, 1939).Google Scholar The paradoxical views of Soyez, B. (Byblos et la Fête des Adonies [Leiden: Brill, 1977])CrossRefGoogle Scholar, who identifies Lucian's sanctuary with the temple of Reshef (pp.15–29) and thinks of Adonis as an interloper of the Hellenistic period (pp. 76–89), are not founded on a mature consideration of the evidence.

32 For some references see Soyez, Byblos, index sub Venus lugens. Macrobius 1.21.5 describes a rock relief of this type on Mount Lebanon, formerly identified with an existing relief at Ghineh near Byblus; the identification was disproved by Seyrig, Syria 13 (1940) 113–22.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

33 The fine tall tree is said to be “heather,” ⋯ρείκη, which is otherwise a shrub, and scholars have roamed as far as Isis in search of an explanation; see Griffiths, J. G., Plutarch's De Iside et Osiride (University of Wales, 1970) 322–24.Google Scholar Yet surely the heather-tree was invented for the sake of the story. Osiris' coffin washed ashore at some deserted spot; nothing but heather would grow in such a bare sandy place, and nothing but heather could be thought of as spreading over the coffin. For the heather to spring up “in a short time into the finest and tallest tree” and to enclose the coffin completely was an outright miracle, but one which fits the context and Plutarch's language.

34 Pillars and birds are each common adjuncts of the cult of Astarte, and sometimes they are found together. Roman coins of Area show, together with the mourning Astarte, birds atop pillars (G. F. Hill, BM Coins Phoenicia, pl. 13). At Bambyce-Hierapolis an aniconic image with a dove on the crown stood between the cult statues of Atargatis and Hadad (Lucian De Syria Dea 33); it was probably no more than a sacred pillar, but Lucian has veiled it in deepest mystery; see Oden, Studies, 109–55, for wide-ranging comment. In our very sanctuary at Byblus, Yehawmilk dedicates a golden bird (Dupont-Sommer, A., Semitica 3 [1950] 35–44)Google Scholar, doubtless to be set upon a pillar. Astarte normally favors doves and pigeons, but Plutarch's swallow agrees with Hesychius' entry ⋯δωνηίς· ⋯ χελιδών· κα⋯ ⋯ ϑριδακίνη, which should not be tampered with (⋯δονίς Baudissin, Latte, but ‘lettuce,’ the alternate definition, goes with Adonis, not with a song-bird; χελιδόνιον, LSJ sub ⋯δωνηίς, but a feminine noun is wanted, and ‘celandine’ is not otherwise associated with Adonis). Atallah (Adonis, 266 n. 4) rather quaintly suggested that the swallow was named after Adonis because it migrates, whereas Adonis in certain versions of the myth divides his time between the upper and lower worlds; Piccaluga (Minutal, 92 = II Mito Greco, 46) improved on this by saying that the migrant swallow and the hunter Adonis are both outside the normal boundaries, al di fuori, and do not really belong anywhere.

35 The heather-tree or pillar which once contained the coffin of Osiris is only superficially similar to the myrrh-tree from which Adonis was born. Lycophron Alex. 829–33 evokes Byblus as “the strong city of Myrrha, whose hard birthtravail was relieved by the tree-like shoot,” and goes on to speak of Adonis' tomb at Aphaca and of his death in the boar-hunt. But the stories of Adonis' birth and death are of separate origin, and the connection of the birth story with Byblus is secondary: more of this in section 7 below.

36 Stories and representations of Adonis' death are surveyed by Atallah, Adonis, 53–91. That Apollo killed Adonis is a whimsical invention of Ptolemaeus Chennus (Nov. hist. 1.7 Chatzis, p. 13 ); that it was Heracles (Atallah, Adonis, 56, citing schol. Il. 24–33) is merely a Byzantine inference from Heracles' proverbial scorn for the worship of Adonis (Clearchus frg. 66 Wehrli, etc.).

37 Cf. Burkert, Structure, 108.

38 The reading ḫnzr in line 9 is not in doubt, and the meaning ‘boars’ has been accepted by nearly all commentators since Virolleaud. De Moor (Seasonal Pattern, 185) reviews earlier opinion and leaves the choice open between persons designated by an animal name and actual swine in the train of a deity. But the parallel construction of “lads” and “boars” shows that one term or the other is metaphorical; and although Bernhardt, K. H. (Near Eastern Religious Texts relating to the Old Testament [London: SCM, 1978] 214Google Scholar n. z) speaks of “servants of Baal in arimal form,” and M. C. Astour (Ugaritica 6, p. 13 n. 33) thinks of “the role of swine in the ritual of the Thesmophoria,” it should be obvious that literal swine have no place between Baal's clouds, etc., and Baal's women. The seven lads and eight boars are also restored by Driver at CTA 5 IV 8–9 in a very fragmentary context.

39 “Animal names as designations in Ugaritic and Hebrew” are collected by Miller, P. D. Jr, Ugarit-Forschungen 2 (1970) 177–86Google Scholar (I owe this reference to the kindness of Professor F. M. Cross). Miller's Hebrew examples are all of chiefs and warriors described as “bulls,” “rams,” “lions,” “he-goats,” and “gazelles,” a manner of speaking common in many languages and also illustrated by one or two of Miller's Ugaritic instances, notably the “bulls” and “gazelles” of the Keret epic (CTA 15 IV 6–8, 17–19). Miller explains our passage as referring to “military leaders or personages (or divine beings) of high rank and status” (p. 179), but this explanation is belied by the context, and draws no support from an enigmatic title of similar aspect, ḫanizarum, occurring as a hapax in the Shemshara tablets. Baal's “lads” and “boars” are not military leaders but his dependents or familiars, most likely his children. And this interpretation is in fact commended by Miller's other Ugaritic instances, the cognate word ḫzr used in several documents of a class of laborers. The term “swine” was applied to such humble and serviceable folk as naturally as the term “dog” to male prostitutes, a usage which Miller does not mention.

40 So Frazer, The Golden Bough 3 pt. 5: Spirits of the Corn and of the Wild (London: Macmillan, 1912) 2.Google Scholar 22–23; followed by Nilsson, M. P., Griechische Feste (Leipzig: Teubner, 1906) 385.Google Scholar In some Greek myths dealing with the worship of Zeus or Dionysus, the god is expressly said to take the shape of his sacrificial animal, a bull or a goat, and in others the transformation overtakes a worshipper, Io or Callisto; see Burkert, Homo Necans, 90–91.

41 That the Cypriote festival concerns Adonis is flatly denied by Weill, (Bulletin de correspondance hellénique 90 (1966) 682 n. 3)CrossRefGoogle Scholar and doubted by Atallah (Adonis, 257); but John leaves no room for such scepticism, for the boar sacrifice is expressly said to commemorate the boar's attack on Adonis, who also figures in the context (n. 53 below). It is more misguided still to speak of “an invention” on John's part, as does de Vaux, R. in Von Ugarit nach Qumran: Beiträge O. Eissfeldt dargebracht (Berlin: Töpelmann, 1958) 258–59.Google Scholar Cf. Nilsson, Griechische Feste, 385. The preliminaries of the festival are examined below, and the spring date in section 5.

42 See Ziehen, L. on Leges Graecorum Sacrae no. 119 line 7 and at PW 17.1 (1936) 98, sub Νηστεία 1.Google Scholar

43 FrgGrHist = Jacoby, F., Fragmente der griechischen Historiker (Berlin/Leiden, 1923—).Google Scholar An epigraphic instance at Halasarna on Cos depends on a doubtful reading, entertained by Nilsson (Griechische Feste, 379), but rejected by Sokolowski at Lois sacrées des cités grecques, 172 line 4.

44 So Nilsson, Griechische Feste, 386; Atallah (Adonis, 86–87) puts the matter rather differently.

45 The worship was typically conducted by private cult associations, thiasoi, but it was venturesome of Nilsson (Griechische Feste, 385) to assert that there was never any official worship, for this can be deduced at Corinth (section 5) and at Argos and Iasus (section 6). Although the lament came to be popular with the demi-monde, the red-figure vases show that in fifth-century Athens it was conducted by fashionable women; it should not be lumped together with disreputable foreign cults in Peiraeus. At Aristophanes Lys. 392, 395, the meaning of ⋯ γυνή, repeatedly contrasted with Demostratus, may be either ‘the woman’, scornfully definite instead of indefinite, or ‘his wife’, i.e., Demostratus'. If the latter, Adonis is linked with high society, for Demostratus belonged to a very distinguished family (schol. Aristophanes Lys. 397).

46 We know of five comedies entitled Adonis: by Plato, Nicophon, Philiscus, Araros and Antiphanes; of another entitled Adoniazusae by Philippides (which might equally be of the early third century); of the tragedy Adonis by Dionysius; and of a tragedy Cinyras, author unknown, produced in 336 B.C.

47 The textual problems are examined inconclusively by Atallah, Adonis, 70–72. Here it is enough to say that the “hooves” are a certain correction in line 3, and that although line 2 remains inscrutable, one expects the boar's head to figure in such a context (cf., e.g., Callimachus frg. 96 Pfeiffer).

48 Such usages have been discussed by Meuli, K. in Phyllobolia: Festschrift für P. Von der Mühll (Basel: Schwabe, 1946) 185–288Google Scholar = Gesammelte Schriften (Basel: Schwabe, 1975) 2.Google Scholar 907–1021, and by Burkert, Homo Necans.

49 For our purpose it does not matter that Lucian's tone is mocking. Anderson, G. (Studies in Lucian's Comic Fiction [Leiden: Brill, 1976] 68–82)Google Scholar supposes that Lucian freely invented ritual details, but this is to misconceive both the manner and the quality of his satire. Some of the material collected by Oden in Studies serves to vindicate the accuracy of the work, which has long been recognized by experts.

50 This is perhaps the place to mention de Vaux's view, as argued in Von Ugarit nach Qumran, 250–65, that the pig was everywhere regarded as a “demoniac” or “chthonian” animal, and that its ritual use was “rare” and confined to cults of this kind and to “magic and exorcisms” as “inferior forms of religion.” His survey of several Near Eastern lands and of Egypt and Greece, though of some interest, is far too cursory to establish these points. As the cheapest form of live-stock, the pig was naturally used for private magic and the like and by women when they worshipped apart from the men (so was the dog, which had no value at all), and it acquired certain associations in consequence; but its use was always much wider than this.

51 The passage, first brought to notice in W. Robertson Smith's account of Semitic sacrifice, runs as follows in the MS: πρόβατον κωδίωι ⋯σκεπασ- μένον συνέϑυον τ⋯ι ᾽Αφροδίτηι (“they jointly sacrificed to Aphrodite a sheep covered with a fleece”). Nilsson (Griechische Feste, 368) defends the transmitted text, taking the first three words as an ornate periphrasis for a woolly sheep, and supposing the sacrifice to be a holocaust in which everything, including the fleece, was burnt. But since such a periphrasis hardly goes with John's workaday style, the phrase must be emphatic, and indicates that the sheep was left unshorn for a purpose; this gives the lie to the notion of a holocaust, which in any case is not suggested by John's language. Robertson Smith, followed by Burkert (Homo Necans, 132) proposed ⋯σκεπασμένοι, so that the worshippers are each covered with a fleece as they sacrifice a single sheep, a fine example of mystic communion between worshippers and victim. R. Wünsch, followed by Pfeiffer on Callimachus frg. 200a, proposed προβάτου κωδίωι ⋯σκεπασμένον σ⋯ν ἔϑυον (“they sacrificed a pig covered with a sheep's fleece”); <σ⋯ν> συνέϑυον would do just as well. Nilsson objects that there is little point in disguising a pig as a sheep, since both are very common victims; but on any view the purpose is less likely to be disguise than contact with the fleece as an instrument in its own right. One might also combine the proposals of Robertson Smith and Wtinsch so that the worshippers are each covered with a fleece as they sacrifice a pig. Certainty in such a matter is beyond our reach; but John's text seems quite acceptable as it stands.

52 No treatment of the question can be recommended as at all satisfactory. Atallah (Adonis, 229–58) provides a general discussion; Weill (Bulletin de correspondance hellénique 90 [1966] 675–98)Google Scholar deals mainly with Athens. A. d. Nock (Gnomon 10 [1934] 290–92Google Scholar = Essays on Religion and the Ancient World [Cambridge, MA: Harvard University, 1972] 1.Google Scholar 402–5) thought of “a spring celebration at Athens, possibly existing side by side with a summer celebration—as in Cyprus perhaps with an autumn celebration,” and of “a possible spring celebration at Byblos.” Atallah (Adonis, 255–58) likewise postulates “a double festival” at Athens, in spring and summer; but Weill (p. 690) will not admit any celebration anywhere but in the summer.

53 Just before this, at 4.64, John interprets Adonis as the embodiment of spring, killed by the boar as the embodiment of summer.

54 Soyez (Byblos, 44–75) dates the lament to high summer, the time of the Etesian winds and the heliacal rising of Sirius, but her arguments are not convincing. It should be said in passing that although travellers and sojourners in Lebanon broadly agree in assigning the discoloration of the river Adonis, as described by Lucian § 8, to the late winter or spring—as against Soyez (Byblos, 59 n. 58), who cites a colleague at Liège for his opinion of when and why the phenomenon might occur—this does not help to fix the date of the lament, for no matter when the river turned red, local observers were bound to speak of the wounding of Adonis.

55 It is debated whether the rite is of Greek or Egyptian origin. Griffiths (Apuleius of Madauros, The Isis-Book [Leiden: Brill, 1975] 31–47)Google Scholar argues for the latter, but very tenuously; cf. Solmsen, F., Isis among the Greeks and Romans (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University, 1979) 144n. 6.CrossRefGoogle Scholar The truth is that no likely antecedents can be found in either Greece or Egypt, though we should expect to hear of them if they existed in these well-documented places. In view of Plutarch's report and of the numismatic evidence (Griffiths, Apuleius, 43–44), we may suspect that the rite originated in Byblus and perhaps other Phoenician cities. Since the opening of navigation was here connected with the lament for Adonis, and since Adonis was here identified with Osiris, the Phoenician background explains what is otherwise inexplicable, namely, the connection of Isis with the opening of navigation.

56 R. Merkelbach's view of the ploiaphesia as including elements of the autumn festival Cicellia or Isia is justly criticized by Griffiths (Apuleius, 38–42), but he need not have discounted Plutarch's chap. 16 altogether (in Griffith's earlier book, Plutarch's De Iside et Osiride 50, 491–92, the ritual ship-launching was mooted only in connection with chap. 50, 371D). Merkelbach, (Zeitschrift fur Papyrologie und Epigraphik 10 [1973] 45–49)Google Scholar interprets an epigram of Thessalonice, IG 10.2.1.108, to suit his theory, but the phrases in question more likely refer to the Isia.

57 Cf. Ribichini, S., Saggi Fenici 1 (1975) 13–14.Google Scholar

58 Nilsson, (Geschichte der griechischen Religion 2 2/3 [Munich: Beck, 1967] 629 n. 5)Google Scholar dismisses Lucian's account as “another Greek motif, the swimming head.” To be sure, the head is a motif, and the pot is another, but as often the fluctuating narrative motif bespeaks a feature of ritual. Soyez’ interpretation of the “papyrus head” as the tufted crown of the papyrus plant (Byblos, 67) can only be sustained if Lucian is punning on the word “head,” for at its first mention the head plainly belongs to Osiris; cf. Oden, Studies, 18, 44. Whatever the actual object that ended the vigil—perhaps nondescript and variable—the head of Osiris and the message from Alexandria exist only in imagination.

59 For recent comment see Betz, H. D., Lukian von Samosata und das Neue Testament (Berlin: Akademie, 1961) 128Google Scholar; Atallah, Adonis, 261–63; Roux, G., Revue de philologie 41 (1967) 262–64Google Scholar; Eissfeldt, Adonis und Adonaj, 10; Seyrig, H., Syria 49 (1972) 97–100CrossRefGoogle Scholar; von Graeve, V., Jahrbuch des deutschen archäologischen Instituts 87 (1972) 345Google Scholar n. 124; Will, Syria 52 (1975) 102–4CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Soyez, Byblos, 38–39; Burkert, Structure, 194 n. 0.

60 So Burkert, Structure, 194 n. O, adducing Lucian Peregrinus 30, and Eudoxus frg. 284 Lasserre. This proposal marks a large step forward. Others have thought that an image of Adonis was raised aloft, perhaps by some contrivance like a theatrical machine; or that something like a Djed pillar was hauled erect; or that the god was simply brought out of a closed chamber into the sight of his worshippers. Yet all these notions require of ⋯ς τ⋯ν ἠέρα some such sense as “into the open air” or “on high,” which is not in fact warranted by Greek usage.

61 Objections to the seasonal view are registered and rebutted by de Moor, Seasonal Pattern, 24–28; none of the objectors (Cassuto, Gordon, Loewenstamm, and Gese) has furnished a plausible alternative. According to Driver, G. R. (Canaanite Myths and Legends [Edinburgh: Clark, 1956] 20–21)Google Scholar, the poem shows how Baal was installed as the supreme god at Ugarit, like Marduk at Babylon, and like other gods in other succession myths. Now the very end of the poem, CTA 6 V-VI, does indeed describe Baal as contending with Mot in heroic style, and as seating himself thereafter on his throne; but this is a most unexpected turn, which may derive from a festival occurring at longer intervals, as the combat is said to do; and whether or not it implies Baal's supremacy over the other gods, it is surely a later addition to the story, for elsewhere Baal cuts a very different figure.

62 Similar suggestions have been made by others; see de Moor, Seasonal Pattern, 13–15, 21, 25–27, 31–34, and index E sub “seven.” Some trace the whole poem to a seventh-year festival, or to a natural or customary cycle of seven years; but there is nothing else in the Baal story to match the peculiar indications of CTA 6 V-VI.

63 So de Moor, Seasonal Pattern, esp. 245–49. Bernhardt is inclined to agree (Near Eastern Religious Texts, 191–92). That the Baal story takes in more than one season is obvious, and it may even extend through the whole year, as de Moor has it; but the seasonal activities and observances which de Moor finds in the poem are often illusory.

64 So Gray, J., The Legacy of Canaan 2 (Leiden: Brill, 1965) 53Google Scholar, and idem, Near Eastern Mythology (London: Hamlyn, 1969) 81–82.Google Scholar

65 See the evidence adduced by de Moor, Seasonal Pattern, 59–61, 153–55.

66 The location and the aspect of Baal's palace are left so vague that de Moor (Seasonal Pattern, 112–13) supposes two “conceptions” to have been merged, of an earthly temple at Ugarit and of a “heavenly abode” atop Mount Zaphon, and Bernhardt (Near Eastern Religious Texts, 211 n. z) thinks of Baal's temple as set among the clouds of Mount Zaphon, and indeed as “formed by the mighty clouds themselves,” the silver, gold, and gemstones evoking the bright colors which the sun produces on the clouds after rain. It is rather a pity that such poetic imagination is not evident elsewhere in the poem. Fontenrose, J. (Python [Berkeley: University of California, 1959] 138 n. 36)Google Scholar likened the building of Baal's palace after his defeat of Yamm to the building of Apollo's temple at Delphi after his defeat of the serpent; this may be closer to the mark, for as we shall see in a moment, the Delphic festival Septerium featured a palace which was built and burnt just like Baal's at Ugarit, and the myth of Apollo's earliest temple, built of laurel fetched from Tempe, is almost certainly an aition of this ritual practice. Sourvinou-Inwood, C. (CQ 73 [1979] 231–51)CrossRefGoogle Scholar now offers a structuralist interpretation of the laurel temple.

67 Gaster, T. H. (Folk-Lore 44 [1933] 387)Google Scholar thought of fire-festivals at the solstices and at harvest-time, but did not return to this suggestion afterwards.

68 Bernhardt (Near Eastern Religious Texts, 211 n. k) imagines “a powerful smelting furnace” in which metal was smelted between walls of brick. This idea does not really meet the case and seems unlikely in itself.

69 Lucian's trees sound rather like the ⋯οῖα of Hesychius, defined as “trees cut and dedicated to Aphrodite … at the entrances”; the practice may have belonged to the worship of Adonis, since ᾽Α⋯ος was a name for Adonis on Cyprus, and ᾽Α⋯α for his mother, the daughter of King Theias (Etymologicum Genuinum sub ᾽Α⋯ος). But it is not said that the ⋯οῖα were burnt, and we might also think of the gardens of Adonis, or even of the 'asherim of the OT. Of the ritual “tree-cutting,” dendrokopion, attested for Hera on Cos, nothing is known but the name; conceivably it was a fire-festival like Lucian's, as suggested by Sherwin-White, S. M. (Ancient Cos [Göttingen, 1978] 297–98)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, but other guesses might be entertained.

70 The significance of fire-festivals is in dispute and need not always be the same—indeed cannot be, since they are celebrated at widely different times of the year; but the notion of guilt and atonement emerges clearly in the Greek myths, including Plutarch's aition of the Septerium, as also in Lucian's account of the Syrian rite.

71 The description of the feast is not complete, for the end of col. VI and the beginning of VII are broken off, making a lacuna of about eight lines. Although Yamm is mentioned near the end of the lacuna, at VII 3, there is no room for any new transaction, such as the overthrow of Yamm; and at VII 5–6 the gods are still feasting.

72 The names in their usual order are Pdry bt ar, Ṭly bt rb, and Arṣy bt y₿bdr. Pdry occurs also in ritual texts and even further afield (cf. Albright, Yahweh and the Gods of Canaan, 109 n. 38, 111, 126) and is therefore a deity of cult; perhaps Arṣy was too, since the word is given as equivalent to Allatum in a list of Ugaritic gods; but Ṭly is known only from the Baal poem, and so may well have been invented to make a mythical triad. The evidence is fully discussed by Astour (Ugaritica 6, pp. 9–16), but he goes very far astray in deducing a “chthonian” rite of human sacrifice shared by Semites and Greeks (ibid., 16–23). Of the three Aglaurids or Cecropids at Athens, Aglauros and Pandrosos are both deities of cult, though they were seldom or never worshipped together; but Herse is a mere figment who completes another mythical triad in the aition of the Arrhephoria, an obscure rite dubiously reconstructed by Burkert, (Hermes 94 [1966] 1–25).Google Scholar There is a striking similarity between the Greek and the Ugaritic Tauschwestern as mythical triads partly composed of deities of cult, and since Pandrosos has to do with the sacred olive tree on the Acropolis, it is tempting to look for a sacred tree on the Semitic side too. Astour's speculations, however, which also embrace Moses and several Greek figures, are completely unfounded.

73 See Gaster, Myth, Legend, and Custom in the Old Testament (New York: Doubleday, 1969) 431–32.Google ScholarSmith, M. (in S. W. Baron Jubilee Volume [Jerusalem: American Academy of Jewish Research, 1974]Google Scholar English Section 2. 825) thinks of maenads worshipping “the wine god”; but this does not explain why the figure whom the women mourn is also a woman.

74 At Jer 22:18 the obloquy awaiting the dead Jehoiakim is contrasted with various cries of lamentation, including “Ah sister.” It is not clear whether the cries are meant to evoke an ordinary funeral or the rite of the dying god; the latter is suggested by the analogy of Zech 12:1–11, where a beloved king is to be mourned like Hadad-Rimmon. The “sister” then corresponds to Baal's women and Jephthah's daughter.

75 Ephorus in Book 19 spoke of Φοινικαῖον as a “mountain at Corinth” (Frg-GrHist 70 F 75 = Stephanus Byzantius s.v.), probably in the context of the Corinthian War, as Jacoby observes ad loc.; perhaps the “mountain” figured in the lament for Adonis like other hills and mountains in Cyprus and Phoenicia. More problematic is schol. Lycophron Alexandra 658: “Athena is honoured as Φοινίκη at Corinth.” The scholiast's statement should be considered in the light of his purpose, which is to explain Lycophron's kenning for Odysseus, “dolphin-emblem thief of goddess Phoinike.” What Odysseus stole was the Palladium of Troy, an avatar of Athena; therefore the scholiast must somehow equate Athena with Phoinike. He found warrant for this at Corinth, where Athena was very prominent in myth and cult, and where the festival Phoinikaia figured in the civic calendar—what better place to look? Probably the putative goddess Phoinike, “Phoenicia,” was a mere personification arising from the festival; to equate her with Athena is makeshift at best, and may even result from the abridgment of our scholia. The real point of Lycophron's phrase we cannot hope to ascertain, and it probably has nothing to do with Corinth—the Trojan Palladium was afterwards sought and found in various places, and may well have been identified with some cult statue in Phoenicia.

76 The nomenclature has been discussed by Wilhelm (n. 77 below); Dow, S., AJA 46 (1942) 69–72CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Will, E., Korinthiaka (Paris: de Boccard, 1955) 143–45Google Scholar; Kardara, C., AAA 3 (1970) 95–97Google Scholar; and Williams, C. K., II, “Pre-Roman Cults in the Area of the Forum of Ancient Corinth” (Ph.D. diss., University of Pennsylvania, 1978) 54–55Google Scholar: these authors all treat Athena Phoinike as the key figure. Will suggests, en désespoir de cause, that the name means “Athena Purple,” and Kardara pursues a similar notion, linking the goddess with the dye-works which have been excavated on the Isthmian Rachi.

77 The proof was largely worked out by Wilhelm, Attische Urkunden, 2. 25–27= Opuscula 8.1 (Leipzig: Zentralantiquariat der Deutsch. Dem. Rep., 1974) 449–51Google Scholar; but like much of the evidence for the month-name, it has been generally overlooked, except by , J. and Robert, L., REG 54 (1941) 231 and 86 (1973) 70.Google Scholar Wilhelm chose to restore “Thargelion” in the text of IG 22 951 line 1, and this is accepted by Kirchner and the Roberts; but Wilhelm's argument shows that “Munichion” would do as well.

78 Wilhelm (Attische Urkunden, 2. 26= Opuscula 8.1.450) supposed that another instance of the Corinthian nomenclature was to be found in Φοινίκη as the name of the city in Chaonia. But to judge from remains on the site, and from the pattern of Greek references to this area, the city was only founded towards 330 B.C.: see Hammond, N. G. L., Epirus (Oxford: Clarendon, 1967) 112–18Google Scholar, and P. Cabanes, L'Épire de la Mort de Purrhos à la Conquête Romaine, 272–167 av. J.C., (Ann. Litt. de l' Univ. de Besançon, Centre de Rech. d' Hist. Anc. 19; 1976) 4Google Scholar, 118. And it is most unlikely on general grounds that a place-name hereabouts has anything to do with Greek institutions; instead, the name may well be a Greek deformation of some local word. A palm-tree depicted in a Byzantine church on the site (Hammond, Epirus, 117) suggests how the name was understood in later days.

79 See nn. 52 and 108.

80 Aristophanes is not concerned with the substance of the speech, but only with the contrast between the politician's harangue and his wife's, or the women's, wailing; this is why he gives us two important-sounding proposals in succession: “Demostratus was saying, ‘We must sail to Sicily,’” and “Demostratus was saying, ‘We must recruit hoplites at Zacynthos.’” Much ingenuity has been wasted on these words, as by Nock, , Gnomon 10 (1934) 291Google Scholar = Essays, 402; Atallah, Adonis, 262–63; Weill, Bulletin de correspondance hellénique 90 (1966) 684–87CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Dover, K. J., A Historical Commentary on Thucydides 4 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1970) 224Google Scholar, with a view to proving either that Demostratus spoke at the first debate about Sicily (Nock, Atallah), or returned to the charge long afterward (Weill), or sought to amplify the original decision with the recruiting measure (Dover).

81 Weill, (Bulletin de correspondance hellénique 90 [1966] 684–87)CrossRefGoogle Scholar claims Aristophanes in support of a summer festival—which she subsequently dates to late July—by arguing that Demostratus spoke at the last moment before the departure of the Sicilian expedition in 415; but she does not discuss, and evidently misconceives, the date of departure, for which see Dover, Historical Commentary on Thucydides, 4. 264–76. If Demostratus did in fact speak in 415—and though the signs point to 413, this possibility cannot be excluded altogether—we must simply cut the knot. The Lysistrata then comes four years after the events, and Aristophanes was talking for effect against the womenfolk. Might he not choose to synchronize the catastrophic speech and the dissolute, lugubrious festival, even if it were not true? This appalling omen is mentioned by no one else but Plutarch (Nicias 13.10; Alcibiades 18.5), who will depend directly on Aristophanes. If Demostratus' wife was conspicuous in the lament (n. 45 above), the temptation to synchronize the occasions would be very great.

82 So Weill, (Bulletin de correspondance hellénique 90 [1966] 664–74)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, who published the fragment. Detienne (Gardens of Adonis, 178 n. 14) deduces from the building seen by Pausanias that the state was here attempting to control the private worship.

83 See Cumont, F., Syria 8 (1927) 330–41CrossRefGoogle Scholar; idem, 16 (1935) 46–49; and idem, in Mélanges G. Glotz (Paris: Université de France, 1932) 257–64.Google Scholar

84 Some writers equate Adonis more vaguely with the crops; see Atallah, Adonis, 320–21, and Burkert, Structure, 100, 187–88. To say that his dying and reviving are the sowing and sprouting of the grain (schol. Theocritus 3.48, and also Origen and Jerome) is nothing more than allegory.

85 For the rest of the evidence see Langdon, S., Babylonian Menologies and the Semitic Calendars (London: Schweich Lectures of the British Academy, 1935) 119–23.Google Scholar

86 Atallah (Adonis, 211–28) assembles the literary and pictorial sources bearing on the gardens; for the vase-paintings see also Weill, Bulletin de correspondance hellénique 90 (1966) 664–74.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Detienne (Gardens of Adonis, 99–122) gives a structuralist interpretation.

87 Jeremiah denounces the worship of Baal on the roofs of houses in Jerusalem, and Isaiah appears to denounce the tending of miniature gardens. The OT evidence for the gardens is fully treated by Eissfeldt, Adonis und Adonaj, 19–20.

88 Atallah (Adonis, 227–28) also objects to the usual view, though without offering anything in its place.

89 See Frazer, Golden Bough 3 pt. 4: Adonis, Attis, Osiris (London: Macmillan, 1914) 1.Google Scholar 230, quoting the Fihrist of an-Nidim from Chwolsohn, D., Die Ssabier und die Ssabismus (St. Petersburg: Kaiserl. Akad. der Wiss., 1856) 2. 27.Google Scholar

90 The few undoubted “vegetation spirits” whom we hear of in Greek literature—Bormus, Hylas, Linus, Lityerses, Maneros—all belong to other lands than Greece. Cf. Alexiou, M., The Ritual Lament in Greek Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University, 1974) 55–60Google Scholar; Alexiou observes that the ritual lament for such figures had no Greek counterpart. It is significant that Adonis is never mentioned in this company—except once by Pausanias: “Sappho of Lesbos learned the name of Oetolinus from Pampho's hexameter poems and sang of Adonis and Oetolinus together” (9.29.8). This means not that Adonis and Oetolinus were somehow equated by Sappho but that both names occurred in her poems; it is Pausanias' learned source who equates them. Before the Roman period, Adonis is never associated with grain or harvest-time.

91 Cf. de Moor, Seasonal Pattern, 212–15.

92 It is not inconsistent with this interpretation that the birds are said to eat the remnants—for so they do, alighting in flocks on the stubbled fields. The birds give the final twist to Mot's destruction. The sense is doubtful only in the defective lines at the end of the second passage, CTA 6 V 17–19, which de Moor (Seasonal Pattern, 212, 214) takes to mean, “Because of you I have suffered wilting in the fields, because of you I have suffered sowing in the sea.” He then adduces the gardens of Adonis—an apt comparison, though literal gardens of Adonis cannot be reconciled with the story of Mot.

93 The text of this fragment has been improved by Henrichs, A. (GRBS 13 [1972] 92–94)Google Scholar, who restores the names cited for mention of Adonis as Antima] chus, P[anyassis, and Epim[enides. The letters deciphered as ᾽Επιμ by Henrichs survive on a supraposto, a patch of papyrus from this layer adhering to the next; the earlier readings Εὐμόλ[πος (G. Schmid) and Ἡσίοδ[ος (R. Philippson) are now seen to be inadmissible.

94 At Apollodorus 3.183, Panyassis is cited for the names Theias and Smyrna, and this need not be the source of the incest story that follows; see Lloyd-Jones, H., Gnomon 48 (1976) 505Google Scholar, as against Matthews, V. J., Panyassis of Halikarnassos (Leiden: Brill, 1974) 120–25.Google Scholarvan der Valk, M. (REG 71 [1958] 164)Google Scholar is far from proving that Apollodorus used Panyassis directly or any other early source. There can be no doubt, however, in view of the names Theias and Smyrna, that Panyassis gave some version of the incest story.

95 The text of [Probus] which preserves Antimachus' nomenclature is somewhat flawed (ed. Hagen in Thilo-Hagen, Servius commentarii, 3.2.348; cf. Wyss on Antimachus), but the corrections Thiantis for hoantis and Assyriam for Hystriam, Histriam are reasonable.

96 Philodemus' citations of Epimenides will come from the putative Theogony (cf. Diels, Vorsokratiker, 3 B 5, 7, 8, 9= FrgGrHist 457 F 4b, 6a, 8, 6b), which as Jacoby said (FrgGrHist IIIb Kommentar 1. 315) shows much Hesiodic influence. Henrichs (GRBS 13 [1972] 92)Google Scholar thinks of Vorsokratiker 3 B 14 = FrgGrHist 457 F 10, the fate of Endymion, as a “similar case,” and here Epimenides seems to differ little from [Hesiod] frgs. 14.6–8(?), 245, 260 M-W; cf. Schwartz, J., Pseudo-Hesiodeia (Leiden: Brill, 1960) 338–41.Google Scholar

97 The affiliation of Adonis and Cinyras is commonly recognized as secondary, e.g., by Jacoby on FrgGrHist 137 F 3; Atallah, Adonis, 33–39, 312–19; and Baurain, C., Bulletin de correspondance hellénique 104 (1980) 280–87Google Scholar; and so we need not trench on the old question of whether Cinyras began as a Semite or an Eteo-Cypriote. The proposal of Kirst, S. (Forschungen und Fortschritte 30 [1956] 185–89)Google Scholar to equate Adonis and Cinyras with Baal and El, and to interpret the name Cinyras as El's epithet qūnē ʾarṣā, “creator of earth,” shows more ingenuity than attention to the evidence. Baurain (pp. 277–308) deals at length with the traditions about Cinyras.

98 For these ties see Meiggs, R., The Athenian Empire (Oxford: Clarendon, 1972) 477–86.Google Scholar

99 Since Oreithyia personifies the wind (for her name means “rushing on the mountain” and she is elsewhere abducted by Boreas), it is just possible that the winnowing of the grain is in view; but more likely she was chosen as appropriate to Adonis' birth-place, which for Antoninus is Mount Lebanon.

100 That “Theias” renders “El” was suggested by von Lücken, G., Forschungen und Fortschritte 36 (1962) 240–45.Google Scholar

101 On the Harran monuments published by Gadd, C. J. (Anatolian Studies 8 [1958] 35–92)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, Nabonidus boasts of securing Arabian stations and routes from Taima to Medina and of bringing prosperity to his empire by this means (H2 A I 22–27, 43–46, II 9–10, III 14–17). According to Gadd (pp. 79–89), commerce was only an incidental motive as compared with the quarrel between Nabonidus and the Babylonians; for other views see Saggs, H. W. F., The Greatness that was Babylon (London: Sidgwick and Jackson, 1962) 145–50Google Scholar, 267–68, 285; Röllig, W., ZA 56 (1964) 243–52.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

102 The importance of incense in the worship of Adonis is comically exaggerated by Detienne (Gardens of Adonis, 1–98) under such headings as “The perfumes of Arabia,” “The spice-ox,” “From myrrh to lettuce,” “The misfortunes of mint.” Detienne's book is cited by Müller, W. W. in the bibliography for Weihrauch PWSup 15 (1978) 777Google Scholar s.v., but this extensive article (cols. 700–777) in fact contains no mention of the worship or the myths of Adonis, only of Aphrodite (col. 753).

103 So Gow ad loc., with sufficient illustration.

104 Tamar resembles Myrrha in at least four respects. She bears the name of a tree, the date-palm; she tricks her father-in-law (if not her father) into consorting with her as an unrecognized loose woman; she is menaced by his anger when he discovers the trick; and from the incestuous union she bears offspring of consequence. The analogy of Lot's daughters (Gen 19:30–38) is not so close. Cf. Astour, Hellenosemitica (Leiden: Brill, 1967) 137Google Scholar; and Matthews, Panyassis, 122.

105 Some Greek incest stories are surveyed by Atallah, Adonis, 51–52. They were much in vogue among Hellenistic poets, and Atallah thinks that ours is no earlier, and that it may be due to “confusion between Cinyras and Adonis”; so Panyassis cannot be responsible, despite appearances (p. 48; cf. 23). Similarly Cook, J. M., CR 81 (1967) 77.Google Scholar

106 This sequence of events is sometimes abbreviated. At Apollodorus 3.184, Myrrha is transformed as her father overtakes her, and Adonis is born from the tree-trunk ten months later; at Antoninus Liberalis 34, Myrrha gives birth when discovered by her father, and then she is transformed. But the myrrh-tree belongs nowhere but in Arabia, and the original story must have placed the transformation here, just as Ovid does. Likewise Cinna (frgs. 6, 7 Morel) and the version known to Lycophron Alexandra 829–30, since both speak of Myrrha's protracted suffering.

107 Other evidence for Adonis in East Greece is registered by Atallah, Adonis, 311–12. On any view Athens and Argos are at least as likely to have derived the lament from East Greece as from Cyprus or Phoenicia, The case for Cyprus is over-stated by Nock, , Gnomon 10 (1934) 291–92Google Scholar = Essays, 1. 404. Athens would also have ties with the coast of Palestine in the mid-fifth century if it were true that Dor near Mt. Carmel was assessed for tribute in Athens' empire, as argued by Meritt, B. D. et al., The Athenian Tribute Lists 3 (Princeton: American School of Classical Studies at Athens, 1950) 9–11Google Scholar; but this identification of “Dorus” in Craterus (FrgGrHist 342 F 1), unlikely in itself, cannot be maintained in the face of express evidence that a Carian town is in view.

108 It cannot be accidental that Adonis is never named in any literary or epigraphic notice of the cults of Aphrodite. Meritt (Hesperia 4 [1935] 574–75)Google Scholar and Walton, F. R. (HTR 31 [1938] 69–72)CrossRefGoogle Scholar looked for Adonis and the Adonia in the cult of Eros and Aphrodite on the north slope of the Athenian Acropolis, with its festival of Munychion 4 (Lois sacrées des cités grecques, suppl. 5); this idea was welcomed by Atallah (Adonis, 242–44, 257) but is rightly rejected by Weill, (Bulletin de correspondance hellénique 90 [1966] 687 n. 4).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

109 The object of the summer lament at Harran is likewise said to be a young man slain by his “master” (cf. n. 89 above). It was to be expected that in Greek myth Adonis should always be represented as a mortal.

110 The vague but unmistakable indications of the poem are well discussed by Gow ad loc., who remarks that “Alexandrian coroplasts were expert at this sort of work, as the long catalogue of figures carried in Ptolemy's procession shows.”

111 Our sources do not say what was done at Aphaca, nor even that the worship here was part of the festival at Byblus, though this can be safely assumed; for some speculation see Soyez, Byblos, 30–36, 60–67.

112 Heurgon, J. (JRS 56 [1966] 1–15)Google Scholar stresses the Phoenician outlook and remarks that the dedication “could have been made in Byblos, Cyprus or Carthage without changing a word” (p. 12).

113 See Cumont, Syria 8 (1927) 330–41.

114 The temple remains and the cult which they imply have been re-studied by von Graeve, V. (jahrbuch des deutschen archäologischen Instituts 87 [1972] 314–47)Google Scholar, who rather implausibly argues that Adonis was often joined with the Heliopolitan triad (pp. 334–47). In the Demetrias relief (for which, see further von Graeve in Demetrias 1 [ed. Milojcic, V. and Theocharis, D.; Bonn: Habelt, 1976] 145–56)Google Scholar, the figure in shepherd garb who stands beside Hadad, Atargatis, and “Hermes” is more likely Attis than Adonis. At the Janiculum temple, Adonis is suggested by the Syrian elements, but Osiris by the seeds placed on the breast of the statuette and also by the statues of a Pharaoh and of Dionysus found in the same room or the next; and in Rome at this late date it is natural to suppose that the worshippers thought of both. In quoting Firmicus Maternus De errore profanarum religionum 22.1–2, the rebuke to pagan mystae who cherish a stone image, von Graeve omits the sentence about assembling or composing the limbs of the image, which of course points to Osiris rather than Adonis or another; probably Firmicus' targets too had a syncretizing bent.

115 Mount Zaphon at Ugarit matches Mount Lebanon and Aphaca at Byblus, and in Greek myth Adonis is sometimes said to have met his death on a mountain, as at Idalium in Cyprus (Propertius 2.13.54), which in fact has only a hill. But often enough a mountain setting is not evident or is excluded.

116 Since the temple lament was known at Enkomi and Salamis (sections 2–3 above), one might also think of the three bronze statuettes that were ceremonially buried at Enkomi in different sanctuary areas belonging to the last period of occupation (12th century B.C.). But none of the statuettes—a seated deity like El, and two warrior gods with horned caps, the smaller standing on an ingot—bears any resemblance to Adonis, and the warrior gods were both set erect. The best explanation seems to be that the statuettes were buried as a precautionary measure when earthquake threatened, or when the Inhabitants were about to leave: see Schaeffer, Alasia 1, pp. 505–66.

117 But a periodic renewal of life is already implicit in the vicarious sacrifice, in so far as each offering looks forward to the next. According to Lucian, the officiant “promises a greater victim next time” (De Syria Dea 55), i. e., another substitute will be provided in due course, if only the officiant's life is prolonged. When Baal mates with a heifer in the underworld and begets a son whom he seemingly invests with marks of honor (CTA 5 V 18–25), this is perhaps to provide an equivalent victim in the following year.

118 The evidence for the pig sacrifice of the Eleusinian initiate is assembled by Burkert (Homo Necans, 283–86, 294), who remarks that the pig stands for the initiate, “life for life” (p. 285). Burkert also thinks that the secret spectacle of the Mysteries was in part the sacrifice of a prepotent male animal (pp. 309–13), but his reasons are more ingenious than compelling.

119 Cf. Richarson, N. J., The Homeric Hymn to Demeter (Oxford: Clarendon, 1974) 12–30Google Scholar, a review of the problem.

120 The tradition is fittingly described as “apocryphal” by Burkert, (Griechische Religion der archaischen und klassischen Epoche [Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1977] 290)Google Scholar, who traces its sporadic occurrences at pp. 442–443. That the dismembered Dionysus stands for a sacrificial animal is commonly acknowledged; see, e.g., Burkert, Homo Necans, 104 n. 29, 203, 249.

121 The lists of Dionysus’ “toys” are assembled by Kern (Orphica Fragments nos. 31, 34) and have been discussed at length by Jeanmaire, H. (Dionysos [Paris: Payot, 1951] 379–85Google Scholar, 388–90), who interprets them as vestiges of an initiation rite marking the passage from childhood to adolescence, and by Boyance, P. (Revue des études anciennes 68 [1966] 39–41)Google Scholar and Fauth, W. (PW 9A 2 [1967]Google Scholar 2272–74 sub Zagreus), who both think in terms of mystic symbols, as ancient writers do. Two essential points have not been grasped. The first is the distinction between the extraneous items of the later lists, which are toys and nothing else—balls, tops, hoops —and the original items common to both earlier and later lists, which may be regarded as toys but in a ritual context can only be fertility emblems. The second point is the congruence of the two earlier lists—the Gurob papyrus, which has the pine-cone, bull-roarer, and knuckle bones, and of the Orphic lines quoted by Clement, which have pine-cone, bull-roarer, παίγνια καμπεσίγυια, and apples. This Greek phrase has been misunderstood by everyone as meaning dolls with flexible joints (so Lobeck, followed by the majority of commentators) or as a sort of hermetic kenning for toys in general; in fact it is only a poetic term for knuckle-bones. That these items are fertility emblems needs no elaborate demonstration: pine boughs and pine-cones were in use at the Thesmophoria (schol. Lucian Dialogi meietricii 2.1 [Rabe] p. 276; Stephanus sub Miletos); the bull-roarer, attested in various rites, is discussed by Gow, A. S. F., JHS 54 (1934) 1–13CrossRefGoogle Scholar; a knuckle-bone was carried by one of the three Charites at Elis, a rose and a myrtle bough by the others (Pausanias 6.24.6–7).