Venus

Struck by Adonis’s beauty, Venus hid him from the gods and fell deeply in love with him. She stayed beside him in the shade, followed him through woods and over hills, and joined him when he hunted harmless hares, stags, and deer. She warned him against boars, wolves, bears, and lions. She told him that anyone who challenged a stronger creature could meet disaster. Adonis listened, but he did not always obey.

Adonis’s year had been divided between Venus, Persephone, and a period that he spent alone. Venus wore her magic girdle and persuaded him to give her his own share of the year. He also grudged Persephone the share that belonged to her and disobeyed the order that governed his time. Persephone went to Thrace and told Ares that Venus preferred Adonis to him, even though Adonis was a mortal. Ares grew jealous and changed himself into a wild boar.

While Adonis hunted on Mount Lebanon, the boar rushed at him. It gored him and killed him before Venus’s eyes. In another telling, the boar came from Artemis’s anger. Venus had travelled in a chariot drawn by swans towards Cyprus when she learned that Adonis had died. She turned back, descended from the sky, and found him lying in his blood. She tore her clothes, tore her hair, and beat her breast. She blamed the Fates and vowed that the memory of Adonis and her grief would remain.

Venus placed his blood in a flower. Anemones sprang from it, and their yearly growth recalled his death. Adonis’s soul descended to Tartarus. Venus then went to Zeus and begged him to let Adonis spend more than the darker half of the year with Persephone. Zeus granted that Adonis would return to Venus for the summer months.

Venus punished Myrrha after the girl’s beauty was set against the goddess’s. She caused Myrrha to conceive a forbidden passion for her father, Cinyras. Myrrha recognised the horror of her desire and struggled against it. She prayed to the gods, to divine law, and to the sacred duties owed to parents, asking to be drawn away from the crime. Her prayers failed. She decided that death would be better than the life she faced.

Myrrha’s nurse learned of her distress and promised to help. When Cinyras asked who the unknown woman was, the nurse told him that a young maiden waited for him. She led Myrrha to his bed at night. Before doing so, she made him drunk, so that he did not know whom he embraced. Myrrha entered the darkness and lay with him. Cinyras called her daughter, and she called him father, while neither understood the full crime. She left his bed carrying his child. The same act happened on following nights, until Cinyras brought a light and saw both his lover and his daughter.

Cinyras seized a sword and chased Myrrha from the palace. Darkness protected her from death. She fled across the land, carrying the child in her womb, until she begged the gods to change her and to spare her both life and death. Her feet fixed themselves in the ground, and roots twisted from her toes. Her bones became wood, her blood became sap, her arms became branches, her fingers became twigs, and her skin hardened into bark. The tree grew over her swollen belly and breast, then climbed towards her neck. Myrrha drew her face into the bark, but tears still fell as warm drops from the tree.

The tree split open and the infant Adonis came out. Venus, who had already regretted the harm she caused, hid the child in a chest and entrusted him to Persephone, queen of the dead, asking her to keep him in a dark place.

They stood in Cyprus and maintained their fixed denial that Venus was a goddess. They rejected her divinity and refused to honour her, although her power had been shown to them. Venus grew angry at their insolence and punished the Propoetides. She first made their bodies common and compelled every one of them to enter prostitution. They continued in the life that Venus had forced upon them, and they lost all shame. They became brazen before others and showed no modesty in their conduct. Their former nature then changed. The hardness that had entered their behaviour spread through their bodies, and their flesh grew coarse and unyielding. Venus changed them into stone. Their human shape remained almost untouched, so little difference could be seen between their former appearance and their stony forms. Yet life left them completely. They stood hard, still, and lifeless, fixed in the gestures that had marked their final state. Pygmalion saw the Propoetides leading this sinful life and felt disgust at the vice among them. He therefore kept himself apart and lived alone. For a long time, he could not bring himself to take a wife. The Propoetides remained stones after Venus punished them for denying her divinity and refusing her honour. Their transformation ended with the loss of every living part of them.