tators take of the story of
Adonis having been founded on physical circumstance, we cannot do
better than quote the able remarks of Mr. Keightley on the subject.
He says (Mythology of Ancient Greece and Italy, p. 109)-- "The tale
of Adonis is apparently an Eastern mythus. His very name is Semitic
(Hebrew 'Adon,' 'Lord'), and those of his parents also refer to that
part of the world. He appears to be the same with the Thammuz,
mentioned by the prophet Ezekiel, and to be a Phoenician
personification of the sun who, during a part of the year is absent,
or, as the legend expresses it, with the Goddess of the under world:
during the remainder with Astarte, the regent of heaven. It is
uncertain when the Adonia were first celebrated in Greece; but we
find Plato alluding to the gardens of Adonis, as boxes of flowers
used in them were called; and the ill fortune of the Athenian
expedition to Sicily was in part ascribed to the circumstance of the
fleet having sailed during that festival."

This notion of the mourning for Adonis being a testimony of grief
for the absence of the Sun during the winter, is not, however, to be
too readily acquiesced in. Lobeck (Aglaophamus, p. 691), for
example, asks, with some appearance of reason, why those nations
whose heaven was mildest, and their winter shortest, should so
bitterly bewail the regular changes of the seasons, as to feign that
the Gods themselves were carried off or slain; and he shrewdly
observes, that, in that case, the mournful and the joyful parts of
the festival should have been held at different times of the year,
and not joined together, as they were. He further inquires, whether
the ancient writers, who esteemed these Gods to be so little
superior to men, may not have believed them to have been really and
not metaphorically put to death? And, in truth, it is not easy to
give a satisfactory answer to these questions.

BOOK THE ELEVENTH.

FABLE I. [XI.1-84]

While Orpheus is singing to his lyre on Mount Rhodope, the women of
Thrace celebrate their orgies. During that ceremony they take
advantage of the opportunity to punish Orpheus for his indifference
towards their sex; and, in the fury inspired by their rites, they
beat him to death. His head and lyre are carried by the stream of
the river Hebrus into the sea, and are cast on shore on the isle of
Lesbos. A serpent, about to attack the head