He was said to have been born from a myrrh-tree, the bark of which
bursting, after a ten months' gestation, allowed the lovely infant
to come forth. According to some, a boar rent the bark with his tusk
and so opened a passage for the babe. A faint rationalistic colour
was given to the legend by saying that his mother was a woman named
Myrrh, who had been turned into a myrrh-tree soon after she had
conceived the child. The use of myrrh as incense at the festival of
Adonis may have given rise to the fable. We have seen that incense
was burnt at the corresponding Babylonian rites, just as it was
burnt by the idolatrous Hebrews in honour of the Queen of Heaven,
who was no other than Astarte. Again, the story that Adonis spent
half, or according to others a third, of the year in the lower world
and the rest of it in the upper world, is explained most simply and
naturally by supposing that he represented vegetation, especially
the corn, which lies buried in the earth half the year and reappears
above ground the other half. Certainly of the annual phenomena of
nature there is none which suggests so obviously the idea of death
and resurrection as the disappearance and reappearance of vegetation
in autumn and spring.
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