Myrrha
Encyclopedia
Myrrha also known as Smyrna (Greek: ), is the mother of Adonis
in Greek mythology
. She was transformed into a myrrh tree after having had intercourse with her father and gave birth to Adonis as a tree. Although the tale of Adonis has Semitic
roots, it is uncertain from where the myth of Myrrha emerged, though it was likely from Cyprus
.
The myth details the incestuous relationship between Myrrha and her father, Cinyras
. Myrrha falls in love with her father and tricks him into sexual intercourse. After discovering her identity, Cinyras draws his sword and pursues Myrrha. She flees across Arabia and, after nine months, turns to the gods for help. They take pity on her and transform her into a myrrh
-tree. While in plant form, Myrrha gives birth to Adonis. According to legend, the aromatic exudings of the myrrh-tree are Myrrha's tears.
The most familiar form of the myth was recounted in the Metamorphoses of Ovid
. Several alternate versions appeared in the Bibliotheca
of Apollodorus
, the Fabulae of Hyginus
, and the Metamorphoses of Antoninus Liberalis
, with major variations depicting Myrrha's father as the Assyria
n king Theias
or depicting Aphrodite
as having engineered the tragic liaison. Critical interpretation of the myth has considered Myrrha's refusal of conventional sexual relations to have provoked her incest, with the ensuing transformation to tree as a silencing punishment. It has been suggested that the taboo of incest marks the difference between culture and nature and that Ovid's version of Myrrha showed this. A translation of Ovid's Myrrha, done by English poet John Dryden
in 1700, has been interpreted as a critique of the society of that day linking Myrrha to Mary II
and Cinyras to James II
.
In post-classical times, Myrrha has had widespread influence in Western culture. She was mentioned in the Divine Comedy by Dante
, was an inspiration for Mirra by Vittorio Alfieri
, and was alluded to in Mathilda by Mary Shelley
. In the play Sardanapalus
by Byron, a character named Myrrha appeared, whom critics interpreted as a symbol of Byron's dream of romantic love. The myth of Myrrha was one of 24 tales retold in Tales from Ovid
by English poet Ted Hughes
. In art, Myrrha's seduction of her father has been illustrated by German engraver
Virgil Solis
, her tree-metamorphosis by French engraver Bernard Picart
and Italian painter Marcantonio Franceschini
, while French engraver Gustave Doré
chose to depict Myrrha in Hell as a part of his series of engravings for Dante's Divine Comedy. In music, she has appeared in pieces by Sousa
and Ravel
. She was also the inspiration for several species' scientific names and an asteroid's.
form of the Phoenicia
n word "adoni", meaning "my lord". It is believed that the cult of Adonis
was known to the Greeks from around the sixth century B.C., but it is unquestionable that they came to know it through contact with Cyprus. Around this time, the cult of Adonis is noted in the Book of Ezekiel
in Jerusalem, though under the Babylon
ian name Tammuz.
Adonis originally was a Phoenician god of fertility representing the spirit of vegetation. It is further speculated that he was an avatar of the version of Ba'al, worshipped in Ugarit
. It is likely that lack of clarity concerning whether Myrrha was called Smyrna, and who her father was, originated in Cyprus before the Greeks first encountered the myth. However, it is clear that the Greeks added much to the Adonis-Myrrha story, before it was first recorded by classical scholars.
Over the centuries Myrrha, the girl, and myrrh, the fragrance, have been linked etymologically. Myrrh was precious in the ancient world, and was used for embalming, medicine, perfume, and incense. The Modern English
word myrrh
(Old English: myrra) derives from the Latin
Myrrha (or murrha or murra, all are synonymous Latin words for the tree substance). The Latin Myrrha originated from the Ancient Greek
múrrā, but, ultimately, the word is of Semitic origin, with roots in the Arabic murr, the Hebrew mōr, and the Aramaic mūrā, all meaning "bitter" as well as referring to the plant. Regarding smyrna, the word is a Greek dialectic form of myrrha.
Myrrh in the Bible is referenced as one of the most desirable fragrances, and though mentioned alongside frankincense it is usually more expensive. Several Old Testament
passages refer to myrrh. In the Song of Solomon
, which according to scholars dates to either the tenth century B.C. as a Hebrew oral tradition or to the Babylonian captivity
in the 6th century B.C., myrrh is referenced seven times making the Song of Solomon the passage in the Old Testament referring to myrrh the most, often with erotic overtones. In the New Testament
the substance is famously associated with the birth of Christ when the magi presented their gifts of "gold, frankincense, and myrrh".
Published in 8 A.D. the Metamorphoses of Ovid was ahead of its time stylistically and has become one of the most influential poems by the Latin writers. The Metamorphoses showed that Ovid was more interested in questioning how the laws interfered with and ruined people's lives rather than writing epic tales like Virgil
's Aeneid
and Homer
's Odyssey
. The Metamorphoses is not narrated by Ovid, but rather by the characters inside the stories. The myth of Myrrha and Cinyras is sung by Orpheus
in the tenth book of Metamorphoses after he has told the myth of Pygmalion
and before he turns to the tale of Venus and Adonis. As the myth of Myrrha is also the longest tale sung by Orpheus (205 lines) and the only story that corresponds to his announced theme of girls who are punished for their madness from forbidden desire, it is considered the centerpiece of the song. Ovid opens the myth with a warning to the audience that this is a myth of great horror, especially to fathers and daughters:
According to Ovid
, Myrrha was the daughter of King Cinyras
and Queen Cenchreis of Cyprus. Before relating the story, it is stated that Cupid
played no role in the events and was not to blame for Myrrha's incestuous love for her father, Cinyras. Ovid further comments that hating one's father is a crime, but Myrrha's love was a greater crime than hate. Wrong as Myrrha's love was, Ovid blamed it on the Furies, stating that they cursed Myrrha.
Myrrha, who could have her choice of men from far and wide, felt attracted to her father. Knowing the love was forbidden, she fought it as hard as she could. Over several verses, Ovid depicts the inner struggle Myrrha faces between her sexual desire for her father and the social sanctions and shame she would face for sleeping with him.
One night the household was asleep, Myrrha found herself sleepless due to the passion she felt for her father. Her longings showed themselves partly as despair and partly as a resolve to fool her father into believing she was not his daughter, but she was unable to devise a means to do so. At last, losing all hope, she chose suicide. While fitting the noose around her neck, Myrrha was discovered by her nurse who snatched the rope from her. Distraught that she had been discovered, Myrrha confided her forbidden love to the nurse. The nurse tried to make Myrrha suppress the infatuation, but could not calm the girl. Finally the nurse agreed to help Myrrha get into her father's bed if she promised that she would not try to kill herself again.
The women got their opportunity during Ceres' festival
. During this celebration, the worshiping women (including Cenchreis, Myrrha's mother) were not to be touched by men for nine nights. The nurse found King Cinyras drunk in his bed and told him of a girl who was deeply in love with him, giving a false name. When he asked how old the girl was, the nurse responded that she was Myrrha's age. King Cinyras bade the nurse fetch the girl. In this manner, Myrrha and the nurse were able to deceive Cinyras. The affair lasted several nights in complete darkness to conceal Myrrha's identity. One night, Cinyras wanted to know the identity of the girl with whom he had conducted the affair. Upon bringing in a lamp, and seeing his crime, the king drew his sword and attempted to kill her on the spot, but Myrrha fled and escaped, saved because the darkness of the night hid her from sight.
Myrrha walked for nine months, past the palms of Arabia and the fields of Panchaea
, until she reached Sabaea
. At this point she could hardly bear the burden of her father's unborn child. Afraid of death and tired of life, she begged the gods for a solution. Her prayer was granted and as she spoke she was transformed into the myrrh tree. Though Myrrha abandoned her human feelings when she was transformed, she still mourns her tragic fate and her tears, being the drops oozing from the tree's bark, are today known as myrrh. When it came time for the birth of Myrrha's child, the tree appeared to wrench and sounded as though it had sighed and groaned. The goddess of childbirth came, touched the tree, and spoke soothingly to it. The tree cracked and delivered a baby boy, Adonis.
In his Bibliotheca, written around the 1st century B.C. Apollodorus tells of three possible parentages for Adonis. In the first he states that Cinyras arrived in Cyprus with a few followers and founded Paphos
, and that he married Metharme
, eventually becoming king of Cyprus through her family. Cinyras had five children with Metharme: the two boys, Oxyporos and Adonis, and three daughters, Orsedice, Laogore, and Braisia. The daughters at some point became victims of Aphrodite's wrath and had intercourse with foreigners, ultimately dying in Egypt.
For the second possible parentage of Adonis, Apollodorus quotes Hesiod
, who postulates that Adonis could be the child of Phoenix
and Alphesiboia
. He elaborates no further on this statement.
For the third option, he quotes Panyasis
, who states that King Theias of Assyria had a daughter called Smyrna. Smyrna accordingly failed to honor Aphrodite, incurring the wrath of the goddess. As punishment, she was made to fall in love with her father and with the aid of her nurse she deceived him for twelve nights until her identity was discovered. Smyrna fled, but her father drew his sword, chased her and later caught up with her. Smyrna then prayed that the gods would make her invisible, prompting them to turn her into a tree, which was named the Smyrna. Ten months later the tree cracked and Adonis was born from it.
In his Fabulae, written around 1 A.D. Hyginus states that King Cinyras of Assyria had a daughter with his wife, Cenchreis. The daughter was named Smyrna and the mother boasted that her child excelled even Venus in beauty. Angered, Venus punished the mother by cursing Smyrna with forbidden love, causing her to fall in love with her father. After the nurse had prevented Smyrna from committing suicide, she helped her engage her father in sexual intercourse. When Smyrna became pregnant, she hid in the woods from shame. Venus pitied the girl's fate, changing her into a myrrh tree, from which was born Adonis.
In the Metamorphoses by Antoninus Liberalis, written somewhere in the 2nd or 3rd century A.D., the myth is set in Phoenicia, near Mount Lebanon. Here King Thias, son of Belus and Orithyia, had a daughter named Smyrna. Being of great beauty, she was sought by men from far and wide. She had devised many tricks in order to delay her parents and defer the day they would choose a husband for her. Smyrna had been driven mad by desire for her father and did not want anybody else. At first she hid her desires, eventually telling her nurse, Hippolyte, the secret of her true feelings. Hippolyte told the king that a girl of exalted parentage wanted to lie with him, but in secret. The affair lasted for an extended period of time, and Smyrna became pregnant. At this point, Thias desired to know who she was so he hid a light, illuminating the room and discovering Smyrna's identity when she entered. In shock, Smyrna gave birth prematurely to her child. She then raised her hands and said a prayer, which was heard by Zeus who took pity on her and turned her into a tree. Thias killed himself, and it was on the wish of Zeus that the child was brought up and named Adonis.
who fell in love with her brother, Myrrha is transformed and rendered voiceless making her unable to break the taboo of incest.
Myrrha has also been thematically linked to the myth of Lot's daughters. They live with their father in an isolated cave and because their mother is dead they decide to befuddle Lot's mind with wine and seduce him in order to keep the family alive through him. Nany Miller comments on the two myths:
Myrrha has been interpreted as developing from a girl into a woman in the course of the story: in the beginning she is a virgin refusing her suitors, in that way denying the part of herself that is normally dedicated to Aphrodite. The goddess then strikes her with desire to make love with her father and Myrrha is then made into a woman in the grip of an uncontrollable lust. The marriage between her father and mother is then set as an obstacle for her love along with incest being forbidden by the laws, profane as well as divine. The way the daughter seduces her father illustrates the most extreme version a seduction can take: the union between two persons who by social norms and laws are strictly held apart.
James Richard Ellis has argued that the incest taboo is fundamental to a civilized society. Building on Sigmund Freud
's theories and psychoanalysis this is shown in Ovid's version of the myth of Myrrha. When the girl has been gripped by desire, she laments her humanity, for if she and her father were animals, there would be no bar to their union.
That Myrrha is transformed into a myrrh tree has also been interpreted to have influenced the character of Adonis. Being the child of both a woman and a tree he is a split person. In Ancient Greece
the word Adonis could mean both "perfume" and "lover" and likewise Adonis is both the perfume made from the aromatic drops of myrrh as well as the human lover who seduces two goddesses.
In her essay "What Nature Allows the Jealous Laws Forbid" literary critic Mary Aswell Doll compares the love between the two male protagonists of Annie Proulx' book Brokeback Mountain
(1997) with the love Myrrha has for her father in Ovid's Metamorphoses. Doll suggests that both Ovid's and Proulx' main concerns are civilization and its discontents and that their use of images of nature uncovers similar understandings of what is "natural" when it comes to who and how one should love. On the subject of Ovid’s writing about love Doll states:
Cinyras' relationship with a girl on his daughter's age was therefore not unnatural, but Myrrha's being in love with her own father was. Doll elaborates further on this stating that Myrrha's lamenting that animals can mate father and daughter without problems is a way for Ovid to express a paradox: in nature a father-daughter relationship is not unnatural, but it is in human society. On this Doll concludes that "Nature follows no laws. There is no such thing as "natural law"". Still, Ovid distances himself in three steps from the horrifying story:
First he does not tell the story himself, but has one of his in-story characters, Orpheus, sing it; second, Ovid tells his audience not even to believe the story (cf. quote in "Ovid's version"); third, he has Orpheus congratulate Rome, Ovid's home town, for its being far away from the land where this story took place (Cyprus). By distancing himself, Doll writes, Ovid lures his audience to keep listening. First then does Ovid begin telling the story describing Myrrha, her father and their relationship, which Doll compares to the mating of Cupid and Psyche
: here the lovemaking occurs in complete darkness and only the initiator (Cupid
) knows the identity of the other as well. Myrrha's metamorphosing into a tree is read by Doll as a metaphor where the tree incarnates the secret. As a side effect, Doll notes, the metamorphosis also alters the idea of incest into something natural for the imagination to think about. Commenting on a Freudian analysis of the myth stating that Ovid "disconcertingly suggests that [father-lust] might be an unspoken universal of human experience" Doll notes that Ovid's stories work like metaphors: they are meant to give insight into the human psyche. Doll states that the moments when people experience moments like those of father-lust are repressed and unconscious, which means that they are a natural part of growing and that most grow out of it sometime. She concludes about Ovid and his version of Myrrha that: "What is perverted, for Ovid, is the use of sex as a power tool and the blind acceptance of sexual male power as a cultural norm."
In 2008 the newspaper The Guardian
named Myrrha's relationship with her father as depicted in Metamorphoses by Ovid as one of the top ten stories of incestuous love ever. It complimented the myth for being more disturbing than any of the other incestuous relationships depicted in the Metamorphoses.
, written in 93 A.D. by the Roman
-Jewish
historian Flavius Josephus
. A tragedy entitled Cinyras is mentioned, wherein the main character, Cinyras, is to be slain along with his daughter Myrrha, and "a great deal of fictitious blood was shed". No further details are given about the plot of this play.
Myrrha appears in the Divine Comedy poem Inferno
by Dante Alighieri
, where Dante sees her soul being punished in the eighth circle of Hell
, in the tenth bolgia (ditch). Here she and other falsifiers such as the alchemists
and the counterfeiters are being punished with dreadful diseases with Myrrha's disease being madness. Myrrha's suffering in the tenth bolgia indicates her most serious sin was not incest but deceit. Diana Glenn interprets the symbolism in Myrrha's contrapasso
as being that her sin is so unnatural and unlawful that she is forced to abandon human society and simultaneously she loses her identity. Her madness in Hell prevents even basic communication which attests to her being contemptuous of the social order in life.
Dante had already shown his familiarity with the myth of Myrrha in a prior letter to Emperor Henry VII
, which he wrote on 17 April 1311. Here he compares Florence
with "Myrrha, wicked and ungodly, yearning for the embrace of her father, Cinyras"; a metaphor, Claire Honess interprets as referring to the way Florence tries to "seduce" Pope Clement V
away from Henry VII. It is incestuous because the Pope
is the father of all and it is also implied that the city in that way rejects her true husband, the Emperor.
In the poem Venus and Adonis
, written by William Shakespeare
in 1593 Venus
refers to Adonis' mother. In the 34th stanza Venus is lamenting because Adonis is ignoring her approaches and in her heart-ache she says "O, had thy mother borne so hard a mind, She had not brought forth thee, but died unkind." Shakespeare makes a subtle reference to Myrrha later when Venus picks a flower: "She crops the stalk, and in the breach appears, Green dropping sap, which she compares to tears." It has been suggested that these plant juices being compared to tears are a parallel to Myrrha's tears being the drops of myrrh exuding from the myrrh-tree.
In another work of Shakespeare, Othello
(1603), it has been suggested that he has made another reference. In act 5, scene 2 the main character Othello compares himself to a myrrh tree with its constant stream of tears (Myrrha's tears). The reference is justified in the way that it draws inspiration from Book X of Ovid's Metamorphoses, just like his previously written poem, Venus and Adonis, did.
The tragedy Mirra by Vittorio Alfieri
(written in 1786) is inspired by the story of Myrrha. In the play, Myrrha falls in love with her father, Cinyras. Myrrha is to be married to Prince Pyrrhus, but decides against it, and leaves him at the altar. In the ending, Mirra has a mental breakdown in front of her father who is infuriated because the prince has killed himself. Owning that she loves Cinyras, Mirra grabs his sword, while he recoils in horror, and kills herself.
The novella Mathilda, written by Mary Shelley
in 1820, contains similarities to the myth and mentions Myrrha. Mathilda is left by her father as a baby after her birth causes the death of her mother, and she does not meet her father until he returns sixteen years later. Then he tells her that he is in love with her, and, when she refuses him, he commits suicide. In chapter 4, Mathilda makes a direct allusion: "I chanced to say that I thought Myrrha the best of Alfieri's tragedies." Audra Dibert Himes, in an essay entitled "Knew shame, and knew desire", notes a more subtle reference to Myrrha: Mathilda spends the last night before her father’s arrival in the woods, but as she returns home the next morning the trees seemingly attempt to encompass her. Himes suggests that the trees can be seen as a parallel to Ovid’s metamorphosed Myrrha.
The tragedy Sardanapalus by George Gordon Byron published in 1821 and produced in 1834 is set in Assyria, 640 B.C., under King Sardanapalus
. The play deals with the revolt against the extravagant king and his relationship to his favourite slave Myrrha. Myrrha made Sardanapalus appear at the head of his armies, but after winning three successive battles in this way he was eventually defeated. A beaten man, Myrrha persuaded Sardanapalus to place himself on a funeral pyre which she would ignite and subsequently leap onto - burning them both alive. The play has been interpreted as an autobiography
, with Sardanapalus as Byron's alter ego, Zarina as Byron's wife Anne Isabella
, and Myrrha as his mistress Teresa
. At a more abstract level Myrrha is the desire for freedom driving those who feel trapped or bound, as well as being the incarnation of Byron's dream of romantic love. Byron knew the story of the mythical Myrrha, if not directly through Ovid's Metamorphoses, then at least through Alfieri's Mirra, which he was familiar with. In her essay "A Problem Few Dare Imitate", Susan J. Wolfson phrases and interprets the relation of the play Sardanapalus and the myth of Myrrha:
In 1997 the myth of Myrrha and Cinyras was one of 24 tales from Ovid's Metamorphoses that were retold by English poet Ted Hughes
in his poetical work Tales from Ovid
. The work was praised for not directly translating, but instead retelling the story in a language which was as fresh and new for the audience today as Ovid's texts were to his contemporary audience. Hughes was also complimented on his achievements in using humour or horror when describing Myrrha or a flood, respectively. The work received critical acclaim winning the Whitbread Book Of The Year Award 1997 and being adapted to the stage in 1999, starring Sirine Saba as Myrrha.
In 1997 American poet Frank Bidart
wrote Desire, which was another retelling of the myth of Myrrha as it was presented in the Metamorphoses by Ovid. The case of Myrrha, critic Langdon Hammer notes, is the worst possible made against desire, because the story of Myrrha shows how sex can lead people to destroy others as well as themselves. He comments that "the "precious bitter resin" into which Myrrha's tears are changed tastes bitter and sweet, like Desire as a whole". He further writes: "The inescapability of desire makes Bidart's long story of submission to it a kind of affirmation. Rather than aberrant, the Ovidian characters come to feel exemplary".
In 1700 English poet John Dryden
published his translations of myths by Ovid, Homer
, and Boccaccio
in the volume Fables, Ancient and Modern. Literary critic Anthony W. Lee notes in his essay "Dryden's Cinyras and Myrrha" that this translation, along with several others, can be interpreted as a subtle comment on the political scene of the late seventeenth-century England.
The translation of the myth of Myrrha as it appeared in Ovid's Metamorphoses is suggested as being a critique of the political settlement that followed the Glorious Revolution
. The wife of the leader of this revolution, William of Orange
, was Mary
, daughter of James II
. Mary and William were crowned king and queen of England in 1689, and because Dryden was deeply sympathetic to James he lost his public offices and fell into political disfavor under the new reign. Dryden turned to translation and infused these translations with political satire in response - the myth of Myrrha being one of these translations.
In the opening lines of the poem Dryden describes King Cinyras just as Ovid did as a man who had been happier if he had not become a father. Lee suggests that this is a direct parallel to James who could have been counted as happier if he had not had his daughter, Mary, who betrayed him and usurped his monarchical position. When describing the act of incest Dryden uses a monster metaphor. Those lines are suggested as aimed at William III who invaded England from the Netherlands and whose presence Dryden describes as a curse or a punishment, according to Lee. A little further on the Convention Parliament
is indicted. Lee suggests that Dryden critiques the intrusiveness of the Convention Parliament, because it acted without constituted legal authority. Finally the daughter, Mary as Myrrha, is described as an impious outcast from civilization, whose greatest sin was her disrupting the natural line of succession thereby breaking both natural as well as divine statutes which resulted in fundamental social confusion. When Myrrha craves and achieves her father's (Cinyras') bed, Lee sees a parallel to Mary's ascending James' throne: both daughters incestuously occupied the place which belonged to their fathers.
Reading the translation of the myth of Myrrha by Dryden as a comment on the political scene, states Lee, is partly justified by the characterization done by the historian Julian Hoppit on the events of the revolution of 1688:
and Andre Caplet
each wrote cantatas titled Myrrha. Caplet finished first over Ravel who was third in the Prix de Rome
competition. The competition required that the candidates jumped through a series of academic hoops before entering the final where they were to compose a cantata on a prescribed text. Though it was not the best musical piece, the jury praised Ravel's work for its "melodic charm" and "sincerity of dramatic sentiment". Musical critic Andrew Clements writing for The Guardian commented on Ravel's failures at winning the competition: "Ravel's repeated failure to win the Prix de Rome, the most coveted prize for young composers in France at the turn of the 20th century, has become part of musical folklore."
Italian composer Domenico Alaleona
's only opera, premiering in 1920, was entitled Mirra. The libretto drew on the legend of Myrrha while the music was inspired by Claude Debussy
's Pelléas et Mélisande
(1902) as well as Richard Strauss
' Elektra
(1909). Suffering from being monotonic, the final showdown between father and daughter, the critics commented, was the only part really making an impact. Mirra remains Alaleona's most ambitious composition and though the music tended to be "eclectic and uneven", it showed "technical enterprise".
More recently, Kristen Kuster created a choral orchestration, Myrrha, written in 2004 and first performed at Carnegie Hall
in 2006. Kuster stated that the idea for Myrrha came when she was asked by the American Composers Orchestra
to write a love-and-erotica themed concert. The concert was inspired by the myth of Myrrha in Ovid's Metamorphoses and includes excerpts from the volume that "move in and out of the music as though in a dream, or perhaps Myrrha’s memory of the events that shaped her fate," as described by Kuster.
, a German
bilingual translation by Johann Posthius was published, featuring the woodcuts of renowned German engraver Virgil Solis
. The illustration of Myrrha depicts Myrrha's deceiving her father as well as her fleeing from him. In 1717 in London, a Latin-English edition of Metamorphoses was published, translated by Samuel Garth
and with plates of French engraver Bernard Picart
. The illustration of Myrrha was entitled The Birth of Adonis and featured Myrrha as a tree delivering Adonis while surrounded by women. In 1857 French engraver Gustave Doré
made a series of illustrations to Dante's Divine Comedy, the depiction of Myrrha showing her in the eighth circle of Hell.
In 1690, Italian Baroque painter Marcantonio Franceschini
depicted Myrrha as a tree while delivering Adonis in The Birth of Adonis. The painting was included in the art exhibition "Captured Emotions: Baroque Painting in Bologna, 1575-1725" at the J. Paul Getty Museum
at the Getty Center in Los Angeles, California which lasted from December 16, 2008 through May 3, 2009. Normally the painting is exhibited in the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden
(English: Dresden State Art Collections) in Germany as a part of the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister
(English: Old Masters Picture Gallery).
In 1984, artist Mel Chin
created a sculpture based on Doré's illustration of Myrrha for the Divine Comedy. The sculpture was titled "Myrrha of the Post Industrial World" and depicted a nude woman sitting on a rectangular pedestal. It was an outdoor project in Bryant Park, and the skin of the sculpture was made of perforated steel. Inside was a visible skeleton of polystyrene
. When finished, the sculpture was 29 feet tall.
insects' scientific names reference the myth. Myrrha
is a genus
of ladybug beetles, such as the 18-spot ladybird
(Myrrha octodecimguttata) Libythea myrrha
, the club beak, is a butterfly native to India. Cupido myrrha
is a rare species of butterfly named by Herrich-Schäffer found on Mount Erciyes
in south-eastern Turkey. Catocala myrrha is a synonym for a species of moth known as married underwing. In total the United Kingdom's Natural History Museum
lists eight Lepidoptera
(moths and butterflies) with the myrrha name.
Myrrh is a bitter-tasting, aromatic, yellow to reddish brown gum. It is obtained from small thorny flowering trees of the Commiphora
genus, which is a part of the incense-tree family (Latin: Burseraceae
). There are two main varieties of myrrh: bisabol and herabol. Bisabol is produced by C. erythraea, an Arabian species similar to the C. myrrha
, which produces the herabol myrrh. C. myrrha grows in Ethiopia
, Arabia, and Somalia
.
A large asteroid, measuring 124 kilometres (77 mi) is named 381 Myrrha
. It was discovered and named at January 10, 1894 by A. Charlois at Nice. The mythical Myrrha inspired the name and her son, Adonis, is the name given to another asteroid, 2101 Adonis
. Using classical names like Myrrha, Juno
, and Vesta
when naming minor planets was standard custom at the time when Myrrha
was discovered. It was the general opinion that using numbers instead might lead to unnecessary confusion.
Adonis
Adonis , in Greek mythology, the god of beauty and desire, is a figure with Northwest Semitic antecedents, where he is a central figure in various mystery religions. The Greek , Adōnis is a variation of the Semitic word Adonai, "lord", which is also one of the names used to refer to God in the Old...
in Greek mythology
Greek mythology
Greek mythology is the body of myths and legends belonging to the ancient Greeks, concerning their gods and heroes, the nature of the world, and the origins and significance of their own cult and ritual practices. They were a part of religion in ancient Greece...
. She was transformed into a myrrh tree after having had intercourse with her father and gave birth to Adonis as a tree. Although the tale of Adonis has Semitic
Semitic
In linguistics and ethnology, Semitic was first used to refer to a language family of largely Middle Eastern origin, now called the Semitic languages...
roots, it is uncertain from where the myth of Myrrha emerged, though it was likely from Cyprus
Cyprus
Cyprus , officially the Republic of Cyprus , is a Eurasian island country, member of the European Union, in the Eastern Mediterranean, east of Greece, south of Turkey, west of Syria and north of Egypt. It is the third largest island in the Mediterranean Sea.The earliest known human activity on the...
.
The myth details the incestuous relationship between Myrrha and her father, Cinyras
Cinyras
In Greek mythology, Cinyras was a king of Cyprus. Accounts vary significantly as to his genealogy and provide a variety of stories concerning him; in many sources, however, he is associated with the cult of Aphrodite on Cyprus, and Adonis, a consort of Aphrodite, is mentioned as his son.In the...
. Myrrha falls in love with her father and tricks him into sexual intercourse. After discovering her identity, Cinyras draws his sword and pursues Myrrha. She flees across Arabia and, after nine months, turns to the gods for help. They take pity on her and transform her into a myrrh
Myrrh
Myrrh is the aromatic oleoresin of a number of small, thorny tree species of the genus Commiphora, which grow in dry, stony soil. An oleoresin is a natural blend of an essential oil and a resin. Myrrh resin is a natural gum....
-tree. While in plant form, Myrrha gives birth to Adonis. According to legend, the aromatic exudings of the myrrh-tree are Myrrha's tears.
The most familiar form of the myth was recounted in the Metamorphoses of Ovid
Ovid
Publius Ovidius Naso , known as Ovid in the English-speaking world, was a Roman poet who is best known as the author of the three major collections of erotic poetry: Heroides, Amores, and Ars Amatoria...
. Several alternate versions appeared in the Bibliotheca
Bibliotheca (Pseudo-Apollodorus)
The Bibliotheca , in three books, provides a comprehensive summary of traditional Greek mythology and heroic legends, "the most valuable mythographical work that has come down from ancient times," Aubrey Diller observed, whose "stultifying purpose" was neatly expressed in the epigram noted by...
of Apollodorus
Apollodorus
Apollodorus of Athens son of Asclepiades, was a Greek scholar and grammarian. He was a pupil of Diogenes of Babylon, Panaetius the Stoic, and the grammarian Aristarchus of Samothrace...
, the Fabulae of Hyginus
Hyginus
Hyginus can refer to:People:*Gaius Julius Hyginus , Roman poet, author of Fabulae, reputed author of Poeticon astronomicon*Hyginus Gromaticus, Roman surveyor*Pope Hyginus, also a saint, Bishop of Rome about 140...
, and the Metamorphoses of Antoninus Liberalis
Antoninus Liberalis
Antoninus Liberalis was an Ancient Greek grammarian who probably flourished between AD 100 and 300.His only surviving work is the Metamorphoses, , a collection of forty-one very briefly summarised tales about mythical metamorphoses effected by offended deities, unique in that they are...
, with major variations depicting Myrrha's father as the Assyria
Assyria
Assyria was a Semitic Akkadian kingdom, extant as a nation state from the mid–23rd century BC to 608 BC centred on the Upper Tigris river, in northern Mesopotamia , that came to rule regional empires a number of times through history. It was named for its original capital, the ancient city of Assur...
n king Theias
Theias
In Greek mythology, Theias was the King of Assyria and father of Myrrha and Adonis. The birth of Adonis existed in two different versions:#The most commonly accepted version is that Aphrodite urged Myrrha or Smyrna to commit incest with her father, Theias. Myrrha's nurse helped with the scheme....
or depicting Aphrodite
Aphrodite
Aphrodite is the Greek goddess of love, beauty, pleasure, and procreation.Her Roman equivalent is the goddess .Historically, her cult in Greece was imported from, or influenced by, the cult of Astarte in Phoenicia....
as having engineered the tragic liaison. Critical interpretation of the myth has considered Myrrha's refusal of conventional sexual relations to have provoked her incest, with the ensuing transformation to tree as a silencing punishment. It has been suggested that the taboo of incest marks the difference between culture and nature and that Ovid's version of Myrrha showed this. A translation of Ovid's Myrrha, done by English poet John Dryden
John Dryden
John Dryden was an influential English poet, literary critic, translator, and playwright who dominated the literary life of Restoration England to such a point that the period came to be known in literary circles as the Age of Dryden.Walter Scott called him "Glorious John." He was made Poet...
in 1700, has been interpreted as a critique of the society of that day linking Myrrha to Mary II
Mary II of England
Mary II was joint Sovereign of England, Scotland, and Ireland with her husband and first cousin, William III and II, from 1689 until her death. William and Mary, both Protestants, became king and queen regnant, respectively, following the Glorious Revolution, which resulted in the deposition of...
and Cinyras to James II
James II of England
James II & VII was King of England and King of Ireland as James II and King of Scotland as James VII, from 6 February 1685. He was the last Catholic monarch to reign over the Kingdoms of England, Scotland, and Ireland...
.
In post-classical times, Myrrha has had widespread influence in Western culture. She was mentioned in the Divine Comedy by Dante
DANTE
Delivery of Advanced Network Technology to Europe is a not-for-profit organisation that plans, builds and operates the international networks that interconnect the various national research and education networks in Europe and surrounding regions...
, was an inspiration for Mirra by Vittorio Alfieri
Vittorio Alfieri
Count Vittorio Alfieri was an Italian dramatist, considered the "founder of Italian tragedy."-Early life:Alfieri was born at Asti in Piedmont....
, and was alluded to in Mathilda by Mary Shelley
Mary Shelley
Mary Shelley was a British novelist, short story writer, dramatist, essayist, biographer, and travel writer, best known for her Gothic novel Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus . She also edited and promoted the works of her husband, the Romantic poet and philosopher Percy Bysshe Shelley...
. In the play Sardanapalus
Sardanapalus
Sardanapalus was, according to the Greek writer Ctesias of Cnidus, the last king of Assyria. Ctesias' Persica is lost, but we know of its contents by later compilations and from the work of Diodorus...
by Byron, a character named Myrrha appeared, whom critics interpreted as a symbol of Byron's dream of romantic love. The myth of Myrrha was one of 24 tales retold in Tales from Ovid
Tales from Ovid
Tales from Ovid is a poetical work written by the English poet Ted Hughes. Published in 1997 by Faber and Faber, it is a retelling of twenty-four tales from Ovid's Metamorphoses. It won the Whitbread Book Of The Year Award for 1997 and has been translated into several languages. It was one of his...
by English poet Ted Hughes
Ted Hughes
Edward James Hughes OM , more commonly known as Ted Hughes, was an English poet and children's writer. Critics routinely rank him as one of the best poets of his generation. Hughes was British Poet Laureate from 1984 until his death.Hughes was married to American poet Sylvia Plath, from 1956 until...
. In art, Myrrha's seduction of her father has been illustrated by German engraver
Engraving
Engraving is the practice of incising a design on to a hard, usually flat surface, by cutting grooves into it. The result may be a decorated object in itself, as when silver, gold, steel, or glass are engraved, or may provide an intaglio printing plate, of copper or another metal, for printing...
Virgil Solis
Virgil Solis
Virgil Solis or Virgilius Solis , a member of a prolific family of artists, was a German draughtsman and printmaker in engraving, etching and woodcut who worked in Nuremberg. His prints were sold separately or formed the illustrations of books; many prints signed by him are probably by assistants...
, her tree-metamorphosis by French engraver Bernard Picart
Bernard Picart
Bernard Picart , was a French engraver, son of Etienne Picart, also an engraver. He was born in Paris and died in Amsterdam. He moved to Antwerp in 1696, and then spent a year in Amsterdam before returning to France at the end of 1698...
and Italian painter Marcantonio Franceschini
Marcantonio Franceschini
Marcantonio Franceschini , was an Italian painter of the Baroque period, active mostly in his native Bologna. He was the father and teacher of Giacomo Franceschini.-Biography :...
, while French engraver Gustave Doré
Gustave Doré
Paul Gustave Doré was a French artist, engraver, illustrator and sculptor. Doré worked primarily with wood engraving and steel engraving.-Biography:...
chose to depict Myrrha in Hell as a part of his series of engravings for Dante's Divine Comedy. In music, she has appeared in pieces by Sousa
John Philip Sousa
John Philip Sousa was an American composer and conductor of the late Romantic era, known particularly for American military and patriotic marches. Because of his mastery of march composition, he is known as "The March King" or the "American March King" due to his British counterpart Kenneth J....
and Ravel
Maurice Ravel
Joseph-Maurice Ravel was a French composer known especially for his melodies, orchestral and instrumental textures and effects...
. She was also the inspiration for several species' scientific names and an asteroid's.
Origin and etymology
The myth of Myrrha is closely linked to that of her son, Adonis, which has been easier to trace. Adonis is the HellenizedGreece
Greece , officially the Hellenic Republic , and historically Hellas or the Republic of Greece in English, is a country in southeastern Europe....
form of the Phoenicia
Phoenicia
Phoenicia , was an ancient civilization in Canaan which covered most of the western, coastal part of the Fertile Crescent. Several major Phoenician cities were built on the coastline of the Mediterranean. It was an enterprising maritime trading culture that spread across the Mediterranean from 1550...
n word "adoni", meaning "my lord". It is believed that the cult of Adonis
Adonis
Adonis , in Greek mythology, the god of beauty and desire, is a figure with Northwest Semitic antecedents, where he is a central figure in various mystery religions. The Greek , Adōnis is a variation of the Semitic word Adonai, "lord", which is also one of the names used to refer to God in the Old...
was known to the Greeks from around the sixth century B.C., but it is unquestionable that they came to know it through contact with Cyprus. Around this time, the cult of Adonis is noted in the Book of Ezekiel
Book of Ezekiel
The Book of Ezekiel is the third of the Latter Prophets in the Hebrew Bible, following the books of Isaiah and Jeremiah and preceding the Book of the Twelve....
in Jerusalem, though under the Babylon
Babylon
Babylon was an Akkadian city-state of ancient Mesopotamia, the remains of which are found in present-day Al Hillah, Babil Province, Iraq, about 85 kilometers south of Baghdad...
ian name Tammuz.
Adonis originally was a Phoenician god of fertility representing the spirit of vegetation. It is further speculated that he was an avatar of the version of Ba'al, worshipped in Ugarit
Ugarit
Ugarit was an ancient port city in the eastern Mediterranean at the Ras Shamra headland near Latakia, Syria. It is located near Minet el-Beida in northern Syria. It is some seven miles north of Laodicea ad Mare and approximately fifty miles east of Cyprus...
. It is likely that lack of clarity concerning whether Myrrha was called Smyrna, and who her father was, originated in Cyprus before the Greeks first encountered the myth. However, it is clear that the Greeks added much to the Adonis-Myrrha story, before it was first recorded by classical scholars.
Over the centuries Myrrha, the girl, and myrrh, the fragrance, have been linked etymologically. Myrrh was precious in the ancient world, and was used for embalming, medicine, perfume, and incense. The Modern English
Modern English
Modern English is the form of the English language spoken since the Great Vowel Shift in England, completed in roughly 1550.Despite some differences in vocabulary, texts from the early 17th century, such as the works of William Shakespeare and the King James Bible, are considered to be in Modern...
word myrrh
Myrrh
Myrrh is the aromatic oleoresin of a number of small, thorny tree species of the genus Commiphora, which grow in dry, stony soil. An oleoresin is a natural blend of an essential oil and a resin. Myrrh resin is a natural gum....
(Old English: myrra) derives from the Latin
Latin
Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...
Myrrha (or murrha or murra, all are synonymous Latin words for the tree substance). The Latin Myrrha originated from the Ancient Greek
Ancient Greek
Ancient Greek is the stage of the Greek language in the periods spanning the times c. 9th–6th centuries BC, , c. 5th–4th centuries BC , and the c. 3rd century BC – 6th century AD of ancient Greece and the ancient world; being predated in the 2nd millennium BC by Mycenaean Greek...
múrrā, but, ultimately, the word is of Semitic origin, with roots in the Arabic murr, the Hebrew mōr, and the Aramaic mūrā, all meaning "bitter" as well as referring to the plant. Regarding smyrna, the word is a Greek dialectic form of myrrha.
Myrrh in the Bible is referenced as one of the most desirable fragrances, and though mentioned alongside frankincense it is usually more expensive. Several Old Testament
Old Testament
The Old Testament, of which Christians hold different views, is a Christian term for the religious writings of ancient Israel held sacred and inspired by Christians which overlaps with the 24-book canon of the Masoretic Text of Judaism...
passages refer to myrrh. In the Song of Solomon
Song of Solomon
The Song of Songs of Solomon, commonly referred to as Song of Songs or Song of Solomon, is a book of the Hebrew Bible—one of the megillot —found in the last section of the Tanakh, known as the Ketuvim...
, which according to scholars dates to either the tenth century B.C. as a Hebrew oral tradition or to the Babylonian captivity
Babylonian captivity
The Babylonian captivity was the period in Jewish history during which the Jews of the ancient Kingdom of Judah were captives in Babylon—conventionally 587–538 BCE....
in the 6th century B.C., myrrh is referenced seven times making the Song of Solomon the passage in the Old Testament referring to myrrh the most, often with erotic overtones. In the New Testament
New Testament
The New Testament is the second major division of the Christian biblical canon, the first such division being the much longer Old Testament....
the substance is famously associated with the birth of Christ when the magi presented their gifts of "gold, frankincense, and myrrh".
Ovid's version
Virgil
Publius Vergilius Maro, usually called Virgil or Vergil in English , was an ancient Roman poet of the Augustan period. He is known for three major works of Latin literature, the Eclogues , the Georgics, and the epic Aeneid...
's Aeneid
Aeneid
The Aeneid is a Latin epic poem, written by Virgil between 29 and 19 BC, that tells the legendary story of Aeneas, a Trojan who travelled to Italy, where he became the ancestor of the Romans. It is composed of roughly 10,000 lines in dactylic hexameter...
and Homer
Homer
In the Western classical tradition Homer , is the author of the Iliad and the Odyssey, and is revered as the greatest ancient Greek epic poet. These epics lie at the beginning of the Western canon of literature, and have had an enormous influence on the history of literature.When he lived is...
's Odyssey
Odyssey
The Odyssey is one of two major ancient Greek epic poems attributed to Homer. It is, in part, a sequel to the Iliad, the other work ascribed to Homer. The poem is fundamental to the modern Western canon, and is the second—the Iliad being the first—extant work of Western literature...
. The Metamorphoses is not narrated by Ovid, but rather by the characters inside the stories. The myth of Myrrha and Cinyras is sung by Orpheus
Orpheus
Orpheus was a legendary musician, poet, and prophet in ancient Greek religion and myth. The major stories about him are centered on his ability to charm all living things and even stones with his music; his attempt to retrieve his wife from the underworld; and his death at the hands of those who...
in the tenth book of Metamorphoses after he has told the myth of Pygmalion
Pygmalion (mythology)
Pygmalion is a legendary figure of Cyprus. Though Pygmalion is the Greek version of the Phoenician royal name Pumayyaton, he is most familiar from Ovid's Metamorphoses, X, in which Pygmalion was a sculptor who fell in love with a statue he had carved.-In Ovid:In Ovid's narrative, Pygmalion was a...
and before he turns to the tale of Venus and Adonis. As the myth of Myrrha is also the longest tale sung by Orpheus (205 lines) and the only story that corresponds to his announced theme of girls who are punished for their madness from forbidden desire, it is considered the centerpiece of the song. Ovid opens the myth with a warning to the audience that this is a myth of great horror, especially to fathers and daughters:
The story I am going to tell is a horrible one: I beg that daughters and fathers should hold themselves aloof, while I sing, or if they find my songs enchanting, let them refuse to believe this part of my tale, and suppose that it never happened: or else, if they believe that it did happen, they must believe also in the punishment that followed.
According to Ovid
Ovid
Publius Ovidius Naso , known as Ovid in the English-speaking world, was a Roman poet who is best known as the author of the three major collections of erotic poetry: Heroides, Amores, and Ars Amatoria...
, Myrrha was the daughter of King Cinyras
Cinyras
In Greek mythology, Cinyras was a king of Cyprus. Accounts vary significantly as to his genealogy and provide a variety of stories concerning him; in many sources, however, he is associated with the cult of Aphrodite on Cyprus, and Adonis, a consort of Aphrodite, is mentioned as his son.In the...
and Queen Cenchreis of Cyprus. Before relating the story, it is stated that Cupid
Cupid
In Roman mythology, Cupid is the god of desire, affection and erotic love. He is the son of the goddess Venus and the god Mars. His Greek counterpart is Eros...
played no role in the events and was not to blame for Myrrha's incestuous love for her father, Cinyras. Ovid further comments that hating one's father is a crime, but Myrrha's love was a greater crime than hate. Wrong as Myrrha's love was, Ovid blamed it on the Furies, stating that they cursed Myrrha.
Myrrha, who could have her choice of men from far and wide, felt attracted to her father. Knowing the love was forbidden, she fought it as hard as she could. Over several verses, Ovid depicts the inner struggle Myrrha faces between her sexual desire for her father and the social sanctions and shame she would face for sleeping with him.
One night the household was asleep, Myrrha found herself sleepless due to the passion she felt for her father. Her longings showed themselves partly as despair and partly as a resolve to fool her father into believing she was not his daughter, but she was unable to devise a means to do so. At last, losing all hope, she chose suicide. While fitting the noose around her neck, Myrrha was discovered by her nurse who snatched the rope from her. Distraught that she had been discovered, Myrrha confided her forbidden love to the nurse. The nurse tried to make Myrrha suppress the infatuation, but could not calm the girl. Finally the nurse agreed to help Myrrha get into her father's bed if she promised that she would not try to kill herself again.
The women got their opportunity during Ceres' festival
Cerealia
In ancient Roman religion, the Cerealia was the major festival celebrated for the grain goddess Ceres. It was held for seven days from mid- to late April, but the dates are uncertain....
. During this celebration, the worshiping women (including Cenchreis, Myrrha's mother) were not to be touched by men for nine nights. The nurse found King Cinyras drunk in his bed and told him of a girl who was deeply in love with him, giving a false name. When he asked how old the girl was, the nurse responded that she was Myrrha's age. King Cinyras bade the nurse fetch the girl. In this manner, Myrrha and the nurse were able to deceive Cinyras. The affair lasted several nights in complete darkness to conceal Myrrha's identity. One night, Cinyras wanted to know the identity of the girl with whom he had conducted the affair. Upon bringing in a lamp, and seeing his crime, the king drew his sword and attempted to kill her on the spot, but Myrrha fled and escaped, saved because the darkness of the night hid her from sight.
Myrrha walked for nine months, past the palms of Arabia and the fields of Panchaea
Panchaea
Panchaea is a fictional island, first mentioned by ancient Greek philosopher Euhemerus in the late 4th century BC. Euhemerus describes the island and his trip there in his major work Sacred History, only fragments of which survive....
, until she reached Sabaea
Sabaeans
The Sabaeans or Sabeans were an ancient people speaking an Old South Arabian language who lived in what is today Yemen, in the south west of the Arabian Peninsula.Some scholars suggest a link between the Sabaeans and the Biblical land of Sheba....
. At this point she could hardly bear the burden of her father's unborn child. Afraid of death and tired of life, she begged the gods for a solution. Her prayer was granted and as she spoke she was transformed into the myrrh tree. Though Myrrha abandoned her human feelings when she was transformed, she still mourns her tragic fate and her tears, being the drops oozing from the tree's bark, are today known as myrrh. When it came time for the birth of Myrrha's child, the tree appeared to wrench and sounded as though it had sighed and groaned. The goddess of childbirth came, touched the tree, and spoke soothingly to it. The tree cracked and delivered a baby boy, Adonis.
Other versions
The myth of Myrrha has been chronicled in several other works than Ovid's Metamorphoses. Among the scholars who recounted it are Apollodorus, Hyginus, and Antoninus Liberalis. All three versions differ greatly from one another.In his Bibliotheca, written around the 1st century B.C. Apollodorus tells of three possible parentages for Adonis. In the first he states that Cinyras arrived in Cyprus with a few followers and founded Paphos
Paphos
Paphos , sometimes referred to as Pafos, is a coastal city in the southwest of Cyprus and the capital of Paphos District. In antiquity, two locations were called Paphos: Old Paphos and New Paphos. The currently inhabited city is New Paphos. It lies on the Mediterranean coast, about west of the...
, and that he married Metharme
Galatea (mythology)
-Name "Galatea":Though the name "Galatea" has become so firmly associated with Pygmalion's statue as to seem antique, its use in connection with Pygmalion originated with a post-classical writer. No extant ancient text mentions the statue's name...
, eventually becoming king of Cyprus through her family. Cinyras had five children with Metharme: the two boys, Oxyporos and Adonis, and three daughters, Orsedice, Laogore, and Braisia. The daughters at some point became victims of Aphrodite's wrath and had intercourse with foreigners, ultimately dying in Egypt.
For the second possible parentage of Adonis, Apollodorus quotes Hesiod
Hesiod
Hesiod was a Greek oral poet generally thought by scholars to have been active between 750 and 650 BC, around the same time as Homer. His is the first European poetry in which the poet regards himself as a topic, an individual with a distinctive role to play. Ancient authors credited him and...
, who postulates that Adonis could be the child of Phoenix
Phoenix (son of Agenor)
In Greek mythology, Phoenix was a son of Agenor and Telephassa , brother of Cadmus, Cilix and Europe.When Europa was carried off by Zeus, her three brothers were sent out by Agenor to find her, but the search was unsuccessful...
and Alphesiboia
Alphesiboea
Alphesiboea was the name of several characters in Greek mythology:*Alphesiboea, the mother of Adonis with Phoenix .*Alphesiboea, a daughter of Phegeus, who married Alcmaeon. In some versions of this myth, she is called Arsinoe....
. He elaborates no further on this statement.
Panyassis
Panyassis of Halicarnassus, sometimes known as Panyasis , was a 5th century BC Greek epic poet, famous for the Heracleia and the Ionica. It is believed that he also wrote other works which have since been lost. He was critically unappreciated during his lifetime, but was posthumously recognised as...
, who states that King Theias of Assyria had a daughter called Smyrna. Smyrna accordingly failed to honor Aphrodite, incurring the wrath of the goddess. As punishment, she was made to fall in love with her father and with the aid of her nurse she deceived him for twelve nights until her identity was discovered. Smyrna fled, but her father drew his sword, chased her and later caught up with her. Smyrna then prayed that the gods would make her invisible, prompting them to turn her into a tree, which was named the Smyrna. Ten months later the tree cracked and Adonis was born from it.
In his Fabulae, written around 1 A.D. Hyginus states that King Cinyras of Assyria had a daughter with his wife, Cenchreis. The daughter was named Smyrna and the mother boasted that her child excelled even Venus in beauty. Angered, Venus punished the mother by cursing Smyrna with forbidden love, causing her to fall in love with her father. After the nurse had prevented Smyrna from committing suicide, she helped her engage her father in sexual intercourse. When Smyrna became pregnant, she hid in the woods from shame. Venus pitied the girl's fate, changing her into a myrrh tree, from which was born Adonis.
In the Metamorphoses by Antoninus Liberalis, written somewhere in the 2nd or 3rd century A.D., the myth is set in Phoenicia, near Mount Lebanon. Here King Thias, son of Belus and Orithyia, had a daughter named Smyrna. Being of great beauty, she was sought by men from far and wide. She had devised many tricks in order to delay her parents and defer the day they would choose a husband for her. Smyrna had been driven mad by desire for her father and did not want anybody else. At first she hid her desires, eventually telling her nurse, Hippolyte, the secret of her true feelings. Hippolyte told the king that a girl of exalted parentage wanted to lie with him, but in secret. The affair lasted for an extended period of time, and Smyrna became pregnant. At this point, Thias desired to know who she was so he hid a light, illuminating the room and discovering Smyrna's identity when she entered. In shock, Smyrna gave birth prematurely to her child. She then raised her hands and said a prayer, which was heard by Zeus who took pity on her and turned her into a tree. Thias killed himself, and it was on the wish of Zeus that the child was brought up and named Adonis.
Interpretation
The myth of Myrrha has been interpreted in various ways. The transformation of Myrrha in Ovid's version has been interpreted as a punishment for her breaking the social rules through her incestuous relationship with her father. Like ByblisByblis
In Greek mythology, Byblis or Bublis was a daughter of Miletus. Her mother was either Tragasia, Cyanee, daughter of the river-god Meander, or Eidothea, daughter of King Eurytus of Caria. She fell in love with Caunus, her twin brother....
who fell in love with her brother, Myrrha is transformed and rendered voiceless making her unable to break the taboo of incest.
Myrrha has also been thematically linked to the myth of Lot's daughters. They live with their father in an isolated cave and because their mother is dead they decide to befuddle Lot's mind with wine and seduce him in order to keep the family alive through him. Nany Miller comments on the two myths:
[Lot's daughters'] incest is sanctioned by reproductive necessity; because it lacks consequences, this story is not a socially recognized narrative paradigm for incest. [...] In the cases of both Lot's daughters and Myrrha, the daughter's seduction of the father has to be covert. While other incest configurations - mother-son, sibling - permit consensual agency, father-daughter incest does not; when the daughter displays transgressive sexual desire, the prohibitive father appears.
Myrrha has been interpreted as developing from a girl into a woman in the course of the story: in the beginning she is a virgin refusing her suitors, in that way denying the part of herself that is normally dedicated to Aphrodite. The goddess then strikes her with desire to make love with her father and Myrrha is then made into a woman in the grip of an uncontrollable lust. The marriage between her father and mother is then set as an obstacle for her love along with incest being forbidden by the laws, profane as well as divine. The way the daughter seduces her father illustrates the most extreme version a seduction can take: the union between two persons who by social norms and laws are strictly held apart.
James Richard Ellis has argued that the incest taboo is fundamental to a civilized society. Building on Sigmund Freud
Sigmund Freud
Sigmund Freud , born Sigismund Schlomo Freud , was an Austrian neurologist who founded the discipline of psychoanalysis...
's theories and psychoanalysis this is shown in Ovid's version of the myth of Myrrha. When the girl has been gripped by desire, she laments her humanity, for if she and her father were animals, there would be no bar to their union.
That Myrrha is transformed into a myrrh tree has also been interpreted to have influenced the character of Adonis. Being the child of both a woman and a tree he is a split person. In Ancient Greece
Ancient Greece
Ancient Greece is a civilization belonging to a period of Greek history that lasted from the Archaic period of the 8th to 6th centuries BC to the end of antiquity. Immediately following this period was the beginning of the Early Middle Ages and the Byzantine era. Included in Ancient Greece is the...
the word Adonis could mean both "perfume" and "lover" and likewise Adonis is both the perfume made from the aromatic drops of myrrh as well as the human lover who seduces two goddesses.
In her essay "What Nature Allows the Jealous Laws Forbid" literary critic Mary Aswell Doll compares the love between the two male protagonists of Annie Proulx' book Brokeback Mountain
Brokeback Mountain (short story)
"Brokeback Mountain" is a short story by American author Annie Proulx. It was originally published in The New Yorker on October 13, 1997, and was subsequently published in a slightly expanded version in Proulx's 1999 collection of short stories, Close Range: Wyoming Stories. The story won an O....
(1997) with the love Myrrha has for her father in Ovid's Metamorphoses. Doll suggests that both Ovid's and Proulx' main concerns are civilization and its discontents and that their use of images of nature uncovers similar understandings of what is "natural" when it comes to who and how one should love. On the subject of Ovid’s writing about love Doll states:
In Ovid’s work no love is "taboo" unless it arises out of a need for power and control. A widespread instance for the latter during the Roman EmpireRoman EmpireThe Roman Empire was the post-Republican period of the ancient Roman civilization, characterised by an autocratic form of government and large territorial holdings in Europe and around the Mediterranean....
was the practice by the elite to take nubile young girls as lovers or mistresses, girls who could be as young as daughters. Such a practice was considered normal, natural.
Cinyras' relationship with a girl on his daughter's age was therefore not unnatural, but Myrrha's being in love with her own father was. Doll elaborates further on this stating that Myrrha's lamenting that animals can mate father and daughter without problems is a way for Ovid to express a paradox: in nature a father-daughter relationship is not unnatural, but it is in human society. On this Doll concludes that "Nature follows no laws. There is no such thing as "natural law"". Still, Ovid distances himself in three steps from the horrifying story:
First he does not tell the story himself, but has one of his in-story characters, Orpheus, sing it; second, Ovid tells his audience not even to believe the story (cf. quote in "Ovid's version"); third, he has Orpheus congratulate Rome, Ovid's home town, for its being far away from the land where this story took place (Cyprus). By distancing himself, Doll writes, Ovid lures his audience to keep listening. First then does Ovid begin telling the story describing Myrrha, her father and their relationship, which Doll compares to the mating of Cupid and Psyche
Cupid and Psyche
Cupid and Psyche , is a legend that first appeared as a digressionary story told by an old woman in Lucius Apuleius' novel, The Golden Ass, written in the 2nd century CE. Apuleius likely used an earlier tale as the basis for his story, modifying it to suit the thematic needs of his novel.It has...
: here the lovemaking occurs in complete darkness and only the initiator (Cupid
Cupid
In Roman mythology, Cupid is the god of desire, affection and erotic love. He is the son of the goddess Venus and the god Mars. His Greek counterpart is Eros...
) knows the identity of the other as well. Myrrha's metamorphosing into a tree is read by Doll as a metaphor where the tree incarnates the secret. As a side effect, Doll notes, the metamorphosis also alters the idea of incest into something natural for the imagination to think about. Commenting on a Freudian analysis of the myth stating that Ovid "disconcertingly suggests that [father-lust] might be an unspoken universal of human experience" Doll notes that Ovid's stories work like metaphors: they are meant to give insight into the human psyche. Doll states that the moments when people experience moments like those of father-lust are repressed and unconscious, which means that they are a natural part of growing and that most grow out of it sometime. She concludes about Ovid and his version of Myrrha that: "What is perverted, for Ovid, is the use of sex as a power tool and the blind acceptance of sexual male power as a cultural norm."
In 2008 the newspaper The Guardian
The Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
named Myrrha's relationship with her father as depicted in Metamorphoses by Ovid as one of the top ten stories of incestuous love ever. It complimented the myth for being more disturbing than any of the other incestuous relationships depicted in the Metamorphoses.
Literature
One of the earliest recordings of a play inspired by the myth of Myrrha is in the Antiquities of the JewsAntiquities of the Jews
Antiquities of the Jews is a twenty volume historiographical work composed by the Jewish historian Flavius Josephus in the thirteenth year of the reign of Roman emperor Flavius Domitian which was around 93 or 94 AD. Antiquities of the Jews contains an account of history of the Jewish people,...
, written in 93 A.D. by the Roman
Roman Empire
The Roman Empire was the post-Republican period of the ancient Roman civilization, characterised by an autocratic form of government and large territorial holdings in Europe and around the Mediterranean....
-Jewish
Jews
The Jews , also known as the Jewish people, are a nation and ethnoreligious group originating in the Israelites or Hebrews of the Ancient Near East. The Jewish ethnicity, nationality, and religion are strongly interrelated, as Judaism is the traditional faith of the Jewish nation...
historian Flavius Josephus
Josephus
Titus Flavius Josephus , also called Joseph ben Matityahu , was a 1st-century Romano-Jewish historian and hagiographer of priestly and royal ancestry who recorded Jewish history, with special emphasis on the 1st century AD and the First Jewish–Roman War, which resulted in the Destruction of...
. A tragedy entitled Cinyras is mentioned, wherein the main character, Cinyras, is to be slain along with his daughter Myrrha, and "a great deal of fictitious blood was shed". No further details are given about the plot of this play.
Myrrha appears in the Divine Comedy poem Inferno
Inferno (Dante)
Inferno is the first part of Dante Alighieri's 14th-century epic poem Divine Comedy. It is followed by Purgatorio and Paradiso. It is an allegory telling of the journey of Dante through what is largely the medieval concept of Hell, guided by the Roman poet Virgil. In the poem, Hell is depicted as...
by Dante Alighieri
Dante Alighieri
Durante degli Alighieri, mononymously referred to as Dante , was an Italian poet, prose writer, literary theorist, moral philosopher, and political thinker. He is best known for the monumental epic poem La commedia, later named La divina commedia ...
, where Dante sees her soul being punished in the eighth circle of Hell
Malebolge
In Dante Alighieri's Inferno, part of the Divine Comedy, Malebolge is the eighth circle of Hell. Roughly translated from Italian, Malebolge means "evil ditches". Malebolge is a large, funnel-shaped cavern, itself divided into ten concentric circular trenches or ditches. Each trench is called a bolgia...
, in the tenth bolgia (ditch). Here she and other falsifiers such as the alchemists
Alchemy
Alchemy is an influential philosophical tradition whose early practitioners’ claims to profound powers were known from antiquity. The defining objectives of alchemy are varied; these include the creation of the fabled philosopher's stone possessing powers including the capability of turning base...
and the counterfeiters are being punished with dreadful diseases with Myrrha's disease being madness. Myrrha's suffering in the tenth bolgia indicates her most serious sin was not incest but deceit. Diana Glenn interprets the symbolism in Myrrha's contrapasso
Contrapasso
Contrapasso refers to the punishment of souls in Dante's Inferno, "by a process either resembling or contrasting with the sin itself." A similar process, though a penitential one, occurs in the Purgatorio.One of many examples of contrapasso occurs in the 4th Bolgia , where the sorcerers,...
as being that her sin is so unnatural and unlawful that she is forced to abandon human society and simultaneously she loses her identity. Her madness in Hell prevents even basic communication which attests to her being contemptuous of the social order in life.
Dante had already shown his familiarity with the myth of Myrrha in a prior letter to Emperor Henry VII
Henry VII, Holy Roman Emperor
Henry VII was the King of Germany from 1308 and Holy Roman Emperor from 1312. He was the first emperor of the House of Luxembourg...
, which he wrote on 17 April 1311. Here he compares Florence
Florence
Florence is the capital city of the Italian region of Tuscany and of the province of Florence. It is the most populous city in Tuscany, with approximately 370,000 inhabitants, expanding to over 1.5 million in the metropolitan area....
with "Myrrha, wicked and ungodly, yearning for the embrace of her father, Cinyras"; a metaphor, Claire Honess interprets as referring to the way Florence tries to "seduce" Pope Clement V
Pope Clement V
Pope Clement V, born Raymond Bertrand de Got was Pope from 1305 to his death...
away from Henry VII. It is incestuous because the Pope
Pope
The Pope is the Bishop of Rome, a position that makes him the leader of the worldwide Catholic Church . In the Catholic Church, the Pope is regarded as the successor of Saint Peter, the Apostle...
is the father of all and it is also implied that the city in that way rejects her true husband, the Emperor.
In the poem Venus and Adonis
Venus and Adonis (Shakespeare poem)
Venus and Adonis is a poem by William Shakespeare, written in 1592–1593, with a plot based on passages from Ovid's Metamorphoses. It is a complex, kaleidoscopic work, using constantly shifting tone and perspective to present contrasting views of the nature of love.-Publication:Venus and Adonis was...
, written by William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon"...
in 1593 Venus
Venus (mythology)
Venus is a Roman goddess principally associated with love, beauty, sex,sexual seduction and fertility, who played a key role in many Roman religious festivals and myths...
refers to Adonis' mother. In the 34th stanza Venus is lamenting because Adonis is ignoring her approaches and in her heart-ache she says "O, had thy mother borne so hard a mind, She had not brought forth thee, but died unkind." Shakespeare makes a subtle reference to Myrrha later when Venus picks a flower: "She crops the stalk, and in the breach appears, Green dropping sap, which she compares to tears." It has been suggested that these plant juices being compared to tears are a parallel to Myrrha's tears being the drops of myrrh exuding from the myrrh-tree.
In another work of Shakespeare, Othello
Othello
The Tragedy of Othello, the Moor of Venice is a tragedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written in approximately 1603, and based on the Italian short story "Un Capitano Moro" by Cinthio, a disciple of Boccaccio, first published in 1565...
(1603), it has been suggested that he has made another reference. In act 5, scene 2 the main character Othello compares himself to a myrrh tree with its constant stream of tears (Myrrha's tears). The reference is justified in the way that it draws inspiration from Book X of Ovid's Metamorphoses, just like his previously written poem, Venus and Adonis, did.
The tragedy Mirra by Vittorio Alfieri
Vittorio Alfieri
Count Vittorio Alfieri was an Italian dramatist, considered the "founder of Italian tragedy."-Early life:Alfieri was born at Asti in Piedmont....
(written in 1786) is inspired by the story of Myrrha. In the play, Myrrha falls in love with her father, Cinyras. Myrrha is to be married to Prince Pyrrhus, but decides against it, and leaves him at the altar. In the ending, Mirra has a mental breakdown in front of her father who is infuriated because the prince has killed himself. Owning that she loves Cinyras, Mirra grabs his sword, while he recoils in horror, and kills herself.
The novella Mathilda, written by Mary Shelley
Mary Shelley
Mary Shelley was a British novelist, short story writer, dramatist, essayist, biographer, and travel writer, best known for her Gothic novel Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus . She also edited and promoted the works of her husband, the Romantic poet and philosopher Percy Bysshe Shelley...
in 1820, contains similarities to the myth and mentions Myrrha. Mathilda is left by her father as a baby after her birth causes the death of her mother, and she does not meet her father until he returns sixteen years later. Then he tells her that he is in love with her, and, when she refuses him, he commits suicide. In chapter 4, Mathilda makes a direct allusion: "I chanced to say that I thought Myrrha the best of Alfieri's tragedies." Audra Dibert Himes, in an essay entitled "Knew shame, and knew desire", notes a more subtle reference to Myrrha: Mathilda spends the last night before her father’s arrival in the woods, but as she returns home the next morning the trees seemingly attempt to encompass her. Himes suggests that the trees can be seen as a parallel to Ovid’s metamorphosed Myrrha.
The tragedy Sardanapalus by George Gordon Byron published in 1821 and produced in 1834 is set in Assyria, 640 B.C., under King Sardanapalus
Sardanapalus
Sardanapalus was, according to the Greek writer Ctesias of Cnidus, the last king of Assyria. Ctesias' Persica is lost, but we know of its contents by later compilations and from the work of Diodorus...
. The play deals with the revolt against the extravagant king and his relationship to his favourite slave Myrrha. Myrrha made Sardanapalus appear at the head of his armies, but after winning three successive battles in this way he was eventually defeated. A beaten man, Myrrha persuaded Sardanapalus to place himself on a funeral pyre which she would ignite and subsequently leap onto - burning them both alive. The play has been interpreted as an autobiography
Autobiography
An autobiography is a book about the life of a person, written by that person.-Origin of the term:...
, with Sardanapalus as Byron's alter ego, Zarina as Byron's wife Anne Isabella
Anne Isabella Byron, Baroness Byron
Anne Isabella Noel Byron, 11th Baroness Wentworth and Baroness Byron was the wife of the poet Lord Byron, and mother of Ada Lovelace, the patron and co-worker of mathematician Charles Babbage.-Name:Her names were unusually complex...
, and Myrrha as his mistress Teresa
Teresa, Contessa Guiccioli
Teresa, Contessa Guiccioli was the mistress of Lord Byron whilst he was living in Ravenna, Italy, and writing the first five cantos of Don Juan. She wrote the biographical account Lord Byron's Life in Italy....
. At a more abstract level Myrrha is the desire for freedom driving those who feel trapped or bound, as well as being the incarnation of Byron's dream of romantic love. Byron knew the story of the mythical Myrrha, if not directly through Ovid's Metamorphoses, then at least through Alfieri's Mirra, which he was familiar with. In her essay "A Problem Few Dare Imitate", Susan J. Wolfson phrases and interprets the relation of the play Sardanapalus and the myth of Myrrha:
Although [Byron's] own play evades the full import of this complicated association, Myrrha's name means that it [the name's referring to incest, red.] cannot be escaped entirely - especially since Ovid's story of Myrrha's incest poses a potential reciprocal to the nightmare Byron invents for Sardanapalus, of sympathy with the son who is the object of his mother's 'incest'.
In 1997 the myth of Myrrha and Cinyras was one of 24 tales from Ovid's Metamorphoses that were retold by English poet Ted Hughes
Ted Hughes
Edward James Hughes OM , more commonly known as Ted Hughes, was an English poet and children's writer. Critics routinely rank him as one of the best poets of his generation. Hughes was British Poet Laureate from 1984 until his death.Hughes was married to American poet Sylvia Plath, from 1956 until...
in his poetical work Tales from Ovid
Tales from Ovid
Tales from Ovid is a poetical work written by the English poet Ted Hughes. Published in 1997 by Faber and Faber, it is a retelling of twenty-four tales from Ovid's Metamorphoses. It won the Whitbread Book Of The Year Award for 1997 and has been translated into several languages. It was one of his...
. The work was praised for not directly translating, but instead retelling the story in a language which was as fresh and new for the audience today as Ovid's texts were to his contemporary audience. Hughes was also complimented on his achievements in using humour or horror when describing Myrrha or a flood, respectively. The work received critical acclaim winning the Whitbread Book Of The Year Award 1997 and being adapted to the stage in 1999, starring Sirine Saba as Myrrha.
In 1997 American poet Frank Bidart
Frank Bidart
Frank Bidart is an American academic and poet.-Biography:In 1957, he began to study at the University of California at Riverside and went on to Harvard, where he was a student and friend of Robert Lowell and Elizabeth Bishop...
wrote Desire, which was another retelling of the myth of Myrrha as it was presented in the Metamorphoses by Ovid. The case of Myrrha, critic Langdon Hammer notes, is the worst possible made against desire, because the story of Myrrha shows how sex can lead people to destroy others as well as themselves. He comments that "the "precious bitter resin" into which Myrrha's tears are changed tastes bitter and sweet, like Desire as a whole". He further writes: "The inescapability of desire makes Bidart's long story of submission to it a kind of affirmation. Rather than aberrant, the Ovidian characters come to feel exemplary".
John Dryden's translation
John Dryden
John Dryden was an influential English poet, literary critic, translator, and playwright who dominated the literary life of Restoration England to such a point that the period came to be known in literary circles as the Age of Dryden.Walter Scott called him "Glorious John." He was made Poet...
published his translations of myths by Ovid, Homer
Homer
In the Western classical tradition Homer , is the author of the Iliad and the Odyssey, and is revered as the greatest ancient Greek epic poet. These epics lie at the beginning of the Western canon of literature, and have had an enormous influence on the history of literature.When he lived is...
, and Boccaccio
Giovanni Boccaccio
Giovanni Boccaccio was an Italian author and poet, a friend, student, and correspondent of Petrarch, an important Renaissance humanist and the author of a number of notable works including the Decameron, On Famous Women, and his poetry in the Italian vernacular...
in the volume Fables, Ancient and Modern. Literary critic Anthony W. Lee notes in his essay "Dryden's Cinyras and Myrrha" that this translation, along with several others, can be interpreted as a subtle comment on the political scene of the late seventeenth-century England.
The translation of the myth of Myrrha as it appeared in Ovid's Metamorphoses is suggested as being a critique of the political settlement that followed the Glorious Revolution
Glorious Revolution
The Glorious Revolution, also called the Revolution of 1688, is the overthrow of King James II of England by a union of English Parliamentarians with the Dutch stadtholder William III of Orange-Nassau...
. The wife of the leader of this revolution, William of Orange
William III of England
William III & II was a sovereign Prince of Orange of the House of Orange-Nassau by birth. From 1672 he governed as Stadtholder William III of Orange over Holland, Zeeland, Utrecht, Guelders, and Overijssel of the Dutch Republic. From 1689 he reigned as William III over England and Ireland...
, was Mary
Mary II of England
Mary II was joint Sovereign of England, Scotland, and Ireland with her husband and first cousin, William III and II, from 1689 until her death. William and Mary, both Protestants, became king and queen regnant, respectively, following the Glorious Revolution, which resulted in the deposition of...
, daughter of James II
James II of England
James II & VII was King of England and King of Ireland as James II and King of Scotland as James VII, from 6 February 1685. He was the last Catholic monarch to reign over the Kingdoms of England, Scotland, and Ireland...
. Mary and William were crowned king and queen of England in 1689, and because Dryden was deeply sympathetic to James he lost his public offices and fell into political disfavor under the new reign. Dryden turned to translation and infused these translations with political satire in response - the myth of Myrrha being one of these translations.
In the opening lines of the poem Dryden describes King Cinyras just as Ovid did as a man who had been happier if he had not become a father. Lee suggests that this is a direct parallel to James who could have been counted as happier if he had not had his daughter, Mary, who betrayed him and usurped his monarchical position. When describing the act of incest Dryden uses a monster metaphor. Those lines are suggested as aimed at William III who invaded England from the Netherlands and whose presence Dryden describes as a curse or a punishment, according to Lee. A little further on the Convention Parliament
Convention Parliament (1689)
The English Convention was an irregular assembly of the Parliament of England which transferred the Crowns of England and Ireland from James II to William III...
is indicted. Lee suggests that Dryden critiques the intrusiveness of the Convention Parliament, because it acted without constituted legal authority. Finally the daughter, Mary as Myrrha, is described as an impious outcast from civilization, whose greatest sin was her disrupting the natural line of succession thereby breaking both natural as well as divine statutes which resulted in fundamental social confusion. When Myrrha craves and achieves her father's (Cinyras') bed, Lee sees a parallel to Mary's ascending James' throne: both daughters incestuously occupied the place which belonged to their fathers.
Reading the translation of the myth of Myrrha by Dryden as a comment on the political scene, states Lee, is partly justified by the characterization done by the historian Julian Hoppit on the events of the revolution of 1688:
To most a monarch was God's earthly representative, chosen by Him for the benefit of His people. For men to meddle in that choice was to tamper with the divine order, the inevitable price of which was chaos.
Music
In music, Myrrha was the subject of an 1876 band piece by John Phillip Sousa, Myrrha Gavotte and in 1901, Maurice RavelMaurice Ravel
Joseph-Maurice Ravel was a French composer known especially for his melodies, orchestral and instrumental textures and effects...
and Andre Caplet
André Caplet
André Caplet was a French composer and conductor now known primarily through his orchestrations of works by Claude Debussy.-Biography:...
each wrote cantatas titled Myrrha. Caplet finished first over Ravel who was third in the Prix de Rome
Prix de Rome
The Prix de Rome was a scholarship for arts students, principally of painting, sculpture, and architecture. It was created, initially for painters and sculptors, in 1663 in France during the reign of Louis XIV. It was an annual bursary for promising artists having proved their talents by...
competition. The competition required that the candidates jumped through a series of academic hoops before entering the final where they were to compose a cantata on a prescribed text. Though it was not the best musical piece, the jury praised Ravel's work for its "melodic charm" and "sincerity of dramatic sentiment". Musical critic Andrew Clements writing for The Guardian commented on Ravel's failures at winning the competition: "Ravel's repeated failure to win the Prix de Rome, the most coveted prize for young composers in France at the turn of the 20th century, has become part of musical folklore."
Italian composer Domenico Alaleona
Domenico Alaleona
Domenico Alaleona was an Italian organist and composer. He was born in and died in Montegiorgio.-External links:*...
's only opera, premiering in 1920, was entitled Mirra. The libretto drew on the legend of Myrrha while the music was inspired by Claude Debussy
Claude Debussy
Claude-Achille Debussy was a French composer. Along with Maurice Ravel, he was one of the most prominent figures working within the field of impressionist music, though he himself intensely disliked the term when applied to his compositions...
's Pelléas et Mélisande
Pelléas et Mélisande (opera)
Pelléas et Mélisande is an opera in five acts with music by Claude Debussy. The French libretto was adapted from Maurice Maeterlinck's Symbolist play Pelléas et Mélisande...
(1902) as well as Richard Strauss
Richard Strauss
Richard Georg Strauss was a leading German composer of the late Romantic and early modern eras. He is known for his operas, which include Der Rosenkavalier and Salome; his Lieder, especially his Four Last Songs; and his tone poems and orchestral works, such as Death and Transfiguration, Till...
' Elektra
Elektra (opera)
Elektra is a one-act opera by Richard Strauss, to a German-language libretto by Hugo von Hofmannsthal, which he adapted from his 1903 drama Elektra. The opera was the first of many collaborations between Strauss and Hofmannsthal...
(1909). Suffering from being monotonic, the final showdown between father and daughter, the critics commented, was the only part really making an impact. Mirra remains Alaleona's most ambitious composition and though the music tended to be "eclectic and uneven", it showed "technical enterprise".
More recently, Kristen Kuster created a choral orchestration, Myrrha, written in 2004 and first performed at Carnegie Hall
Carnegie Hall
Carnegie Hall is a concert venue in Midtown Manhattan in New York City, United States, located at 881 Seventh Avenue, occupying the east stretch of Seventh Avenue between West 56th Street and West 57th Street, two blocks south of Central Park....
in 2006. Kuster stated that the idea for Myrrha came when she was asked by the American Composers Orchestra
American Composers Orchestra
The American Composers Orchestra is an American orchestra based in New York City. It is the only orchestra in the world dedicated solely to the creation, performance, preservation, and promulgation of music by American composers...
to write a love-and-erotica themed concert. The concert was inspired by the myth of Myrrha in Ovid's Metamorphoses and includes excerpts from the volume that "move in and out of the music as though in a dream, or perhaps Myrrha’s memory of the events that shaped her fate," as described by Kuster.
Art
The Metamorphoses of Ovid has been illustrated by several artists through time. In 1563 in FrankfurtFrankfurt
Frankfurt am Main , commonly known simply as Frankfurt, is the largest city in the German state of Hesse and the fifth-largest city in Germany, with a 2010 population of 688,249. The urban area had an estimated population of 2,300,000 in 2010...
, a German
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
bilingual translation by Johann Posthius was published, featuring the woodcuts of renowned German engraver Virgil Solis
Virgil Solis
Virgil Solis or Virgilius Solis , a member of a prolific family of artists, was a German draughtsman and printmaker in engraving, etching and woodcut who worked in Nuremberg. His prints were sold separately or formed the illustrations of books; many prints signed by him are probably by assistants...
. The illustration of Myrrha depicts Myrrha's deceiving her father as well as her fleeing from him. In 1717 in London, a Latin-English edition of Metamorphoses was published, translated by Samuel Garth
Samuel Garth
Sir Samuel Garth FRS was an English physician and poet.Garth was born in Bolam in County Durham and matriculated at Peterhouse, Cambridge in 1676, graduating B.A. in 1679 and...
and with plates of French engraver Bernard Picart
Bernard Picart
Bernard Picart , was a French engraver, son of Etienne Picart, also an engraver. He was born in Paris and died in Amsterdam. He moved to Antwerp in 1696, and then spent a year in Amsterdam before returning to France at the end of 1698...
. The illustration of Myrrha was entitled The Birth of Adonis and featured Myrrha as a tree delivering Adonis while surrounded by women. In 1857 French engraver Gustave Doré
Gustave Doré
Paul Gustave Doré was a French artist, engraver, illustrator and sculptor. Doré worked primarily with wood engraving and steel engraving.-Biography:...
made a series of illustrations to Dante's Divine Comedy, the depiction of Myrrha showing her in the eighth circle of Hell.
In 1690, Italian Baroque painter Marcantonio Franceschini
Marcantonio Franceschini
Marcantonio Franceschini , was an Italian painter of the Baroque period, active mostly in his native Bologna. He was the father and teacher of Giacomo Franceschini.-Biography :...
depicted Myrrha as a tree while delivering Adonis in The Birth of Adonis. The painting was included in the art exhibition "Captured Emotions: Baroque Painting in Bologna, 1575-1725" at the J. Paul Getty Museum
J. Paul Getty Museum
The J. Paul Getty Museum, a program of the J. Paul Getty Trust, is an art museum. It has two locations, one at the Getty Center in Los Angeles, California, and one at the Getty Villa in Pacific Palisades, Los Angeles, California...
at the Getty Center in Los Angeles, California which lasted from December 16, 2008 through May 3, 2009. Normally the painting is exhibited in the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden
Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden
Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden is a cultural institution in Dresden, Germany, owned by the State of Saxony. It belongs to the most renowned and oldest museum institutions in the world, originating from the collections of the Saxon electors in the 16th century .Today, the Dresden State Art...
(English: Dresden State Art Collections) in Germany as a part of the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister
Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister
The Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister in Dresden features major works of art. It is located in the gallery wing of the Zwinger....
(English: Old Masters Picture Gallery).
In 1984, artist Mel Chin
Mel Chin
Mel Chin is a conceptual visual artist. Motivated largely by political, cultural, and social circumstances, Chin works in a variety of art media to calculate meaning in modern life. Chin places art in landscapes, in public spaces, and in gallery and museum exhibitions, but his work is not limited...
created a sculpture based on Doré's illustration of Myrrha for the Divine Comedy. The sculpture was titled "Myrrha of the Post Industrial World" and depicted a nude woman sitting on a rectangular pedestal. It was an outdoor project in Bryant Park, and the skin of the sculpture was made of perforated steel. Inside was a visible skeleton of polystyrene
Polystyrene
Polystyrene ) also known as Thermocole, abbreviated following ISO Standard PS, is an aromatic polymer made from the monomer styrene, a liquid hydrocarbon that is manufactured from petroleum by the chemical industry...
. When finished, the sculpture was 29 feet tall.
Science
Several metamorphosingMetamorphosis
Metamorphosis is a biological process by which an animal physically develops after birth or hatching, involving a conspicuous and relatively abrupt change in the animal's body structure through cell growth and differentiation...
insects' scientific names reference the myth. Myrrha
Myrrha (beetle)
Myrrha is a genus of ladybirds originally defined by French entomologist Étienne Mulsant in his 1846 monograph of the ladybird family Coccinellidae. One species Myrrha octodecimguttata, is found in Europe....
is a genus
Genus
In biology, a genus is a low-level taxonomic rank used in the biological classification of living and fossil organisms, which is an example of definition by genus and differentia...
of ladybug beetles, such as the 18-spot ladybird
18-spot ladybird
The 18-spot ladybird is a species of Myrrha in the ladybird family recorded in Britain that lives in pine forests and is usually in length. They can also live in willow trees....
(Myrrha octodecimguttata) Libythea myrrha
Libythea myrrha
The Club Beak is a butterfly found in India that belongs to the Libytheinae group of the Brush-footed butterflies family....
, the club beak, is a butterfly native to India. Cupido myrrha
Cupido myrrha
Cupido myrrha, is a butterfly in the family Lycaenidae. Originally named Lycaena myrrha by Herrich-Schäffer in 1851 in the six volume 'Systematische Bearbeitung der Schmetterlinge von Europa' . This rare species has been found in Anatolia area of Turkey....
is a rare species of butterfly named by Herrich-Schäffer found on Mount Erciyes
Mount Erciyes
Mount Erciyes is a massive stratovolcano located 25 km to the south of Kayseri in Turkey.Erciyes is the highest mountain in central Anatolia, with its summit reaching...
in south-eastern Turkey. Catocala myrrha is a synonym for a species of moth known as married underwing. In total the United Kingdom's Natural History Museum
Natural History Museum
The Natural History Museum is one of three large museums on Exhibition Road, South Kensington, London, England . Its main frontage is on Cromwell Road...
lists eight Lepidoptera
Lepidoptera
Lepidoptera is a large order of insects that includes moths and butterflies . It is one of the most widespread and widely recognizable insect orders in the world, encompassing moths and the three superfamilies of butterflies, skipper butterflies, and moth-butterflies...
(moths and butterflies) with the myrrha name.
Myrrh is a bitter-tasting, aromatic, yellow to reddish brown gum. It is obtained from small thorny flowering trees of the Commiphora
Commiphora
Commiphora is a genus of flowering plants in the family Burseraceae. It includes about 185 species of trees and shrubs, often armed or thorny, native to Africa, Arabia, and the Indian subcontinent.-Uses:...
genus, which is a part of the incense-tree family (Latin: Burseraceae
Burseraceae
Burseraceae is a moderate-sized family of 17-18 genera and about 540 species of flowering plants. The actual numbers differ according to the time period in which a given source is written describing this family. The Burseraceae is also known as the Torchwood family, the frankincense and myrrh...
). There are two main varieties of myrrh: bisabol and herabol. Bisabol is produced by C. erythraea, an Arabian species similar to the C. myrrha
Commiphora myrrha
Common myrrh or gum myrrh is a tree in the Burseraceae family. It is one of the primary trees used in the production of myrrh, a resin made from dried tree sap...
, which produces the herabol myrrh. C. myrrha grows in Ethiopia
Ethiopia
Ethiopia , officially known as the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, is a country located in the Horn of Africa. It is the second-most populous nation in Africa, with over 82 million inhabitants, and the tenth-largest by area, occupying 1,100,000 km2...
, Arabia, and Somalia
Somalia
Somalia , officially the Somali Republic and formerly known as the Somali Democratic Republic under Socialist rule, is a country located in the Horn of Africa. Since the outbreak of the Somali Civil War in 1991 there has been no central government control over most of the country's territory...
.
A large asteroid, measuring 124 kilometres (77 mi) is named 381 Myrrha
381 Myrrha
381 Myrrha is a very large main-belt asteroid. It is classified as a C-type asteroid and is probably composed of carbonaceous material.It was discovered by Auguste Charlois on January 10, 1894, in Nice....
. It was discovered and named at January 10, 1894 by A. Charlois at Nice. The mythical Myrrha inspired the name and her son, Adonis, is the name given to another asteroid, 2101 Adonis
2101 Adonis
2101 Adonis was one of the first near-Earth asteroids to be discovered. It was discovered by Eugene Delporte in 1936 and named after Adonis, the beautiful youth with whom the goddess Venus fell in love...
. Using classical names like Myrrha, Juno
3 Juno
Juno , formal designation 3 Juno in the Minor Planet Center catalogue system, was the third asteroid to be discovered and is one of the larger main-belt asteroids, being one of the two largest stony asteroids, along with 15 Eunomia. Juno is estimated to contain 1% of the total mass of the asteroid...
, and Vesta
4 Vesta
Vesta, formally designated 4 Vesta, is one of the largest asteroids, with a mean diameter of about . It was discovered by Heinrich Wilhelm Olbers on March 29, 1807, and is named after the Roman virgin goddess of home and hearth, Vesta....
when naming minor planets was standard custom at the time when Myrrha
381 Myrrha
381 Myrrha is a very large main-belt asteroid. It is classified as a C-type asteroid and is probably composed of carbonaceous material.It was discovered by Auguste Charlois on January 10, 1894, in Nice....
was discovered. It was the general opinion that using numbers instead might lead to unnecessary confusion.
See also
- Electra complexElectra complexIn Neo-Freudian psychology, the Electra complex, as proposed by Carl Gustav Jung, is a girl’s psychosexual competition with mother for possession of father. In the course of her psychosexual development, the complex is the girl’s phallic stage formation of a discrete sexual identity; a boy’s...
- Incest in folkloreIncest in folkloreIncest in folklore is found in many countries and cultures in the world.-Greek:In Greek mythology, Zeus and Hera were brother and sister as well as husband and wife. They were the children of Cronus and Rhea . Cronus and Rhea, in turn, were children of Uranus and Gaia...
- Incest in popular cultureIncest in popular cultureIncest is a somewhat popular topic in English erotic fiction; there are entire collections and websites devoted solely to this genre, with an entire genre of pornographic pulp fiction known as "incest novels". This is probably because, as with many other fetishes, the taboo nature of the act adds...
- List of Metamorphoses characters
- OedipusOedipusOedipus was a mythical Greek king of Thebes. He fulfilled a prophecy that said he would kill his father and marry his mother, and thus brought disaster on his city and family...