Hey everyone, welcome to Mythology Explained. In today's video, we're going to discuss Adonis: one of the most - if not the most - handsome man in Greek mythology, a man who was born from a sappy womb encased in the trunk of a tree, a man with whom Aphrodite was infatuated, a man doomed to fall well before grey flecked his hair or the lines left by long years etched his skin.

Let's get into it.

Adonis' name has become synonymous with male beauty, but despite this and despite the fact that he had goddesses fighting over him, his life was one more so characterised by tragedy than by favour and fortune. His story can basically be boiled-down to three parts: his conception, his birth and his death. In short, his mother, after being impregnated by her father, is transformed into a tree; Adonis then emerges from her bark-crusted body, only to live a short while before a hunting mishap costs him his life. This, of course, is terribly truncated, but it does provide the bare bones and should function as a sort of guiding star for the longer version to come.

Adonis was the son of the princess Smyrna, the beautiful daughter of king Theias, who ruled Assyria. Many suitors lined up in hopes of winning Smyrna's heart, but for one reason or another, none of them could. Rejection after rejection ensued, and they mounded up like love letters crumbled and discarded by some pining soul severed from its other half. They accumulated and then culminated - not in the finding of a husband - but in provoking Aphrodite's Wrath. You see, as the goddess of love, each rejection was an affront to her very being, and eventually, after so many suitors had been turned away, the goddess could not help but lash out, feeling so deeply scorned as she was. She cast a spell of love on Smyrna's mind, and in an especially cruel turn, it was none other than king Theias who was made the object of his own daughter's lustful love. Smyrna surreptitiously slipped into her father's chambers during the night, using the cover of darkness to hide her identity.

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