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132-471: Myrrha ( Greek : Μύρρα , Mýrra ), also known as Smyrna (Greek: Σμύρνα , Smýrna ), is the mother of Adonis in Greek mythology . She was transformed into a myrrh tree after having intercourse with her father, and gave birth to Adonis in tree form. Although the tale of Adonis has Semitic roots, it is uncertain where the myth of Myrrha emerged from, though it was probably from Cyprus . The myth details

264-607: A moon god and as Dagan , the grain god . Rather than the bull, Baʿal Hammon was associated with the ram and depicted with his horns. The archaeological record seems to bear out accusations in Roman sources that the Carthaginians burned their children as human sacrifices to him. He was worshipped as Baʿal Karnaim ("Lord of the Two Horns"), particularly at an open-air sanctuary at Jebel Bu Kornein ("Two-Horn Hill") across

396-543: A pitch accent . In Modern Greek, all vowels and consonants are short. Many vowels and diphthongs once pronounced distinctly are pronounced as /i/ ( iotacism ). Some of the stops and glides in diphthongs have become fricatives , and the pitch accent has changed to a stress accent . Many of the changes took place in the Koine Greek period. The writing system of Modern Greek, however, does not reflect all pronunciation changes. The examples below represent Attic Greek in

528-505: A 'master', or 'husband'. Cognates include the Akkadian Bēlu ( 𒂗 ), Amharic bal ( ባል ), and Arabic baʿl ( بعل ). Báʿal ( בַּעַל ) and baʿl still serve as the words for 'husband' in modern Hebrew and Arabic respectively. They also appear in some contexts concerning the ownership of things or possession of traits. The feminine form is baʿalah ( Hebrew : בַּעֲלָה ; Arabic : بَعْلَة ), meaning 'mistress' in

660-795: A Phoenician deity and false gods generally were extended during the Protestant Reformation to denote any idols , icons of the saints , or the Catholic Church generally. In such contexts, it follows the anglicized pronunciation and usually omits any mark between its two As. In close transliteration of the Semitic name, the ayin is represented, as Baʿal . In the Northwest Semitic languages — Ugaritic , Phoenician , Hebrew , Amorite , and Aramaic —the word baʿal signified ' owner ' and, by extension, 'lord',

792-412: A daughter by 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 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

924-592: A kind of affirmation. Rather than aberrant, the Ovidian characters come to feel exemplary". Myrrha - or Smyrna - is also mentioned in André Aciman's 2019 novel Find Me. 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

1056-477: A lack of contemporaneous evidence. Several theories exist about what Hellenic dialect groups may have existed between the divergence of early Greek-like speech from the common Proto-Indo-European language and the Classical period. They have the same general outline but differ in some of the detail. The only attested dialect from this period is Mycenaean Greek , but its relationship to the historical dialects and

1188-419: A lesser degree. Pamphylian Greek , spoken in a small area on the southwestern coast of Anatolia and little preserved in inscriptions, may be either a fifth major dialect group, or it is Mycenaean Greek overlaid by Doric, with a non-Greek native influence. Regarding the speech of the ancient Macedonians diverse theories have been put forward, but the epigraphic activity and the archaeological discoveries in

1320-619: A metaphor for British politics of the time, 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

1452-408: 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

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1584-506: 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

1716-474: 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: Ancient Greek language Ancient Greek ( Ἑλληνῐκή , Hellēnikḗ ; [hellɛːnikɛ́ː] ) includes

1848-553: 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)

1980-517: 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. The myth of Myrrha is closely linked to that of her son, Adonis, which has been easier to trace. Adonis is the Hellenized form of the Phoenician word " adoni ", meaning " my lord ". It

2112-550: A prefix /e-/, called the augment . This was probably originally a separate word, meaning something like "then", added because tenses in PIE had primarily aspectual meaning. The augment is added to the indicative of the aorist, imperfect, and pluperfect, but not to any of the other forms of the aorist (no other forms of the imperfect and pluperfect exist). The two kinds of augment in Greek are syllabic and quantitative. The syllabic augment

2244-608: A separate historical stage, though its earliest form closely resembles Attic Greek , and its latest form approaches Medieval Greek . There were several regional dialects of Ancient Greek; Attic Greek developed into Koine. Ancient Greek was a pluricentric language , divided into many dialects. The main dialect groups are Attic and Ionic , Aeolic , Arcadocypriot , and Doric , many of them with several subdivisions. Some dialects are found in standardized literary forms in literature , while others are attested only in inscriptions. There are also several historical forms. Homeric Greek

2376-630: A standard subject of study in educational institutions of the Western world since the Renaissance . This article primarily contains information about the Epic and Classical periods of the language, which are the best-attested periods and considered most typical of Ancient Greek. From the Hellenistic period ( c.  300 BC ), Ancient Greek was followed by Koine Greek , which is regarded as

2508-546: A storm and weather god became assimilated into Yahweh's own identification with the storm. In the next stage the Yahwistic religion separated itself from its Canaanite heritage, first by rejecting Baal-worship in the 9th century, then through the 8th to 6th centuries with prophetic condemnation of Baal, sun-worship, worship on the "high places", practices pertaining to the dead, and other matters. Baʿal Zebub ( Hebrew : בעל זבוב , lit.  " Fly Lord") occurs in

2640-568: 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

2772-520: 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

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2904-462: 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

3036-546: A vital, popular belief in any foreign gods can be detected in the stories themselves. Baal prophets appeared in Israel centuries later; but during the age of the judges when Israel is supposed to have been most deeply affected by the religion of Canaan, there are no Baal priests or prophets, nor any other intimation of a vital effect of polytheism in Israel’s life. The Deuteronomist and the present form of Jeremiah seem to phrase

3168-510: A vowel or /n s r/ ; final stops were lost, as in γάλα "milk", compared with γάλακτος "of milk" (genitive). Ancient Greek of the classical period also differed in both the inventory and distribution of original PIE phonemes due to numerous sound changes, notably the following: The pronunciation of Ancient Greek was very different from that of Modern Greek . Ancient Greek had long and short vowels ; many diphthongs ; double and single consonants; voiced, voiceless, and aspirated stops ; and

3300-468: 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 Empire 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

3432-480: 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

3564-570: Is a literary form of Archaic Greek (derived primarily from Ionic and Aeolic) used in the epic poems , the Iliad and the Odyssey , and in later poems by other authors. Homeric Greek had significant differences in grammar and pronunciation from Classical Attic and other Classical-era dialects. The origins, early form and development of the Hellenic language family are not well understood because of

3696-418: Is added to stems beginning with consonants, and simply prefixes e (stems beginning with r , however, add er ). The quantitative augment is added to stems beginning with vowels, and involves lengthening the vowel: Some verbs augment irregularly; the most common variation is e → ei . The irregularity can be explained diachronically by the loss of s between vowels, or that of the letter w , which affected

3828-614: Is also mentioned as "Winged Baʿal" ( Bʿl Knp ) and "Baʿal of the Arrows" ( Bʿl Ḥẓ ). Phoenician and Aramaic inscriptions describe "Baʿal of the Mace " ( Bʿl Krntryš ), "Baʿal of the Lebanon" ( Bʿl Lbnn ), "Baʿal of Sidon" ( Bʿl Ṣdn ), Bʿl Ṣmd , " Baʿal of the Heavens " ( Baʿal Shamem or Shamayin ), Baʿal ʾAddir ( Bʿl ʾdr ), Baʿal Hammon ( Baʿal Ḥamon ), Bʿl Mgnm . Baʿal Hammon

3960-625: 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 became aware of it through contact with Cyprus. Around this time, the cult of Adonis is noted in the Book of Ezekiel in Jerusalem , though under the Babylonian name Tammuz . Adonis originally was a Phoenician god of fertility representing the spirit of vegetation. It

4092-621: 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

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4224-666: Is called 'East Greek'. Arcadocypriot apparently descended more closely from the Mycenaean Greek of the Bronze Age. Boeotian Greek had come under a strong Northwest Greek influence, and can in some respects be considered a transitional dialect, as exemplified in the poems of the Boeotian poet Pindar who wrote in Doric with a small Aeolic admixture. Thessalian likewise had come under Northwest Greek influence, though to

4356-448: Is considered by some linguists to have been closely related to Greek . Among Indo-European branches with living descendants, Greek is often argued to have the closest genetic ties with Armenian (see also Graeco-Armenian ) and Indo-Iranian languages (see Graeco-Aryan ). Ancient Greek differs from Proto-Indo-European (PIE) and other Indo-European languages in certain ways. In phonotactics , ancient Greek words could end only in

4488-487: 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

4620-416: 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

4752-472: Is frequently described as "Victorious Baʿal" ( Aliyn or ẢlỈyn Baʿal ), "Mightiest one" ( Aliy or ʿAly ) or "Mightiest of the Heroes" ( Aliy Qrdm ), "The Powerful One" ( Dmrn ), and in his role as patron of the city "Baʿal of Ugarit" ( Baʿal Ugarit ). As Baʿal Zaphon ( Baʿal Ṣapunu ), he was particularly associated with his palace atop Jebel Aqra (the ancient Mount Ṣapānu and classical Mons Casius). He

4884-567: 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

5016-471: 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

5148-502: Is inspired by the story of Myrrha. In the play, Mirra falls in love with her father, Cinyras. Mirra 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

5280-409: Is mostly applied to worshippers of Baal, or descendants of the worshippers of Baal. Names including the element Baʿal presumably in reference to Yahweh include the judge Gideon (also known as Jerubaʿal, lit.  "The Lord Strives"), Saul 's son Eshbaʿal ("The Lord is Great"), and David 's son Beeliada ("The Lord Knows"). The name Bealiah ("The Lord is Jah "; "Yahweh is Baʿal") combined

5412-430: Is not narrated by Ovid, but rather by the characters in 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 punished for forbidden desire, it

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5544-427: 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,

5676-471: 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

5808-421: 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 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

5940-453: 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

6072-419: Is transformed and rendered voiceless making her unable to break the taboo of incest. Myrrha has also been thematically linked to the story 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. Nancy Miller comments on the two myths: [Lot's daughters'] incest

6204-520: Is usually mentioned along with other gods, "his own field of action being seldom defined". Nonetheless, Ugaritic records show him as a weather god , with particular power over lightning , wind , rain , and fertility . The dry summers of the area were explained as Baʿal's time in the underworld , and his return in autumn was said to have caused the storms that revived the land. Thus, the worship of Baʿal in Canaan —where he eventually supplanted El as

6336-571: 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

6468-682: 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 . In the Bible, myrrh is referenced as one of the most desirable fragrances, and though mentioned alongside frankincense , it

6600-585: The Assyrian 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, by English poet John Dryden in 1700, has been interpreted as

6732-650: The Chronicler(s) disapproved of both "Baals" whilst the Deuteronomists used "Baals" for any god they disapproved of. Likewise, Mark S. Smith believes Yahweh was more likely to be inspired by Baal rather than El, since both are stormy divine warriors and lack the pacifistic traits of El according to the Ugaritic texts and Hebrew Bible. Baʿal Berith ("Lord of the Covenant ") was a god worshipped by

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6864-658: 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

6996-708: The Greek region of Macedonia during the last decades has brought to light documents, among which the first texts written in Macedonian , such as the Pella curse tablet , as Hatzopoulos and other scholars note. Based on the conclusions drawn by several studies and findings such as Pella curse tablet , Emilio Crespo and other scholars suggest that ancient Macedonian was a Northwest Doric dialect , which shares isoglosses with its neighboring Thessalian dialects spoken in northeastern Thessaly . Some have also suggested an Aeolic Greek classification. The Lesbian dialect

7128-679: The Hebrew Bible in reference to various gods. The priests of the Canaanite Baʿal are mentioned numerous times, most prominently in the First Book of Kings . Many scholars believe that this describes Jezebel 's attempt to introduce the worship of the Baʿal of Tyre , Melqart , to the Israelite capital Samaria in the 9th century BCE. Against this, Day argues that Jezebel's Baʿal

7260-593: The Israelites when they "went astray" after the death of Gideon according to the Hebrew Scriptures . The same source relates that Gideon's son Abimelech went to his mother's kin at Shechem and received 70 shekels of silver "from the House of Baʿal Berith" to assist in killing his 70 brothers from Gideon's other wives. An earlier passage had made Shechem the scene of Joshua 's covenant between all

7392-475: The Mesopotamian and Semitic pantheons . Only a definitive article , genitive or epithet , or context could establish which particular god was meant. Baʿal was also used as a proper name by the third millennium BC, when he appears in a list of deities at Abu Salabikh . Most modern scholarship asserts that this Baʿal—usually distinguished as "The Lord" ( ה בעל , Ha Baʿal )—was identical with

7524-514: 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

7656-589: 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 has become one of the most influential poems by writers in Latin. The Metamorphoses show that Ovid was more interested in questioning how laws interfered with people's lives than writing epic tales like Virgil 's Aeneid or Homer 's Odyssey . The Metamorphoses

7788-460: 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

7920-487: The early Hebrews did use the names Baʿal ("Lord") and Baʿali ("My Lord") in reference to the Lord of Israel, just as Baʿal farther north designated the Lord of Ugarit or Lebanon. This occurred both directly and as the divine element of some Hebrew theophoric names . However, according to others it is not certain that the name Baal was definitely applied to Yahweh in early Israelite history. The component Baal in proper names

8052-458: The eighth circle of Hell , in the tenth bolgia (ditch). Here she and other falsifiers such as the alchemists and the counterfeiters suffer dreadful diseases, Myrrha's 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

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8184-433: 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,

8316-658: The patron of sailors and sea-going merchants. As vanquisher of Mot , the Canaanite death god , he was known as Baʿal Rāpiʾuma ( Bʿl Rpu ) and regarded as the leader of the Rephaim ( Rpum ), the ancestral spirits, particularly those of ruling dynasties. From Canaan, worship of Baʿal spread to Egypt by the Middle Kingdom and throughout the Mediterranean following the waves of Phoenician colonization in

8448-501: The present , future , and imperfect are imperfective in aspect; the aorist , present perfect , pluperfect and future perfect are perfective in aspect. Most tenses display all four moods and three voices, although there is no future subjunctive or imperative. Also, there is no imperfect subjunctive, optative or imperative. The infinitives and participles correspond to the finite combinations of tense, aspect, and voice. The indicative of past tenses adds (conceptually, at least)

8580-543: The storm and fertility god Hadad; it also appears in the form Baʿal Haddu . Scholars propose that, as the cult of Hadad increased in importance, his true name came to be seen as too holy for any but the high priest to speak aloud and the alias "Lord" ("Baʿal") was used instead, as " Bel " was used for Marduk among the Babylonians and " Adonai " for Yahweh among the Israelites. A minority propose that Baʿal

8712-409: The tribes of Israel and " El Yahweh , our god of Israel " and a later one describes it as the location of the "House of El Berith". It is thus unclear whether the false worship of the "Baʿalim" being decried is the worship of a new idol or rites and teachings placing Yahweh as a mere local god within a larger pantheon. The Hebrew Scriptures record the worship of Baʿal threatening Israel from

8844-528: The "Twisted Serpent" ( Bṭn ʿqltn ), " Lotan the Fugitive Serpent" ( Ltn Bṭn Brḥ , the biblical Leviathan ), and the " Mighty One with Seven Heads " ( Šlyṭ D.šbʿt Rašm ). Baʿal's conflict with Yammu is now generally regarded as the prototype of the vision recorded in the 7th chapter of the biblical Book of Daniel . As vanquisher of the sea, the Canaanites and Phoenicians regarded Baʿal as

8976-577: 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 by 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

9108-451: 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

9240-1031: The 5th century BC. Ancient pronunciation cannot be reconstructed with certainty, but Greek from the period is well documented, and there is little disagreement among linguists as to the general nature of the sounds that the letters represent. /oː/ raised to [uː] , probably by the 4th century BC. Greek, like all of the older Indo-European languages , is highly inflected. It is highly archaic in its preservation of Proto-Indo-European forms. In ancient Greek, nouns (including proper nouns) have five cases ( nominative , genitive , dative , accusative , and vocative ), three genders ( masculine , feminine , and neuter ), and three numbers (singular, dual , and plural ). Verbs have four moods ( indicative , imperative , subjunctive , and optative ) and three voices (active, middle, and passive ), as well as three persons (first, second, and third) and various other forms. Verbs are conjugated through seven combinations of tenses and aspect (generally simply called "tenses"):

9372-495: The Archaic period of ancient Greek (see Homeric Greek for more details): Μῆνιν ἄειδε, θεά, Πηληϊάδεω Ἀχιλῆος οὐλομένην, ἣ μυρί' Ἀχαιοῖς ἄλγε' ἔθηκε, πολλὰς δ' ἰφθίμους ψυχὰς Ἄϊδι προΐαψεν ἡρώων, αὐτοὺς δὲ ἑλώρια τεῦχε κύνεσσιν οἰωνοῖσί τε πᾶσι· Διὸς δ' ἐτελείετο βουλή· ἐξ οὗ δὴ τὰ πρῶτα διαστήτην ἐρίσαντε Ἀτρεΐδης τε ἄναξ ἀνδρῶν καὶ δῖος Ἀχιλλεύς. The beginning of Apology by Plato exemplifies Attic Greek from

9504-511: The Classical period of ancient Greek. (The second line is the IPA , the third is transliterated into the Latin alphabet using a modern version of the Erasmian scheme .) Ὅτι [hóti Hóti μὲν men mèn ὑμεῖς, hyːmêːs hūmeîs,   Ba%27al The Hebrew Bible includes use of the term in reference to various Levantine deities , often with application towards Hadad, who

9636-674: The Earth" as false gods. Baalim and Ashtaroth are given as the collective names of the male and female demons (respectively) who came from between the "bordering flood of old Euphrates " and "the Brook that parts Egypt from Syrian ground". Baal and derived epithets like Baalist were used as slurs during the English Reformation for the saints and their devotees. The Quran mentions that Prophet Elias ( Elijah ) warned his people against Baʿal worship. And Indeed, Elijah

9768-478: The aid of her nurse she deceived him for twelve nights until her identity was discovered. Smyrna fled, but her father 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

9900-550: The aorist. Following Homer 's practice, the augment is sometimes not made in poetry , especially epic poetry. The augment sometimes substitutes for reduplication; see below. Almost all forms of the perfect, pluperfect, and future perfect reduplicate the initial syllable of the verb stem. (A few irregular forms of perfect do not reduplicate, whereas a handful of irregular aorists reduplicate.) The three types of reduplication are: Irregular duplication can be understood diachronically. For example, lambanō (root lab ) has

10032-603: The aromatic exudate of the myrrh tree are Myrrha's tears. The most familiar form of the myth was recounted in the Metamorphoses of Ovid , and the story was the subject of the most famous work (now lost) of the poet Helvius Cinna . Several alternate versions appeared in the Bibliotheca , the Fabulae of Hyginus , and the Metamorphoses of Antoninus Liberalis , with major variations depicting Myrrha's father as

10164-419: The augment when it was word-initial. In verbs with a preposition as a prefix, the augment is placed not at the start of the word, but between the preposition and the original verb. For example, προσ(-)βάλλω (I attack) goes to προσ έ βαλoν in the aorist. However compound verbs consisting of a prefix that is not a preposition retain the augment at the start of the word: αὐτο(-)μολῶ goes to ηὐ τομόλησα in

10296-694: The bay from Carthage. His consort was the goddess Tanit . The epithet Hammon is obscure. Most often, it is connected with the NW Semitic ḥammān (" brazier ") and associated with a role as a sun god . Renan and Gibson linked it to Hammon (modern Umm el-‘Amed between Tyre in Lebanon and Acre in Israel ) and Cross and Lipiński to Haman or Khamōn, the classical Mount Amanus and modern Nur Mountains, which separate northern Syria from southeastern Cilicia . Baʿal (בַּעַל) appears about 90 times in

10428-438: The center of Greek scholarship, this division of people and language is quite similar to the results of modern archaeological-linguistic investigation. One standard formulation for the dialects is: West vs. non-West Greek is the strongest-marked and earliest division, with non-West in subsets of Ionic-Attic (or Attic-Ionic) and Aeolic vs. Arcadocypriot, or Aeolic and Arcado-Cypriot vs. Ionic-Attic. Often non-West

10560-514: 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

10692-637: The clouds" and Yahweh's "rider of the heavens." Like English ride, rkb has equine and sexual uses. The spelling of the English term "Baal" derives from the Greek Báal ( Βάαλ ) which appears in the New Testament and Septuagint , and from its Latinized form Baal , which appears in the Vulgate . These forms in turn derive from the vowel-less Northwest Semitic form BʿL ( Phoenician and Punic : 𐤁𐤏𐤋 ). The word's biblical senses as

10824-452: 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

10956-615: The dialect of Sparta ), and Northern Peloponnesus Doric (including Corinthian ). All the groups were represented by colonies beyond Greece proper as well, and these colonies generally developed local characteristics, often under the influence of settlers or neighbors speaking different Greek dialects. After the conquests of Alexander the Great in the late 4th century BC, a new international dialect known as Koine or Common Greek developed, largely based on Attic Greek , but with influence from other dialects. This dialect slowly replaced most of

11088-427: The doers of good. (131) Indeed, he was of Our believing servants. (132). Quran Surah 37 , verses 123-132 According to Tabari , baal is a term used by Arabs to denote everything which is a lord over anything. Al-Thaʿlabī offers a more detailed description about Baal; accordingly it was an idol of gold, twenty cubits tall, and had four faces. The trilateral root, ( bā, ayn, lam) baʿl occurs seven times in

11220-549: The early 1st millennium BCE. He was described with diverse epithets, and before Ugarit was rediscovered, these were supposed to refer to distinct local gods. However, as explained by Day , the texts at Ugarit revealed that they were considered "local manifestations of this particular deity, analogous to the local manifestations of the Virgin Mary in the Roman Catholic Church ". In those inscriptions, he

11352-526: 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

11484-540: The fields of Panchaea , until she reached Sabaea . Afraid of death and tired of life, and pregnant as well, she begged the gods for a solution, and was transformed into the myrrh tree, with the sap thereof representing her tears. Later, Lucina freed the newborn Adonis from the tree. 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. In his Bibliotheca , written around

11616-565: The first chapter of the Second Book of Kings as the name of the Philistine god of Ekron . In it, Ahaziah , king of Israel , is said to have consulted the priests of Baʿal Zebub as to whether he would survive the injuries from his recent fall. The prophet Elijah , incensed at this impiety, then foretold that he would die quickly, raining heavenly fire on the soldiers sent to punish him for doing so. Jewish scholars have interpreted

11748-673: The forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek ( c.  1400–1200 BC ), Dark Ages ( c.  1200–800 BC ), the Archaic or Epic period ( c.  800–500 BC ), and the Classical period ( c.  500–300 BC ). Ancient Greek was the language of Homer and of fifth-century Athenian historians, playwrights, and philosophers . It has contributed many words to English vocabulary and has been

11880-489: 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

12012-561: The historical Dorians . The invasion is known to have displaced population to the later Attic-Ionic regions, who regarded themselves as descendants of the population displaced by or contending with the Dorians. The Greeks of this period believed there were three major divisions of all Greek people – Dorians, Aeolians, and Ionians (including Athenians), each with their own defining and distinctive dialects. Allowing for their oversight of Arcadian, an obscure mountain dialect, and Cypriot, far from

12144-476: The historical circumstances of the times imply that the overall groups already existed in some form. Scholars assume that major Ancient Greek period dialect groups developed not later than 1120 BC, at the time of the Dorian invasions —and that their first appearances as precise alphabetic writing began in the 8th century BC. The invasion would not be "Dorian" unless the invaders had some cultural relationship to

12276-423: 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

12408-432: 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

12540-404: The leader of the gods and patron of kingship—was connected to the region's dependence on rainfall for its agriculture, unlike Egypt and Mesopotamia , which focused on irrigation from their major rivers. Anxiety about water availability for crops and trees increased the importance of his cult, which focused attention on his role as a rain god. He was also called upon during battle, showing that he

12672-485: 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

12804-533: The myth may also serve to reverse the narrative on cases where the father manipulates and sexually abuses his own daughters and no actual seduction of the father by the daughter occurs, except in his own mind. This would be similar to how The Freudian Coverup theory functions socially. One of the earliest recordings of a play inspired by the myth of Myrrha is in the Antiquities of the Jews , written in 93 A.D. by

12936-408: 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 . Particularly in light of the themes of secrecy in the taboo, and the patriarchal nature of Ovid's society,

13068-419: The nurse tells Cinyras of a girl deeply in love with him, giving a false name. The affair lasts several nights in complete darkness to conceal Myrrha's identity, until Cinyras wanted to know the identity of his paramour. Upon bringing in a lamp, and seeing his daughter, the king attempted to kill her on the spot, but Myrrha escaped. Thereafter Myrrha walked in exile for nine months, past the palms of Arabia and

13200-508: The older dialects, although the Doric dialect has survived in the Tsakonian language , which is spoken in the region of modern Sparta. Doric has also passed down its aorist terminations into most verbs of Demotic Greek . By about the 6th century AD, the Koine had slowly metamorphosed into Medieval Greek . Phrygian is an extinct Indo-European language of West and Central Anatolia , which

13332-487: The perfect stem eilēpha (not * lelēpha ) because it was originally slambanō , with perfect seslēpha , becoming eilēpha through compensatory lengthening. Reduplication is also visible in the present tense stems of certain verbs. These stems add a syllable consisting of the root's initial consonant followed by i . A nasal stop appears after the reduplication in some verbs. The earliest extant examples of ancient Greek writing ( c.  1450 BC ) are in

13464-454: The priests of Baʿal, after which it began to rain, showing Yahweh's mastery over the weather. Other references to the priests of Baʿal describe their burning of incense in prayer and their offering of sacrifice while adorned in special vestments . The title baʿal was a synonym in some contexts of the Hebrew adon ("Lord") and adonai ("My Lord") still used as aliases of the Lord of Israel Yahweh . According to some scholars,

13596-453: 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

13728-518: The punishment that followed. According to Ovid , Myrrha was the daughter of King Cinyras and Queen Cenchreis of Cyprus. Ovid says that Cupid was not to blame for Myrrha's incestuous love for her father, Cinyras; he comments that hating one's father is a crime, but that Myrrha's love was a greater crime, and blames it instead on the Furies . Over several verses, Ovid depicts the psychic struggle Myrrha faces between her sexual desire for her father and

13860-401: 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

13992-562: 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

14124-435: The second possible parentage of Adonis, Apollodorus quotes Hesiod , who postulates that Adonis could be the child of Phoenix and Alphesiboea . 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 failed to honor Aphrodite, incurring the wrath of the goddess, by whom was made to fall in love with her father; and with

14256-583: The sense of a female owner or lady of the house and still serving as a rare word for 'wife'. Suggestions in early modern scholarship also included comparison with the Celtic god Belenus , however this is now widely rejected by contemporary scholars. Like En in Sumerian , the Akkadian bēlu and Northwest Semitic baʿal (as well as its feminine form baʿalah ) was used as a title of various deities in

14388-531: The social shame she would face for acting on it. Sleepless, and losing all hope, she attempts suicide ; however, she is discovered by her nurse, in whom she confides. The nurse tries to make Myrrha suppress the infatuation, but later agrees to help Myrrha into her father's bed if she promises that she will not try to kill herself again. During the Ceres' festival , the worshipping women (including Cenchreis, Myrrha's mother) were not to be touched by men for nine nights;

14520-477: The struggle as monolatry or monotheism against polytheism . Yahweh is frequently identified in the Hebrew scriptures with El Elyon , however, this was after a conflation with El in a process of religious syncretism . ’El ( Hebrew : אל ) became a generic term meaning "god", as opposed to the name of a worshipped deity, and epithets such as El Shaddai came to be applied to Yahweh alone, while Baal's nature as

14652-517: The syllabic script Linear B . Beginning in the 8th century BC, however, the Greek alphabet became standard, albeit with some variation among dialects. Early texts are written in boustrophedon style, but left-to-right became standard during the classic period. Modern editions of ancient Greek texts are usually written with accents and breathing marks , interword spacing , modern punctuation , and sometimes mixed case , but these were all introduced later. The beginning of Homer 's Iliad exemplifies

14784-574: The time of the Judges until the monarchy . However, during the period of Judges such worship seems to have been an occasional deviation from a deeper and more constant worship of Yahweh: Throughout all the stories of Judges the popular faith in YHWH runs as a powerful current. This faith raises the judges, and inspires poets, prophets, and Nazirites. ... Worship of Baals and Ashtoreths has been schematically interspersed between these chapters, but no trace of

14916-702: The title of "Lord of the Flies" as the Hebrew way of calling Baʿal a pile of dung and his followers vermin , although others argue for a link to power over causing and curing pestilence and thus suitable for Ahaziah's question. The Septuagint renders the name as Baälzeboúb ( βααλζεβούβ ) and as "Baʿal of Flies" ( βααλ μυιαν , Baäl muian ). Symmachus the Ebionite rendered it as Beëlzeboúl ( Βεελζεβούλ ), possibly reflecting its original sense. This has been proposed to have been B‘l Zbl , Ugaritic for "Prince Baal". Outside of Jewish and Christian contexts,

15048-438: The two. However John Day states that as far as the names Eshba’al, Meriba’al, and Beeliada (that is Baaliada), are concerned it is not certain whether they simply allude to the Canaanite god Ba’al, or are intended to equate Yahweh with Ba’al, or have no connection to Ba’al. It was the program of Jezebel , in the 9th century BCE, to introduce into Israel's capital city of Samaria her Phoenician worship of Baal as opposed to

15180-505: The two. Hosea's references to sexual acts being metaphors for Israelite "apostasy". Brian P. Irwin argues that "Baal" in northern Israelite traditions is a form of Yahweh that was rejected as foreign by the prophets. In southern Israelite traditions, "Baal" was a god that was worshipped in Jerusalem. His worshippers saw him as compatible or identical with Yahweh and honored him with human sacrifices and fragrant meal offerings. Eventually,

15312-536: The various forms of Baʿal were indifferently rendered in classical sources as Belus ( ‹See Tfd› Greek : Βῆλος , Bē̂los ). An example is Josephus , who states that Jezebel "built a temple to the god of the Tyrians , which they call Belus"; this describes the Baʿal of Tyre, Melqart . Herrmann identifies the Demarus/Demarous figure mentioned by Philo Byblius as Baʿal. Baʿal Hammon , however,

15444-558: The worship of Yahweh that made the name anathema to the Israelites. At first the name Baal was used by the Jews for their God without discrimination, but as the struggle between the two religions developed, the name Baal was given up by the Israelites as a thing of shame, and even names like Jerubbaal were changed to Jerubbosheth: Hebrew bosheth means "shame". Eshbaʿal became Ish-bosheth and Meribaʿal became Mephibosheth , but other possibilities also occurred. Gideon's name Jerubaʿal

15576-480: Was Aeolic. For example, fragments of the works of the poet Sappho from the island of Lesbos are in Aeolian. Most of the dialect sub-groups listed above had further subdivisions, generally equivalent to a city-state and its surrounding territory, or to an island. Doric notably had several intermediate divisions as well, into Island Doric (including Cretan Doric ), Southern Peloponnesus Doric (including Laconian ,

15708-579: Was a native Canaanite deity whose cult was identified with or absorbed aspects of Adad 's. Regardless of their original relationship, by the 1st millennium BCE, the two were distinct: Hadad was worshiped by the Aramaeans and Baʿal by the Phoenicians and other Canaanites . Baʿal is well-attested in surviving inscriptions and was popular in theophoric names throughout the Levant but he

15840-490: 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

15972-467: Was among the messengers , (123) When he said to his people: "Will you not fear Allah? (124) Do you call upon Ba'l and leave the best of creators - (125) Allah, your Lord and the Lord of your first forefathers?" (126) And they denied him, so indeed, they will be brought [for punishment ], (127) Except the chosen servants of Allah. (128) And we left for him [favorable mention] among later generations: (129) Peace be upon Ilyāseen*. (130) Indeed, We thus reward

16104-399: 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

16236-552: Was decried as a false god . That use was taken over into Christianity and Islam , sometimes under the form Beelzebub in demonology . The Ugaritic god Baal is the protagonist of one of the lengthiest surviving epics from the ancient Near East , the Baal Cycle . Ba'al's widely used epithet is "rider (or mounter ) of the clouds." ( rkb 'rpt cf rkb b'rbt in Ps. 68:5; Ugaritic kb 'rpt .) These are related to Zeus's "gatherer of

16368-426: 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

16500-725: Was identified with the Greek Cronos and the Roman Saturn as the Zabul Saturn. He was probably never equated with Melqart, although this assertion appears in older scholarship. Beelzebub or Beelzebul was identified by the writers of the New Testament as Satan , " prince " (i.e., king ) of the demons . John Milton 's 1667 epic Paradise Lost describes the fallen angels collecting around Satan, stating that, though their heavenly names had been "blotted out and ras'd", they would acquire new ones "wandring ore

16632-539: Was inflicted on her by Helios , the sun god, over some unclear insult, which might reflect the role the Sun has in the myrrh's production, but nevertheless this version was far from being a popular one. 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 Byblis who fell in love with her brother, Myrrha

16764-513: Was mentioned intact but glossed as a mockery of the Canaanite god, implying that he strove in vain. Direct use of Baʿali continued at least as late as the time of the prophet Hosea , who reproached the Israelites for doing so. Brad E. Kelle has suggested that references to cultic sexual practices in the worship of Baal, in Hosea 2, are evidence of an historical situation in which Israelites were either giving up Yahweh worship for Baal, or blending

16896-502: Was more probably Baʿal Shamem , the Lord of the Heavens, a title most often applied to Hadad, who is also often titled just Ba‘al. 1 Kings 18 records an account of a contest between the prophet Elijah and Jezebel's priests. Both sides offered a sacrifice to their respective gods: Ba'al failed to light his followers' sacrifice while Yahweh 's heavenly fire burnt Elijah's altar to ashes, even after it had been soaked with water. The observers then followed Elijah's instructions to slay

17028-405: 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. In a rare version, Myrrha's curse

17160-404: Was thought to intervene actively in the world of man, unlike the more aloof El. The Lebanese city of Baalbeck was named after Baal. Alternatively, Ba' al is a divine co-regent with El, where El was the executive while Ba' al was the sustainer of the cosmos. The Baʿal of Ugarit was the epithet of Hadad, but as time passed, the epithet became the god's name while Hadad became the epithet. Baʿal

17292-523: Was usually said to be the son of Dagan , but appears as one of the sons of El in Ugaritic sources. Both Baʿal and El were associated with the bull in Ugaritic texts, as they symbolized both strength and fertility. He held special enmity against snakes, both on their own and as representatives of Yammu ( lit.  "Sea"), the Canaanite sea god and river god . He fought the Tannin ( Tunnanu ),

17424-459: Was worshipped in the Tyrian colony of Carthage as their supreme god . It is believed that this position developed in the 5th century BCE following the severing of its ties to Tyre following the 480 BCE Battle of Himera . Like Hadad, Baʿal Hammon was a fertility god . Inscriptions about Punic deities tend to be rather uninformative, though, and he has been variously identified as

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