Cinyras

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According to Greek mythology, the king Cinyras (in Greek, Κινύρας – Kinuras) of Cyprus was a son of Apollo and the husband of Galatea. With Galatea, he fathered Adonis and Myrrha.

On Cyprus, Cinyras was revered as the creator of art and of musical instruments, such as the flute.

Cinyras and his father, Apollo, held a musical contest to see who was a better musician with a lyre. Cinyras lost and killed himself.

[edit] The historical version for Cinyras

According to Ovid, Cinyras was a king of Panchaia, a land east of Arabia, and the father of Myrrha.

When Cinyras discovered that he had unwittingly impregnated Myrrha, he attempted to kill his daughter. But the gods turned Myrrha into a tree (the myrrh), from which sprang the child Adonis.

In Homer's and Hesiod's Homeric Hymns, we hear of "how Zeus to humble her [Aphrodite's] pride of power caused her to love a mortal, Anchises; and how the goddess visited the hero upon Mt. Ida." The hymn proceeds to state that Aphrodite and Anchises united and begat Aeneas. It also seems to make Cytherea the same as Aphrodite and the wife of Anchises in the following way: "And Cytherea with the beautiful crown was joined in sweet love with the hero Anchises and bare Aeneas on the peaks of Ida with its many wooded glens."

In Homer's Iliad, we read that Cinyras had given a breastplate to the son of Atreus (probably Agamemnon). The story says that Cinyras had given him this gift on the occasion of the Achaeans about to sail for Troy. Cinyras apparently gave the breastplate to the king of the Achaeans.

According to Virgil and Servius (in the Aeneid of Virgil, Book VII), Teucer, together with the father of Dido, seized Cyprus and ejected Cinyras shortly before Dido's brother Pygmalion reigned.

According to Apollodorus, Cinyras married Metharme the daughter of Pygmalion, and that same Cinyras built Paphos.

Clemens Alessadrinous talks about the "Cyprian Islander Cinyras, who dared to bring forth from night to the light of day the lewd orgies of Aphrodite in his eagerness to deify a stumpet of his own country."

In The Histories, Tacitus relates the account of divination rites at the famous Temple of Venus at Paphos; according to traditional tales, this temple was founded by King Aerias; but based upon tales more modern to the story, Cinyras is thought to have concecrated the temple. The footnotes to this story also state that Cinyras is "Another mythical king of Cyprus. Hesychius calls him a son of Apollo, and Ovid makes him the father of Adonis."

[edit] External links

• The story of Cinyras and Myrrha as written by Ovid was translated by Sir Samuel Garth, John Dryden, et al