In late 19th and early 20th century scholarship of religion, Adonis was widely seen as a prime example of the archetypal dying-and-rising god.

"[13] The significant influence of Near Eastern culture on early Greek religion in general, and on the cult of Aphrodite in particular,[14] is now widely recognised as dating to a period of orientalisation during the eighth century BC,[14] when archaic Greece was on the fringes of the Neo-Assyrian Empire.

[13] Once the plants had withered, the women would mourn and lament loudly over the death of Adonis, tearing their clothes and beating their breasts in a public display of grief.

Thus, she spoke to him of a girl who truly loved him and desired to sleep with him, giving him a fictitious name and simply describing her as Myrrha's age.

[27] After several couplings, Cinyras discovered his lover's identity and drew his sword to kill her; driven out after becoming pregnant, Myrrha was changed into a myrrh tree but still gave birth to Adonis.

[28][29][30] According to classicist William F. Hansen, the story of how Adonis was conceived falls in line with the conventional ideas about sex and gender that were prevalent in the classical world, since the Greeks and Romans believed that women, such as Adonis's mother Myrrha, were less capable of controlling their primal wants and passions than men.

[43] In a very different version from the standard, surviving in the works of fifth century AD grammarian Servius and perhaps originating from the island of Cyprus, Adonis was made to fall in love with a mortal girl named Erinoma by Aphrodite herself at the command of Hera.

Erinoma, a virgin girl favoured by Artemis and Athena, rejected his advances, so Adonis crept up stealthily in her bedroom and raped her.

[45] "Androgynous" here means that Adonis took on a receptive role during sex with Apollo, which was interpreted in classical Greece to be the feminine position.

The text states that due to his love of Adonis, Aphrodite taught Nessos the centaur the trap to ensnare him.

[47][48] In Idyll 15 by the early third-century BC Greek bucolic poet Theocritus, Adonis is described as still an adolescent with down on his cheeks at the time of his love affair with Aphrodite, in contrast to Ovid's Metamorphoses, in which he is portrayed as a fully mature man.

[41] In another version, an anemone flower grew on the spot where Adonis died, and a red rose where Aphrodite's tears fell.

[51] The third century BC poet Euphorion of Chalcis remarked in his Hyacinth that "Only Cocytus washed the wounds of Adonis".

"[49] In the same poem, however, Venus quickly finds another shepherd as her lover, representing the widespread medieval belief in the fickleness and mutability of women.

[54] In Edmund Spenser's epic poem The Faerie Queene (1590), tapestries depicting the story of Adonis decorate the walls of Castle Joyous.

[57] The story of Adonis was the inspiration for the Italian poet Giambattista Marino to write his mythological epic L'Adone (1623), which outsold Shakespeare's First Folio.

[49] Shakespeare's homoerotic descriptions of Adonis's masculine and Venus's beauty inspired the French novelist and playwright Rachilde (Marguerite Vallette-Eymery) to write her erotic novel Monsieur Vénus (1884), about a noblewoman named Raoule de Vénérande who sexually pursues a young, effeminate man named Jacques who works in a flower shop.

[59] The late nineteenth-century Scottish anthropologist Sir James George Frazer wrote extensively about Adonis in his monumental study of comparative religion, The Golden Bough (the first edition of which was published in 1890)[60][63] as well as in later works.

[68] They further argued that Adonis is not explicitly described as rising from the dead in any extant Classical Greek writings,[68][13] though the fact that such a belief existed is attested by authors in Late Antiquity.

[68] For example, Origen discusses Adonis, whom he associates with Tammuz, in his Selecta in Ezechielem ( "Comments on Ezekiel"), noting that "they say that for a long time certain rites of initiation are conducted: first, that they weep for him, since he has died; second, that they rejoice for him because he has risen from the dead (apo nekrôn anastanti)" (cf.