Myrrha

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.

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.

[15][16] 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.

[19] 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 is considered the centerpiece of the song.

[f] 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.

Smyrna failed to honor Aphrodite, incurring the wrath of the goddess, by whom 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.

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.

[37] 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 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.

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.

"[15] 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.

[50] 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.

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.

"[53] 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.

[q] 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.

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.

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.

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'.

[69] The work received critical acclaim winning the Whitbread Book Of The Year Award 1997[70] and being adapted to the stage in 1999, starring Sirine Saba as Myrrha.

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.

[73] 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.

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.

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.

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.

[73] 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:[73] To most a monarch was God's earthly representative, chosen by Him for the benefit of His people.

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.

[84] In 1717 in London, a Latin-English edition of Metamorphoses was published, translated by Samuel Garth and with plates of French engraver Bernard Picart.

[85][86][87] 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.

Polyommatus myrrha is a rare species of butterfly named by Gottlieb August Wilhelm Herrich-Schäffer found on Mount Erciyes in south-eastern Turkey.