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Myrrha

Myrrha, also known in Greek as Smyrna, is a princess in ancient mythology whose story centers on an incestuous relationship with her father, leading to her transformation into the myrrh tree and the birth of Adonis.^[1] In the detailed account by the Roman poet Ovid in Metamorphoses Book 10, Myrrha, daughter of King Cinyras of Cyprus, is afflicted by a Fury with an unnatural desire for her father, rejecting suitors and confiding in her nurse, who facilitates repeated nocturnal unions during a festival when Cinyras's wife is absent.^[1] Upon discovery, Cinyras pursues the fleeing Myrrha with intent to kill; she prays for oblivion, and the gods metamorphose her into a myrrh tree after nine months of gestation, with her tears forming the resinous myrrh.^[1] The tree bark splits to deliver the infant Adonis, a figure later central to myths of beauty and mortality.^[1] Ancient variants differ in details, such as Apollodorus's portrayal of Smyrna as daughter of Thias, king of Assyria, cursed by Aphrodite for her mother's neglect of the goddess, prompting the passion and similar events culminating in the myrrh transformation and Adonis's birth.^[2] These narratives, rooted in pre-Hellenistic traditions and elaborated in Hellenistic and Roman literature, underscore themes of divine retribution, forbidden desire, and botanical origins, with the myrrh tree symbolizing enduring sorrow through its weeping sap.^[1]^[2] The myth's influence extends to explaining the etymology of myrrh and Adonis's parentage, though no empirical historical basis exists, as it belongs to mythic etiology rather than recorded events.

Identity and Etymology

Name Origins and Linguistic Roots

The name Myrrha, as used in Latin accounts of the myth such as Ovid's Metamorphoses, derives directly from the Greek term μύρρα (mýrrha), denoting the aromatic gum-resin extracted from trees of the genus Commiphora.^[3] This Greek word entered the language via trade and cultural exchange from Semitic-speaking regions, where it stems from the triliteral root m-r-r, signifying "bitter," as evidenced in Hebrew mōr (מוֹר) and Arabic murr (مُرّ), reflecting the resin's pungent, bitter taste.^[4]^[5] The etymological connection underscores the mythological narrative's symbolic linkage, wherein Myrrha's transformation into a myrrh tree produces tears of bitter resin, embodying perpetual sorrow.^[6] In earlier Greek traditions, the figure is more commonly known as Smyrna (Σμύρνα), a name potentially adapted from regional Anatolian or Levantine variants, though linguistic analysis ties it closely to the same Semitic substrate as myrrha, with possible folk-etymological reinforcement from the city of Smyrna (modern İzmir) in Asia Minor, associated with myrrh production and export.^[3] The Latin Myrrha thus represents a direct transliteration prioritizing the substance's name, aligning with Roman adaptations that emphasize the botanical outcome of the metamorphosis over geographic or variant nomenclature.^[4] This Semitic-to-Indo-European borrowing exemplifies early Mediterranean linguistic diffusion, where commodity names like myrrh—valued in ancient perfumery, medicine, and ritual from at least the 2nd millennium BCE—shaped personal and mythic nomenclature.^[5]

Relation to Smyrna and Regional Variants

Myrrha, known in Greek sources as Smyrna, represents the same mythological figure whose story involves incestuous relations with her father and subsequent transformation into a myrrh tree.^[7] The name Smyrna appears in earlier Greek traditions, such as those preserved in Apollodorus's Bibliotheca, where she is depicted as the daughter of Theias, king of Assyria, who tests his daughters' claims of chastity akin to Cinyras in other variants.^[8] This Assyrian setting links the myth to eastern Mediterranean influences, potentially reflecting Semitic or Phoenician elements, as Theias's narrative mirrors fertility and kingship motifs in Near Eastern lore.^[9] In contrast, the Latin form Myrrha predominates in Roman literature, notably Ovid's Metamorphoses (ca. 8 CE), where she is the daughter of Cinyras, king of Cyprus, and his wife Cenchreis.^[10] Hyginus's Fabulae similarly employs Myrrha while retaining the Cypriot locale, emphasizing Aphrodite's curse as the catalyst for her desire.^[9] These naming and locational differences likely stem from Hellenistic syncretism, with Cyprus—home to Cinyras's cult and Aphrodite worship—serving as a western anchor for the tale, while the Assyrian variant in Apollodorus (ca. 1st-2nd century CE) may preserve older Anatolian or Levantine transmissions.^[11] Etymologically, both names derive from terms for myrrh (Greek smýrnē, Latin myrrha), the aromatic resin exuded by the tree into which the figure metamorphoses, underscoring the myth's botanical symbolism across regions.^[8] Regional variants thus highlight adaptive storytelling: the Cypriot emphasis on royal lineage and divine retribution aligns with Paphian Aphrodite cults, whereas Assyrian placements evoke broader fertility rites, without resolving into a singular canonical origin.^[10] No primary evidence prioritizes one over the other, though Ovid's version gained prominence in Western tradition due to its literary elaboration.^[11]

Mythological Accounts

Core Narrative in Ovid's Metamorphoses

In Ovid's Metamorphoses (Book 10, lines 298–502), the tale of Myrrha is recounted by Orpheus as part of his songs in the underworld. Myrrha, daughter of King Cinyras of Cyprus, becomes afflicted by an incestuous passion for her father, which she attributes not to Cupid's arrows but to the baleful influence of one of the Furies, wielding a firebrand from the Styx. Tormented by this unnatural desire, Myrrha recognizes the moral transgression inherent in her longing, lamenting that while animals mate freely without such bonds, human law forbids it; she debates suicide as a means of escape but ultimately seeks divine intervention to end her life.^[12]^[1] Her nurse discovers Myrrha in distress and, after extracting a tearful confession, pledges assistance despite the horror of the request. During the festival of Ceres, when Cinyras' wife is absent and the king lies alone in darkness, the nurse arranges for Myrrha to approach him disguised as one of his concubines. Unaware of her identity, Cinyras accepts her, and the illicit union occurs, repeated over several subsequent nights under cover of darkness. On the twelfth night, Cinyras demands to see her face by lighting a lamp, revealing Myrrha as his daughter; seized by rage, he seizes his sword to slay her, but she flees into the night.^[12]^[1] Pregnant with her father's child, Myrrha wanders homeless through Panchaea and Arabia for nine moons, her body swelling until she despairs of existence itself. In a prayer to the gods, she pleads for a fate removing her from both life and death, as she deserves neither fully due to her crime. The gods grant her metamorphosis: her limbs root into the earth, bark encases her form, and she transforms into a myrrh tree, from whose trunk flows resinous tears symbolizing her perpetual sorrow. The tree later splits to birth Adonis, a boy of extraordinary beauty destined for Venus' love.^[12]^[1]

Differences in Earlier Greek Sources

Earlier Greek accounts of the Smyrna (Myrrha) myth, preserved in mythographic compilations drawing from Hellenistic traditions, diverge from Ovid's narrative primarily in etiology, geography, and select details of the transformation, though the core elements of incestuous deception, pregnancy, and arboreal metamorphosis remain consistent. In Pseudo-Apollodorus's Bibliotheca (ca. 2nd century BCE compilation of earlier sources), Smyrna is the daughter of King Theias of Assyria; she incurs Aphrodite's wrath by scorning the goddess outright, prompting the deity to instill unnatural desire for her father, facilitated by her nurse over 12 nights of deception. Upon discovery, Smyrna prays for invisibility, and the gods transform her into a myrrh tree, from which Adonis emerges after nine months when the bark splits.^[2] This version lacks Ovid's emphasis on maternal hubris and instead attributes the curse directly to Smyrna's neglect of Aphrodite, with the affair's duration explicitly quantified at 12 nights—contrasting Ovid's vaguer, repeated nocturnal trysts revealed by lamplight.^[13] Antoninus Liberalis's Metamorphoses (2nd century CE, sourcing Nicander of Colophon, ca. 2nd century BCE) relocates the tale to Mount Lebanon, naming Smyrna's father Thias (a variant of Cinyras or Theias), son of Belus, and her mother the nymph Oreithyia. Aphrodite afflicts Smyrna with paternal lust as punishment for her beauty attracting suitors she rejects, again involving the nurse's aid in the consummation; pregnant and fleeing discovery, Smyrna beseeches the gods to vanish, yielding the myrrh tree and Adonis's birth.^[14] Unlike Ovid's protracted psychological torment and suicide attempt, this account omits extended internal monologues, focusing on divine retribution for spurning worship or marriage norms rather than a proxy's boast, and features no paternal pursuit with weaponry—Smyrna's transformation preempts violence through prayer alone.^[13] Hyginus's Fabulae (ca. 1st century BCE–CE, synthesizing Greek lore) aligns more closely with Ovid by implicating the mother's vanity: Smyrna, daughter of Assyrian king Cinyras and Cenchreis, suffers Aphrodite's curse after her mother claims the girl surpasses Venus in beauty, leading to the nurse-assisted incest and myrrh transformation.^[15] Yet it condenses the narrative without Ovid's dramatic lamp-revelation or Myrrha's pleas balancing life and death, emphasizing instead the hubris motif in a briefer form that may reflect pre-Ovidian Greek variants, such as those hinted in Philostephanus of Cyrene's lost Cypriot myths (3rd century BCE). These sources collectively portray a less psychologized, more direct causal chain from divine offense to metamorphosis, prioritizing cultural taboos over Ovid's innovative pathos and Roman-Cypriot localization.^[13]^[16]

Central Themes and Symbolism

Incest as Transgression and Its Consequences

In Ovid's Metamorphoses (Book 10), Myrrha's incestuous union with her father Cinyras represents a profound transgression against familial and natural order, initiated by her unnatural desire inflamed by Venus's curse on her mother for boasting of beauty surpassing the goddess.^[12] Myrrha internally rationalizes the act by citing precedents in animal behavior, where mating between relatives occurs without shame, yet she acknowledges the human taboo as a barrier enforced by law and piety, ultimately deceiving Cinyras by posing as an anonymous lover over twelve nights.^[12] ^[17] This violation disrupts patrilineal authority, as Myrrha seeks to subvert her father's patria potestas through forbidden intimacy, blurring boundaries between daughterly obedience and marital claim.^[18] Upon discovery, Cinyras pursues Myrrha with murderous intent, forcing her flight while pregnant, which underscores the immediate social and familial rupture: exile, paternal rejection, and the threat of filicide.^[12] The gods, invoked in her despair, grant a metamorphosis into a myrrh tree rather than death, a transformation interpreted as both merciful limbo—neither fully alive nor dead—and punitive encapsulation of her guilt, confining her transgressive essence within bark that perpetually exudes resin symbolizing unending tears of remorse.^[12] ^[19] This arboreal state ensures the survival of her offspring Adonis, born through divine aid from Lucina, yet perpetuates her isolation, reflecting ancient Greco-Roman views of incest as a crime warranting divine retribution beyond mortal law, often manifesting as bodily change to enforce eternal consequence.^[12] ^[20] The myth's portrayal aligns with broader classical motifs where incest incurs cosmic disorder, as seen in legal rhetoric embedded in the narrative that equates the act with fraudulent perversion of kinship roles, leading to generational fallout evident in Adonis's subsequent tragic fate.^[21] While Myrrha's passion evokes sympathy through her tormented conscience, Ovid emphasizes accountability, with transformation serving as a symbolic barrier against recurrence, embodying the causal link between moral breach and irreversible alteration in form and legacy.^[12] ^[19]

Divine Curses and Familial Boasts

In the mythological tradition, the catalyst for Myrrha's tragic fate originated from hubristic familial claims regarding her unparalleled beauty. Her mother, Cenchreis—wife of King Cinyras of Cyprus—boasted that Myrrha surpassed Aphrodite (Venus) in comeliness, a proclamation that directly impugned the goddess's domain over beauty and love.^[22] This overweening pride, emblematic of mortal overreach against divine supremacy, provoked Aphrodite's retaliatory curse, inflicting Myrrha with an irresistible, incestuous desire for her own father.^[22]^[23] Ovid's Metamorphoses (Book 10) elaborates this divine intervention, depicting Aphrodite's wrath as channeled through one of the Furies, who instilled the perverse passion in Myrrha as punishment for her mother's insolence.^[1] The narrative underscores the causal link between the boast and the curse, portraying the gods' responses to human vainglory as inexorable enforcers of cosmic order, where familial exaltation invites supernatural retribution. Alternative accounts, such as those in Apollodorus's Bibliotheca, attribute the curse more directly to Myrrha's personal failure to venerate Aphrodite, omitting explicit mention of the maternal boast but retaining the theme of divine offense tied to neglect or rivalry in beauty.^[2] These variants highlight interpretive flexibility in ancient sources, yet consistently frame the incestuous affliction as a targeted divine penalty rather than random affliction. Such curses reflect broader Greco-Roman motifs of hybris (excessive pride) met with nemesis (divine balancing), where boasts elevating mortals above gods precipitate transformations or torments to restore hierarchical equilibrium.^[22] In Myrrha's case, the familial boast not only precipitated her personal doom but also extended consequences to Cinyras, who, upon discovering the deception, pursued her in rage, further entrenching the cycle of familial discord ordained by the gods.^[7]

Metamorphosis and Perpetual Lament

In Ovid's Metamorphoses, Myrrha, having consummated her incestuous union with her father Cinyras through deception, faces discovery when her nurse reveals the truth, prompting Cinyras to pursue her with a sword in rage.^[1] Myrrha flees Cyprus in terror, wandering until exhaustion halts her, at which point she laments her fate—not wishing to persist in life amid shame nor to evade punishment through death—and beseeches the gods for an intermediary state that denies full existence to either.^[12] The infernal gods, moved by pity, grant her transformation: her feet root into the earth, bark envelops her legs and thighs, slender branches extend from her arms, and her face is shrouded in foliage, leaving only her weeping form amid the emerging trunk of a myrrh tree (Commiphora myrrha).^[1] This metamorphosis serves as both punishment and mercy, preserving Myrrha's consciousness within the tree while externalizing her perpetual sorrow through the exudation of resinous tears, which harden into the aromatic gum known as myrrh—etymologically linked to her name and harvested for its medicinal and ritual uses in antiquity.^[1] The tree's ongoing secretion of myrrh symbolizes an unending lament, as Ovid notes that "there is a virtue even in her tears," with the valued substance distilling from the trunk and enduring through time, a bittersweet legacy of her transgression that cannot be forgotten.^[1] Unlike ephemeral human grief, this vegetal persistence embodies a static, eternal mourning, where the resin's flow—observed in classical botany as a response to wounding or seasonal stress—mirrors Myrrha's immutable remorse, though the myth anthropomorphizes it as deliberate weeping.^[19] The perpetual aspect underscores the myth's theme of inescapable consequence: Myrrha's voice, stifled within the bark, finds expression only in this fragrant efflux, which ancient sources like Pliny the Elder later corroborate as a natural product of the tree, valued in embalming and incense but tied narratively to her unceasing affliction.^[17] While earlier Greek variants, such as those in Apollodorus, focus less on the transformation's details, Ovid's elaboration emphasizes the lament's immortality, contrasting the tree's productivity—yielding Adonis upon gestation—with the enduring pain encoded in its sap.^[2] This dual nature reflects causal realism in the narrative: the incest's violation of natural and social bonds yields a hybrid existence, neither fully vital nor annihilated, perpetuating grief through a tangible, harvestable medium.

Scholarly Interpretations

Ancient Moral Frameworks

In the Roman moral tradition, the Myrrha myth exemplified the perils of unchecked passion (furor) and the subversion of pietas, the virtue encompassing dutiful respect toward family, ancestors, and gods, which was central to ethical conduct as articulated in Cicero's De Officiis (c. 44 BCE), where violations of familial bonds invite communal and divine retribution. Ovid's rendition in Metamorphoses 10.298-559 portrays Myrrha's incestuous longing for her father Cinyras as a perversion of filial devotion, where she conflates pietas with erotic desire, rationalizing it through appeals to natural precedents among animals (lines 330-348), yet the narrative rejects this by attributing her affliction to Venus' curse and the Furies' influence, emphasizing that human law and divine order prohibit such unions to preserve social stability.^[12]^[21] This framework aligned with Augustan-era reforms, including the lex Julia de adulteriis coercendis (18 BCE), which classified incest as stuprum—a grave sexual offense punishable by death or exile, reflecting imperial efforts to enforce marital fidelity and procreation for the state's welfare, as Myrrha's sterile transgression yields only Adonis amid familial ruin.^[21] Ovid employs legal rhetoric in the tale, such as Cupid's denial of culpability (lines 311-315) and Cinyras' invocation of paternal ius occidendi (lines 465-467), underscoring incest's status as both a private familial crime and a public moral failing under Roman jurisprudence, where fathers held authority to execute for dishonor.^[1]^[21] The narrative's origin in Cenchreis' boast surpassing Venus in beauty (lines 298-303, 500-502) reinforces the ethical lesson against hybris toward deities, a recurring Greco-Roman motif where impiety triggers cascading punishments, as seen in Hesiod's Works and Days (c. 700 BCE) on divine nemesis for overweening pride; Myrrha's metamorphosis into a myrrh tree, weeping eternal tears, embodies retributive justice, transforming her perpetual grief into a natural resource while barring further agency, thus affirming the inescapability of moral causality in ancient cosmology.^[12]^[1] Such exempla in Ovid's poem, prefaced by Orpheus' disclaimer excluding the innocent (lines 300-303), served didactic purposes in rhetorical education, cautioning against passions that erode virtus and invite transformation as cosmic correction.^[21]

Modern Psychological and Anthropological Views

In psychoanalytic interpretations, the Myrrha myth has been viewed as illustrating repressed incestuous desires rooted in early familial dynamics, with Myrrha's passion for Cinyras evoking a female counterpart to the Oedipus complex, where unconscious wishes conflict with societal prohibitions, leading to guilt and self-punishment.^[21] Freud drew on Greek myths to posit such desires as universal psychic phenomena, but his theories lack robust empirical support and have been critiqued for overemphasizing fantasy over biological aversion mechanisms like the Westermarck effect, which posits innate sexual repulsion toward those raised in close proximity during childhood, explaining Myrrha's internal torment without invoking inevitable pathology.^[24] The metamorphosis into a myrrh tree symbolizes psychological dissociation or perpetual mourning, representing the ego's defensive retreat from unbearable shame, though contemporary clinical psychology prioritizes environmental factors like attachment disruptions over mythic universals in analyzing real incest cases.^[25] Anthropologically, the narrative underscores the near-universal incest taboo observed across societies, where father-daughter unions like Myrrha's are depicted as transgressive to enforce exogamy and kinship alliances, preventing genetic inbreeding depression that elevates risks of congenital disorders by 2-3 times in consanguineous offspring.^[17] Structuralist analyses, such as Lévi-Strauss's, interpret such myths as cultural mechanisms to validate marriage exchanges that build social solidarity, with Myrrha's curse and transformation serving as cautionary reinforcement of prohibitions that structure family order and avert clan isolation.^[24] Empirical cross-cultural data confirm incest avoidance in over 99% of societies, attributing it primarily to evolutionary pressures rather than arbitrary symbolism, though myths like this may project societal anxieties onto divine retribution to pedagogically uphold norms without explicit legal codification in ancient contexts.^[26] These views align with functionalist perspectives, where the story's perpetual lament via myrrh tears mythically encodes the long-term social costs of taboo violation, such as disrupted lineages evident in Adonis's fraught fate.^[24]

Cultural Representations

Literature and Dramatic Adaptations

In Dante Alighieri's Inferno (c. 1320), part of The Divine Comedy, Myrrha appears among the falsifiers in the tenth bolgia of the eighth circle of Hell, punished for impersonating another woman to seduce her father, Cinyras.^[27] Dante observes her soul, smeared with disease and raving in madness, alongside other impersonators like Gianni Schicchi, emphasizing her deception over the incest itself as the primary sin.^[27] English poet John Dryden adapted Ovid's account in his verse translation "Cinyras and Myrrha," included in Fables Ancient and Modern (1700), which renders Book 10 of the Metamorphoses with heightened dramatic tension and moral commentary on impious love.^[28] Dryden's version amplifies the psychological torment, portraying Myrrha's internal conflict and the curse's inevitability through iambic pentameter couplets.^[29] Italian dramatist Vittorio Alfieri's tragedy Mirra (1783) reworks the myth as a five-act play, focusing on Myrrha's (Mirra's) anguished confession, familial unraveling, and suicide before her metamorphosis, staged with neoclassical restraint to evoke pity and terror.^[30] Alfieri draws directly from Ovid but intensifies the paternal devotion and daughter's remorse, influencing later Romantic interpretations of forbidden desire.^[31] In modern theater, Mary Zimmerman's Metamorphoses (premiered 1998, Broadway 2002) incorporates the Myrrha episode in a multimedia adaptation of Ovid's tales, using a pool of water for symbolic immersion and exploring themes of transgression through contemporary dialogue and staging.^[32] This production alters Myrrha's narrative to heighten audience empathy, framing her as a figure of liminal suffering rather than mere villainy.^[32]

Visual Arts and Iconography

Depictions of Myrrha in visual arts primarily illustrate episodes from Ovid's Metamorphoses (Book X), focusing on her transformation into a myrrh tree as divine punishment for incest with her father Cinyras, and the subsequent birth of Adonis from the tree trunk. Direct representations of the incestuous encounter are uncommon due to its transgressive nature, though German engraver Virgil Solis (1514–1562) produced an explicit illustration showing Myrrha and Cinyras in coitus, intended for editions of Ovid's text.^[33] This engraving emphasizes the narrative's erotic and taboo elements without hybrid metamorphosis. More frequent are scenes of metamorphosis and birth, where Myrrha appears as a hybrid tree-woman figure, symbolizing perpetual lament through myrrh resin tears. In Titian's The Birth of Adonis (oil on panel, c. 1506–1508, Musei Civici, Padua), Myrrha is rendered as a full tree from which Adonis emerges, assisted by deities, portraying the event as a natural wonder rather than moral retribution.^[33] Similarly, Bernardino Luini's fresco Birth of Adonis (1520–1523, Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan) depicts the tree form statically, with nymphs attending the infant, highlighting botanical and maternal motifs over sin.^[33] Baroque artists often amplified dramatic hybridity. Marcantonio Franceschini's The Birth of Adonis (oil on copper, c. 1685–1690, Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Dresden) shows Myrrha as a chimeric trunk with human torso and limbs, her bark splitting to reveal the child, while Diana presents Adonis to Venus amid Arcadian landscape.^[34] Engravings like Michel Faulte's (1619, line engraving with etching, Wellcome Collection) and Louis Desplaces' after Carlo Cignani (1736, Wellcome Collection) reinforce this iconography, with Myrrha's vegetal lower body yielding Adonis, sometimes accompanied by satyrs to evoke moral judgment on her desire.^[35]^[33] These works underscore causal realism in myth: transgression yields enduring transformation, with myrrh as empirical emblem of ceaseless grief.^[33] Iconographic variations reflect interpretive shifts; early Renaissance pieces neutralize punitive aspects, while later ones hybridize forms to signify incomplete humanity, challenging viewers on desire's consequences without explicit condemnation.^[33] Absent in ancient Greek vase painting or sculpture, likely due to cultural reticence toward incest themes, Myrrha's visual legacy emerges post-Ovid, privileging metamorphosis over origin sin in canonical art.^[11]

Music, Theater, and Contemporary Media

Vittorio Alfieri's tragedy Mirra, completed in 1787, dramatizes the Ovidian tale of Myrrha's incestuous passion and transformation, emphasizing her internal torment and the inexorable pull of fate as a critique of tyrannical passions.^[36] The play, Alfieri's final work in the genre, adheres closely to the mythological source while amplifying tragic inevitability through neoclassical structure, with five acts culminating in Myrrha's self-revelation and metamorphosis plea.^[37] Domenico Alaleona's opera Mirra, composed in 1918 and premiered posthumously in Rome on February 1, 1920, adapts the concluding acts of Alfieri's tragedy, setting Myrrha's confession and familial unraveling to a late Romantic score that underscores her psychological descent with chromatic harmonies and leitmotifs evoking cursed desire.^[37] The work, scored for orchestra and voices, reflects verismo influences in its focus on raw emotional extremity, though it received limited performances due to the composer's death shortly before staging.^[37] In contemporary performance, Irish company Junk Ensemble's The Misunderstanding of Myrrha (2020) reinterprets the myth through physical theater and dance, exploring Aphrodite's curse, Myrrha's flight, and tree transformation as metaphors for inescapable inheritance and bodily betrayal, premiered at Dublin Dance Festival in 2021 with choreography emphasizing fragmented movement and stark lighting to evoke perpetual exile.^[38] Similarly, Cheri Magid's solo performance A Poem and a Mistake (2021) frames Myrrha as a classics graduate student confronting Ovid's depiction of sexual violence, blending monologue with mythological recitation to probe academic detachment from ancient traumas.^[39] These adaptations prioritize psychological realism over supernatural elements, aligning with post-2010s discourses on consent and agency in mythic narratives.^[40]

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Poem: The Story of Cinyras, and Myrrha by - PoetryNook
How can the Land be call'd so bless'd that Myrrha bears! ... To hate thy Sire, had merited a Curse; But such an impious Love deserv'd a worse. ... She knew it too, ...
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The Story of Cinyras and Myrrha in Ovid and Dryden - jstor
Dryden had rendered Myrrha's lament that it was merely because of arbitrary prescriptions that Man is barred from the earthy promiscuous sexuality in which ...
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Myrrha | Encyclopedia.com
In Ovid's rendition of the story, Myrrha is the daughter of King Cinyras and Queen Cenchreis of Paphos, in Cyprus. Afflicted by a supernatural curse, Myrrha ...Missing: differences | Show results with:differences
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Ovid's Tragic Formation of Myrrha's Tale (Met. 10.298–502) and its ...
My discussion will focus on how Myrrha's transformation enables Ovid to proceed to the transformation of the genre itself and the formation of a tragic story.
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[PDF] Myrrha Now: Reimagining Classic Myth and Mary Zimmerman's ...
Apr 26, 2019 · In her story arc, the princess Myrrha refuses all potential suitors and is cursed by a vengeful Aphrodite to fall in lust with her father. She ...Missing: variations | Show results with:variations
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Transposing Ovid's Story of Myrrha: The Ideology of the Woman ...
Feb 1, 2024 · In this essay I look at some early modern European visual transpositions of Ovid's rendition of the myth of Myrrha in Metamorphoses, Book X.
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Myrrh in paintings: 1 Adonis born from a tree
Dec 21, 2019 · Myrrha called on the gods to help her, but wanted to neither live nor die. She was therefore transformed into the myrrh tree, to provide the ...
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Myrrha, being transformed into the myrrh tree, gives birth to Adonis ...
After an incestuous relationship with her father Cinyras, Myrrha gave birth to Adonis and was transformed into the myrrh tree.Missing: story | Show results with:story
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[PDF] Female Subjectivity in the Tragedies of Vittorio Alfieri and Gabriele D ...
One century after the self-inflicted death of Alfieri's Mirra, Nietzsche writes that Greek tragedy also met its end in suicide.8 This suicide, or the end of ...
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ALALEONA: Mirra - Opera Today
Mirra (1920, Rome) is a setting of the final two acts of a tragedy by Count Vittorio Alfieri (1749-1803). Alfieri was a major figure in the development of ...
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The Misunderstanding of Myrrha by Junk Ensemble | Dublin Dance ...
Oct 12, 2021 · The long-awaited premiere of The Misunderstanding of Myrrha, a solo dance work that reawakens and reimagines an ancient Greek tale.
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A Poem and a Mistake written by Cheri Magid - ACCA Melbourne
Aug 27, 2021 · A Poem and a Mistake is a one-person show that follows the story of Myrrha, a grad student in the classics who is grappling with how to handle the 50 violent ...
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PLAY - A POEM AND A MISTAKE
Myrrha, a grad student in the classics, grapples with the fifty sexual assaults in Ovid's Metamorphoses. When her professor profoundly misunderstands her, ...