Cinyras

Myrrha and Cinyras. Engraving by Virgil Solis for Ovid's Metamorphoses

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.

According to Ovid, Cinyras was a king of Panchaia, a land east of Arabia, and the father of Myrrha. Myrrha, impelled by an unnatural lust for her own father, slept with Cinyras, became pregnant, and asked the gods to change her into something other than human; she became a tree from whose bark myrrh drips.^[1] Some said that from the incestuous union sprang the child Adonis.

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 (in the Aeneid, Book VII) and Servius, 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 built Paphos.

Clement of Alexandria in his Protrepticus 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 strumpet of his own country."

In his 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 others say Cinyras consecrated 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."

References

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