Venus and Adonis

It happened when Cupid was still a child. Venus was visiting her temples, but her mind was not focused on the love problems of mortals. She was thinking about Cupid, whom she missed more than she thought possible. She finished her temple duties quickly and hurried back to Olympus and her beloved son.

"I'm going to get you," she announced playfully, standing in the doorway of his chambers.

Cupid knew that meant she was going to tickle him, and he began giggling. He was sitting on his bed and hurriedly crawled beneath the blanket as his mother came toward him.

But just as Venus reached the bed, she tripped over Cupid's bow, which was lying on the floor. She fell onto the bed—and the quiver of arrows Cupid had carelessly tossed there when he had come in from practicing.

His mother had told him countless times, "Cupid! Hang your bow and quiver on the back of the closet door." But, yet once again, he had forgotten, or more likely, not felt like doing as his mother asked.

A gold-tipped arrow was sticking out of the quiver, and the tip penetrated the skin just above Venus's breasts. She gasped. Both she and Cupid knew what had happened. He laughed! Venus wanted to slap him, but the arrow's potion would make her fall hopelessly in love with the first person she saw. Juno forbid that should be her own son! Shielding her eyes, she ran from the room, down the long corridor, across the entranceway, and into her suite, in the opposite wing, the sound of Cupid's laughter in her ears.

For three days Venus kept to her chambers and saw no one. The wound appeared to heal quickly, but the potion on the arrowhead was more potent than she knew. Some of the potion was still in her bloodstream.

Thinking herself healed, Venus went outside and looked down on Earth to see what had transpired in the days she had locked herself away. The first person she saw was a young man of amazing beauty and faster than the blink of her eyes, she wanted him, needed him, could not conceive of being able to live without him. Too late she realized: she was still infected, but she did not care. Never in the years of her eternity had she loved anyone as she loved the one on whom she was gazing at that moment.

His name was Adonis, and he was as handsome as Venus was beautiful. He was standing in a meadow, practicing throwing his spear, when out of the sky came a golden chariot drawn by two swans. Even before Venus took one step toward him, he only needed the slightest of glances to be as in love with her as she was with him. What mortal could have resisted the goddess of love?

Venus had loved many, but her feelings for all the others had as much substance as fog compared to her ardor for Adonis. In the past, she realized, she had confused love with lust. But lust was nothing except caring for one's own pleasure. As long as her lust was sated, it had not mattered to her whom she lay with. However, with Adonis, lust was replaced by a deep and passionate caring for the well-being and happiness of another.

Adonis loved to hunt, and Venus gladly went with him, running alongside her lover through woods and over hills, as he chased after rabbit and deer.

However, Adonis became bored hunting harmless game. Where was the challenge in that? He wanted to go after bigger and more dangerous animals, like boars, wolves, bears, and lions, animals whose teeth were bloody after they had killed and eaten. But Venus was afraid for him.

"My love. The time for boldness is when you hunt the animals that are timid and run away at the sound of your footsteps. Do not go after the beasts who do not quail before human boldness. What are your two arms and legs compared to the four limbs and many teeth of the beasts? I beg you. Do not be bold when to do so is to put my heart at risk. Do not place your desire to prove yourself above my love. Your beauty enchants me, but it does not move the hearts of the boar, wolf, bear, or lion."

Reluctantly, Adonis respected her wishes. But the day came when Venus had to attend to her duties as goddess, duties she had neglected so she could be with Adonis.

As soon as Venus and her swan-drawn chariot flew heavenward, Adonis went into the woods. How odd, but almost immediately a boar stood in the path as if waiting for him and him alone. Some say this was no ordinary boar, but Mars in the guise of the tusked beast because he was jealous that Venus loved someone more than she had loved him. Others maintain that the boar was Vulcan, angry, yet again, that Venus was making a mockery of their marriage.

But perhaps the boar was only a boar. Adonis, eager to test himself and his skill, threw his spear at the animal. Alas. The tip of the weapon penetrated only far enough into the boar's tough hide to anger but not wound it. With its long tusks, the animal dislodged the spear. Angry now, the boar charged Adonis.

What are the two legs of a man to the four of a beast? The boar easily caught him. Adonis screamed as the tusks went deeply into his side and chest.

Venus was scarcely halfway on her journey to her temple on Atlantis when she heard a loud and terrified cry in the voice she knew from all others on Earth and Olympus.

"Adonis!" Quickly, she turned the chariot around. Even from afar she could see her beloved's body lying on the forest path, wrapped in blood as if it were a cloak. The swans had scarcely set the chariot on the ground before Venus was running to him. He was already dead.

Holding him on her lap, she cried out to the Fates, "How could you allow this to happen? But I will not let you have all the victory!"

She sprinkled nectar on Adonis's voluptuously red, red blood. The blood began to bubble. Then arising from it came a blood-colored flower as light and delicate as slowly healing sorrow. This is how the anemone, also known as the wind flower, came into being. It is a flower whose petals are weak, and when a wind blows against them, they fall and die.

It was a sad but fitting memorial to the beautiful Adonis.

Even now Venus could not think of Adonis without his loss throbbing within her as if it had its own heart. He had been taken from her, and now this Psyche was taking the love of the people from her. There was nothing she could have done to prevent A donis's death, but she woiald make Psyche wish she had never been born.

Chapter end