Adonis was a youth of wonderful beauty. Tall and lithe and graceful, he seemed like a young god, although he was but a mortal. He was fond of hunting, and day after day found him roaming over the hills and through the forests with his bow and arrows. His step was light and bounding, and he seemed to belong to the life of the hills as much as the trees and flowers.

Tired with the hunt, he would throw himself upon the leafy turf and look up through the great branches of the trees to the azure skies.

It seemed to him that he could understand what the leaves were saying, as they rustled in the breeze. The clouds made him think of white-sailed boats floating on a blue sea, and he wished that he could sail with them to the home of the god of the golden sun. The grass seemed to whisper to him and tell him the secrets of the earth mother, and the streams leaping down the mountain sides seemed to laugh joyously and to call upon him to follow.

Adonis did not care for city life; the woods held all of beauty for him. And he was not at all surprised, one day, when he saw Venus coming towards him, her beauty radiant in the sunlight. She seemed to him to be at home in the woods he loved so well. Venus loved Adonis, and they went hunting together. Adonis was bold, and wished to chase the larger game; but Venus warned him against the fierce wild boars and the wolves. When Venus was with Adonis, he listened to her advice. But in her absence, one day, he pursued a wild boar. His arrow struck the boar and angered him. Fiercely the animal sprang upon the youthful hunter, and thrust his tusks through his side, and Adonis sank in death.

Venus grieved for his death. “Alas!” she cried, “why did you hunt the cruel beasts which care not for youth or grace or beauty? Long shall I lament your untimely death, Adonis. From your blood a flower shall spring to keep your memory upon the earth, and people shall say, ‘This is the flower of Adonis.’” At that moment blossomed the tender anemone, the windflower, which every spring adorns the warm hillsides.

This myth has almost the same meaning as the myth of Ceres and Persephone. When the youthful Adonis, the springtime of the year, is hunting over the hills and valleys, Venus, the cherishing mother, is glad and happy in his presence, and all the earth is filled with flower and fruit.

But before the tusk of the wild boar, the cruel and frosty winter, Adonis is slain; and Venus grieves, as Ceres laments when Persephone is in the kingdom of Pluto.