Cyparissus

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
For the town of ancient Phocis, Greece, see Cyparissus (Phocis).
Cyparissus (c. 1625) by Jacopo Vignali: the boy mourns his pet deer (Musée des Beaux-Arts de Strasbourg)
Cyparissus, fresco in Pompeii, 1st century

In

aetiological in explaining the relation of the tree to its cultural significance. The subject is mainly known from Hellenized Latin literature and frescoes from Pompeii.[1] No Greek hero cult
devoted to Cyparissus has been identified.

Family

According to the grammarian Servius (4th and 5th centuries AD), Cyparissus was the son of Telephus, and thus the grandson of Heracles.[2]

Mythology

As initiation myth

Apollo, Hyacinthus, and Cyparissus Making Music and Singing by Alexander Andreyevich Ivanov 1831-1834

The myth of Cyparissus, like that of

Karl Kerenyi, "the beautiful boys are doubles of [Apollo] himself."[4]

The stag as a gift from Apollo reflects the custom in Archaic Greek society of the older male (erastēs) giving his beloved an animal, an act often alluded to in vase painting.[5] In the initiatory context, the hunt is a supervised preparation for the manly arts of war and a testing ground for behavior, with the stag embodying the gift of the hunter's prey.[6]

Similarly, the myth was used to explain the connection of the cypress tree to mourning and sorrow. Forbes-Irving has argued that the cypress as tree of mourning was mostly a Roman tradition, with few evidence of it playing such a role in Greek society.[7] It is possible however that the earlier Greek source of Cyparissus's myth diverged significantly from the surviving later ones, and was originally used to explain the connection of the cypress to Apollo specifically.[7]

Ovid's version

Latin
: cupressus), whose sap forms droplets like tears on the trunk.

Ovid frames the tale within the story of Orpheus, whose failure to retrieve his bride Eurydice from the underworld causes him to forsake the love of women in favor of that of boys. When Orpheus plays his lyre, even the trees are moved by the music; in the famous cavalcade of trees that ensues, the position of the cypress at the end prompts a transition to the metamorphosis of Cyparissus.[9]

The commentaries of Servius and the Vatican Mythographer

lusterware by Giorgio Andreoli
; the god who embraces the transforming youth holds a branch in his hand

According to one of the

Servius[12]
as alluding to a love affair. In his brief account, Servius differs from Ovid mainly in substituting Silvanus for Apollo, but also changes the gender of the deer and makes the god responsible for its death:

Silvanus loved a boy (puer) named Cyparissus who had a tame deer. When Silvanus unintentionally killed her, the boy was consumed by sorrow. The lover-god turned him into the tree that has his name, which he is said to carry as a consolation.[13]

It is unclear whether Servius is inventing an

aition, a story to explain why Silvanus was depicted holding an evergreen bough, or recording an otherwise unknown version.[14] Elsewhere, Servius mentions a version in which the lover of Cyparissus was Zephyrus, the West Wind.[15] The cypress, he notes, was associated with the underworld, either because they don't grow back when pruned too severely, or because in Attica households in mourning are garlanded with cypress.[16]

Cyparissus in Phocis

According to a different tradition, a Cyparissus, possibly not the same figure, was the son of

Anticyra.[17]

In botany

The word

Swedish biologist Linnaeus. In modern times there is a taxonomic debate regarding which species should be retained in the genus Cupressus.[18]

See also

Notes

  1. ^ Cedric G. Boulter and Julie L. Bentz, "Fifth-Century Attic Red Figure at Corinth," Hesperia 49.4 (October 1980), pp. 295-308. The authors present a possible identification of Cyparissus on a fragment of a Corinthian pot, No. 36, p. 306. The frescoes in the Pompeiian Fourth Style are discussed by Andreas Rumpf, "Kyparissos", Jahrbuch des Deutschen Archäologischen Instituts 63/64 (1948–49), pp. 83–90.
  2. Brill's New Pauly, s.v. Cyparissus; Servius, Commentary on the Aeneid of Virgil 3.680
    .
  3. ^ Bernard Sergent, Homosexualité dans la mythologie grecque, 1984 (Chapter 2), with an introduction by Georges Dumézil, whose lead Sergent follows.
  4. Karl Kerenyi
    , The Gods of the Greeks (Thames and Hudson, 1951), p. 140.
  5. ^ Gifts of animals from the erastes are discussed as they appear in Attic vase-painting by Gundel Koch-Harnack, Knabenliebe und Tiergeschenke: Ihre Bedeutung im päderastischen Erziehungssystem Athens (Berlin 1983).[page needed]
  6. ^ Koch-Harnack, Knabenliebe und Tiergeschenke.[page needed]
  7. ^
    ISBN 0-19-814730-9
    .
  8. Metamorphoses
    X 106ff.
  9. ^ Elaine Fantham, Ovid's Metamorphoses (Oxford University Press, 2004), p. 162.
  10. ^ Ronald E. Pepin, The Vatican Mythographers, 2008:17
  11. ^ Virgil, Georgics 1.20: et teneram ab radice ferens, Silvane, cupressum.
  12. Servius, note to Georgics 1.20 (Latin
    ).
  13. ^ Hic amavit puerum Cyparissum nomine, qui habebat mansuetissimam cervam. hanc cum Silvanus nescius occidisset, puer est extinctus dolore: quem amator deus in cupressum arborem nominis eius vertit, quam pro solacio portare dicitur.
  14. ^ Peter F. Dorcey, The Cult of Silvanus: A Study in Roman Folk Religion (Brill, 1992), pp. 15–16. Servius also mentions this version in his note to Eclogue 10.26.
  15. ^ Servius, note to Aeneid 3.680.
  16. ^ Ergo cupressi quasi infernae, vel quia succisae non renascuntur, vel quia apud Atticos funestae domus huius fronde velantur.
  17. ^ Stephanus of Byzantium, s.v. «Aπολλωνία» and «Κυπάρισσος». Real Enzyclopädie VIII, col. 51, s.v. «Kyparissos» [Hirschfeld].
  18. ^ C. Michael Hogan and Michael P. Frankis. 2009[full citation needed]

References

External links

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