12. Kinyras the Lamenter

In the Gudea Cylinders, the ‘court’ of Ningirsu included two separate balang-gods, one overseeing music to “make the temple happy,” the other “to banish mourning from the mourning heart.” [1] This dichotomy, reflecting basic aspects of human experience and their musical expression, is also found in the evidence for Kinyras. We have seen that Kinyras was a performing guise for the Cypriot ‘kinyrists’ who played praise-hymns both in his own honor, and in the service of his master-god, the Cypriot ‘Aphrodite.’ Now we must consider Kinyras’ connections with lamentation-singing, specifically an early Cypriot threnodic tradition using—and sometimes perhaps purposefully eschewing—the kinýra.

Those more familiar with the Greek world must recall that in Mesopotamia lamentation-singing was not always a personal affair responding to a specific event like the death of a child or spouse. It was also used to soothe a wrathful or grieving god, both apotropaically and in a crisis. The prophylactic mode was tied to regular calendrical occasions, but could also be dictated by specific events, including the building of temples and creation of cult-objects—two examples relevant to the Kinyras material. [2] The closest analogy in the Greek world, we shall see, are the seasonal threnodies allied to certain festivals and hero-cults.

The first evidence for Kinyras the Lamenter comes from a set of mournful predicaments inflicted on and/or suffered by him and his children. These tragic plights typically yield some substance, object, or process connected with Cypriot cult—a clear indication that we are still a world apart from the Aegean, as was also suggested by the temple-orchestras of the Cypro-Phoenician symposium bowls. We must then assemble material that lets the kinýra and its cognates be linked to threnody, as this is the practical medium that must have produced the lamentable Kinyras myths, and to which they allude. This tradition can then be further illuminated by a passage of Herodotos, who refers to lamentation-songs of Cyprus, Phoenicia, and Egypt which were essentially ‘the same’ as the Aegean ‘Linos-song’, for which we have much and early evidence. When kinýra-lamenting has been clarified as far as possible, we can complete our examination of the Homeric variant discussed in Chapter 9, and see what is implied by having Phoinix petition Achilles as though ‘lamenting to the kinýra’. I close with a note on the lyric threnody for Antinoos from Kourion (ca. 130/131 CE).

Key evidence linking Kinyras to lamentation comes from Ovid’s ever-surprising Metamorphoses. [3] Athena, in the weaving contest against Arachne, frames her web with four mythological competitions between mortals and gods, to show “what reward to expect for such mad daring.” [4] One alludes to an otherwise unknown ‘Cinyras’ episode in which the king laments his daughters, who have been metamorphosed into parts of a temple: Although Kinyras does not weep explicitly (n.b.) in any extant Greek author, the very idea depends upon a Greek etymological association of Kinyras with kinȳ́resthai and/or kinyrós—both of which were connected, one way or another, with kinýra in late sources like Eustathios and the lexica. [6] A key contribution of Ovid, therefore, is to guarantee the antiquity of the etymological complex, which accordingly goes back to his Hellenistic models at the latest. Actually we may be quite sure that the essential associations are much older still. For two persistent themes in the mythology of Kinyras’ children—angered or grieving gods, and metamorphoses into objects or processes of cult—echo far earlier conceptions relating to the professional functions of ritual lamenters in Mesopotamia.

We may begin by considering the motive and outcome of the transformation just cited. Like Athena’s other three scenes, the fate of Cinyras’ daughters should result from a specific challenge to divine prerogative. There is no hint about the crime; but the probable Cypriot setting makes ‘Aphrodite’ most likely to have been slighted, as with several of Kinyras’ other children. [7] The closest parallel for the actual metamorphosis is also found in Ovid, the Propoetides of Amathous (a city whose connection with Kinyras and Eteocypriot culture we shall see). These girls, having denied the divinity of ‘Venus’, were made to prostitute themselves until turned ‘to hard flint’ (in rigidum … silicem) by lack of shame. [8] This is presumably an aetiology for some feature of the goddess’s temple in that city. Scholars have thought variously of betyls, stelai, or a statue-group. [9] There is to be sure the story of the stony-hearted Anaxarete of Cypriot Salamis, transformed into a statue for refusing the love of Iphis. [10] Yet Lat. silex more naturally suggests architectural members, as in the Cinyras episode. [11] A further parallel has been sought in the myth that Kinyras’ daughters Orsedike, Laogore, and Braisia were forced by an angry Aphrodite—presumably they neglected her cult or vied with her in beauty—to sleep with foreigners, finishing their lives in Egypt. [12] Some would relate both tales to allegations of sacred prostitution on Cyprus, [13] but this would not account for the second’s connection with Egypt, nor is there any mention there of prostitution; I have alternative explanations to offer. [14]

A different approach is suggested by the Mesopotamian material discussed in Chapter 2. We saw in the Gudea Cylinders that elements of Ningirsu’s temple, and attributa of the god himself, were mythologized as his family members or court intimates (one son, for instance, was the deified door of the hall of justice). [15] To understand how such conceptions begat actual myths, recall A. Livingstone’s observation that Babylonian ritual was mythogenic through its use of statues and other embodiments of deity, including divinized cult-objects. [16] The image of Kinyras weeping while lying on and embracing his ‘step-daughters’ can be explained by the role of ritual lamenters in the fabrication and repair of temples, divine statues, and cult-objects. The purpose of such singing was to avert any divine anger that may have caused a repair to be necessary, or which might be aroused through construction or modification to an existing element. While much lamentation-song transpired on a regularly scheduled basis before a god’s statue, repairs called for performance at the location affected (temple roofs, gates, and walls), or at a sacred workshop in the case of statues or cult-objects. Such a background satisfactorily accounts for every certain element of Ovid’s otherwise peculiar vignette.

A second myth that fits this pattern, also in the Metamorphoses, is treated by Ovid at much greater length. This is the terrible tale of Myrrha (or Smyrna), whose seduction of her father earned Kinyras—here Cinyras—his principal place in the western canon. [17] Once again, cultic aetiology is combined with lachrymosity. But this time the tears are those of Cinyras’ daughter.

Myrrha embodies myrrh (Ug./Phoen. mr, Gk. mýrra), the resinous arboreal sap imported to the Levant from East Africa (Punt) and coastal Arabia from the second millennium onwards, and probably known earlier still in Egypt. [18] It was used for incense-offerings, perfumed-oils for anointing statues and kings, embalming the dead (Egypt), as an additive to wine, and in a variety of medical applications. [19] Myrrh was an important element of Ugaritian ritual, where it is the only aromatic explicitly named—an indication of its prestige. [20] The anthropomorphosis of Myrrha suggests that myrrh too was once divinized in a still unknown mainland pantheon—for instance Byblos, where the myth is often located (Chapter 19). A strong parallel for this is the Divine Censer of the Ugaritian pantheon texts, immediately adjacent to the Divine Kinnaru. [21]

For Frazer the myth’s incest motif derived from early attempts to control matrilineal royal succession. [22] Bömer saw here rather a reflection of the Paphian princesses’ duties in the cult (not necessarily sexual), over which their royal father presided as high priest. [23] Capomacchia argues that the incest motif simply reflects Greek ideas of the Orient as a place where normal behavior is inverted. [24] This may be, but specific ritual contexts or theological constructs relating to myrrh itself must have helped shape the myth. Thus Grottanelli, shifting the focus to Myrrha and the perfumed Adonis, rightly looks to royal salving rites like those attested in Hittite, Egyptian, and Biblical sources, incense offerings in royal ancestor cult, and the use of myrrh in royal burials (including an epigraphic example from fifth-century Byblos). [25] A further suggestive analogy is found in a N-A mystic ritual enacting the descent of Tammuz to the underworld: one section defines the substances used as body parts of the “kidnapped god”, with myrrh called his semen. [26] Myrrh’s aphrodisiac uses must be relevant. [27]

Given Kinyras’ connection with the perfumed oil industry, the Cypriot Myrrha was probably linked with mýron—oil infused with myrrh, frankincense, cassia, and/or saffron. [28] This was used among other things for smoke-offerings, as must have featured in the Kinyrad cult of Old Paphos with its bloodless altar of Aphrodite, [29] and provides apt employment for the perfumed-oil-worker (mu-ro-wo-ro-ko = myroworgós) of a sixth-century inscription from the nearby sanctuary of Rantidi. [30] In a remarkable travesty of Kinyrad icons, Antiphanes, the fourth-century comic poet, puts mýron in another context—describing a Paphian king as smeared with “scented-oil from Syria” so that, as he dined, sacred doves would hover about and fan him with their wings. [31] Dramatic epiphany!

The story of Myrrha/Smyrna was known in Greece from at least the fifth century, when it was treated by Panyassis, the epic poet and kinsman of Herodotos, who made the father Theias king of ‘Assyria’—Kinyras’ doppelganger normally connected with Byblos. [32] Some would see the Kinyras version of the tale behind the sexual struggle of Kinesias (= Kinyras) and Myrrhina (= Myrrha) in Aristophanes’ Lysistrata, [33] but I find this unlikely. Kinyras did feature in the lost poem on lamentable romantic predicaments by Antimakhos of Colophon (fl. ca. 400), and this may have touched upon Adonis’ tearful conception. [34] A tragedy of unknown authorship, in which both Kinyras and Myrrha died, was playing at the Macedonian royal court when Philip was assassinated in 336. [35] Kleitarkhos cited the Theias/Byblos version of the myth in connection, presumably, with Alexander’s Phoenician campaign, [36] and the tale, with or without Kinyras, remained popular throughout Hellenistic and later times. [37]

Cinna, drawing perhaps on Parthenios, introduced the story, with Cinyras, to Rome. His Zmyrna, a neoteric tour-de-force nine years in the making (ca. 65–56)—coinciding with the Roman takeover of Cyprus (58)—was so recherché, and sufficiently popular, that a commentary was produced by Crassicius Pansa in Augustan times. [38] That the majority of certain artistic representations of Myrrha are from the Roman period may owe as much to Cinna as to Ovid (Figure 35). [39]

As it happens, one of the Zmyrna’s few fragments mentions the heroine’s tears, predicting the central role of this motif in Ovid. [40] This element must have been traditional, sap-drops being so described by botanical writers as early as Aristotle and Theophrastos—doubtless adapting a popular usage of considerable antiquity. [41] This and other details from Cinna’s masterpiece presented Ovid with intertextual opportunities too good to squander; like the poet of the Vergilian Ciris, he engaged with the Zmyrna closely. [42] But Ovid was never slavish, and may have incorporated elements from one or more other versions available in the fashionable transformation-anthologies of the Hellenistic period. [43]

Ovid has Myrrha driven by a Fury to fall in love with her father, who exemplifies all that is good and noble. The poet elaborates Myrrha’s inner torment, harping on the continual tears that determine her transformation. [44] The fatal opportunity comes when the girl’s mother Cenchreis [45] is absent, and abstinent, at a nine-day festival of ‘Ceres’. [46] A conniving nurse successfully proposes to Cinyras an anonymous tryst with a beauty she describes as just his daughter’s age, and very similar in looks. [47] Cinyras is all-too-willing. With a possible reminiscence of Aeneas’ katábasis to Anchises, [48] the nurse leads Myrrha in darkness to her father’s chamber. For Cinyras it was fun while it lasted. But overcome with curiosity on the final night, he discovers his mysterious partner by lamplight and, enraged, whips out his sword (with an Ovidian double-entendre). [49] Myrrha flees and “wanders through the palm-bearing plains of Arabia and the districts of Panchaea” and finally the Sabaeans—that is, through the historical and legendary lands from which myrrh came, or was believed to. [50] Half dead, half alive, she begs the gods for release. Her prayers answered, Myrrha is transformed into the myrrh-tree; the baby Adonis, busting out at end of term, is anointed with his mother’s sappy tears.

Although Ovid’s two Cinyras scenes are obviously unrelated, the poet used the first to preview his greater attraction. “Embracing temple steps, his own daughters’ limbs” and “lying on the stone” would readily assume an incestuous flavor for readers primed by Cinna. And while Kinyras himself does not lament in the Myrrha episode, the earlier vignette makes ironic his request that she not weep during their lovemaking. The mournful Kinyras is also implied by the description of Myrrha as virgo Cinyreïa (‘Cinyreian maiden’), where the patronymic clearly suggests Gk. kinyrós (‘mournful’). [51] Being a child of Cinyras means ‘familiarity’ with tears and mourning.

Several variants in the Myrrha tale may be noted. According to Servius, Myrrha was driven to seduce her father by the “anger of the Sun” (no further details are given). [52] This may be related to the sun’s imagined role in the production of myrrh, [53] or perhaps one of Kinyras’ semi-solar lineages (Chapter 21). For Hyginus, Myrrha’s obsession was brought about by her mother’s boast that her daughter was lovelier than Venus; after the affair the anguished Cinyras, here king of ‘Assyria’, kills himself. [54] Elsewhere Aphrodite is angered by Myrrha/Smyrna’s claim to have better hair. [55] Vaguer sources agree that Myrrha’s lust was caused by some failure to honor the goddess. [56] Every case involves divine anger and a tearful outcome. But a final variant, probably original to Cyprus and perhaps late and popular, linked Myrrha not with myrrh but myrtle (mýrtos), a plant often associated with Aphrodite and not obviously tearlike. [57]

Several other familiars of Kinyras may be connected with cult-objects or processes, although the motifs of divine anger and tearfulness are not always so clearly emphasized as with Myrrha or Kinyras and his temple-step daughters.

The myth of Pygmalion, Cypriot king and sometimes Kinyras’ grandfather or father-in-law, is clearly relevant. His love for a statue—either brought to life by Aphrodite, or of the goddess herself—must reflect the divinization of cult images, a practice known throughout ANE history. Some form of hierogamy is also suggested by versions in which Pygmalion lay with the statue itself. [58] These thematic similarities may have inspired Ovid to devise the succession Pygmalion-Paphos-Cinyras, not attested in any other ancient source. [59]

We saw that a wrathful Apollo destroyed Kinyras in a musical contest, leading to the metamorphosis of the king’s daughters into halcyons. This I suggested aetiologized threnodic female choruses like those that appear in the Cypro-Phoenician bowls. [60] Note that birds chased from a temple, or a city destroyed through a god’s anger, are a common image of Mesopotamian Emesal prayers/laments. [61]

A possible son Amaracus, connected with perfume-making, was metamorphosed into marjoram; according to Étienne de Lusignan he too—like Adonis, Myrrha, and ‘Cinaras’—was “numbered among the gods.” This tale, as scantily preserved, does not mention an angered or grieving divinity (Lusignan’s version is euhemerizing); rather it is the boy’s ‘confusion’ or ‘shame’ that ends in his transformation. But the link between Amaracus and Kinyras is not certainly ancient. [62]

A final group of myths relates to the death of Kinyras’ son Adonis, and the annual lamentations instituted as a result. The father-son relationship itself reflects an aspect of ritual poetics (see below), though we now shift from occasional lamentation (construction of temples, cult-objects) to periodic, calendrical performances. Whether on Cyprus such laments were exclusively tied to Adonis is another question, for Kinyras is not attested as his father before the later fifth century. [63] Adonis himself is a complex figure, equally localized at Byblos—with and without Kinyras—where his death and rebirth shaped an annual ritual cycle involving death, lamentation, and perhaps a kind of resurrection (see Chapter 19). Of the innumerable sources, the most relevant here, found in Servius, aetiologizes not only Aphrodite’s establishment of Adonis-laments, but her sacred apples and doves. [64] All of these elements are integrated into Kinyras’ family circle:

The recurrence in these tales of an angered or grieving Aphrodite is striking in view of the Mesopotamian charter-myth that Enki created the lamentation priest (gala/kalû) to assuage Inanna’s grief. [66] It can hardly be coincidence that Kinyras is the personification of the knr, defined as the ‘divine Inanna-instrument’ in second-millennium Mesopotamian scribal tradition; and that versions of this instrument, including the Cypriot kinýra, are associated with lamentative contexts (see further below). While Kinyras’ role as Aphrodite’s priest and lover accords with the Mesopotamian pattern of cult-objects as familiars of their master-god, there is an analogous relationship between Kinyras and his own cult-object children. He is the hub of a miniature myth-cycle, the king within whose ‘realm’ their metamorphoses transpire. These relationships should require, by the Mesopotamian parallels, that Kinyras himself be a god, even if his own worship was subordinated to the goddess. This ‘second-in-command’ status must reflect the controlling role of kinyrists in the cult, as is also implied by the title Kinyradai at Paphos. [67]

Ovid’s portrait of Kinyras weeping suggests not only the posture of a lamentation priest, but a grieving god who himself needs calming. Here we must recall the remarkable Ishtar ritual and lamentation ‘oratorio’ Uru’amma’irabi, performed at OB Mari and focused on the divinized balang Ninigizibara—which is called the goddess’s spouse or lover. [68] The balang somehow represented Ishtar as she mourned for, among other things, the death of Dumuzi and the destruction of her balang. [69] If Ninigizibara was not itself played, as Gabbay suggests, this would suit the divine mood and the conceit of the instrument’s loss; in this scenario, the balang was rather the target of song by lamentation priests and groups of male and female musicians. In any case, the ritual would lead the goddess herself back from dolorous silence, with Ninigizibara somehow effecting this in the divine realm.

These remarkable oppositions of song and silence in ritual and/or ritual poetics provide an ancient real-world background for examining the relationship between the lamenting Kinyras trope and the actual role of the kinýra in threnody. Eustathios, we saw, states plainly that the verb kinȳ́resthai referred to singing songs “over/for the dead” (epì toîs keiménois) using the kinýra. [70] But what exactly is envisioned? And is this more than guess work?

In the Greek world, funeral rites consisted of three stages: próthesis, the laying-out and preparation of a body for burial; ekphorá, carrying the body to the gravesite; and the actual interment. A principal ceremony of próthesis was indeed the singing of laments, which our sources divide into two types. Góoi were spontaneous yet patterned wailings in which the deceased’s nearest kin, especially female, articulated grief and anger about their loss and dark future. [71] These were interspersed with, and sometimes responded to, thrênoi—more formal songs by professional threnodes. [72] The locus classicus for this dichotomy is the funeral of Hektor in the Iliad: Homer goes on to give us lengthy stylized representations of the góoi of Hekuba, Andromakhe, and Helen, [74] while the songs of threnodes are left to the imagination. It is grammatically clear that these specialists were male; and aoidoí and exárkhoi indicate that they were probably lyrists. [75] But the Odyssey’s description of Achilles being mourned by Nereids and Muses, whose performances correspond to góoi and thrênoi, respectively, strongly suggests that threnodes could also be female. [76] This was true in the Biblical world, [77] and is supported by Sappho’s Adonis fragments. [78] It may well also be that the female groups of the Cypro-Phoenician symposium bowls should be related to ‘Adonis’ lamentation in the cult of Astarte/‘Aphrodite’. [79] Pindar and Simonides, who composed thrênoi, were of course male lyrists, though whether these particular songs were accompanied by the instrument is another question. One of the more informative sources on these points is Lucian’s satirical On Funerals, which, though so much later, is broadly compatible with Homer. Here the ‘expert in dirges’ (thrḗnōn sophistḗn), certainly male, acts as a kind of ‘choral producer’ (khorēgós); he leads with his own songs, drawn from a large repertoire of ‘ancient misfortunes’ (palaiàs symphorás), which were punctuated at certain intervals by the family’s own outbursts. [80] This scenario agrees with the laments for Hektor, and the Muses’ “alternating threnody with beautiful voice” at Achilles’ funeral. [81] Thrênoi and góoi were thus an integrated performance; the former were truly musical (mélos in Lucian), drawing on ‘chronic’ mythological repertoire to provide a framework for the expression of ‘acute’ personal grief.

Notwithstanding Lucian’s valuable testimony, our understanding of the threnodic tradition is rather obscured by sixth- and fifth-century legislation instituted in several cities, including Solon’s Athens, aimed at curbing the political influence of clans by limiting the public visibility of funeral rites and the political potential of heroizing the dead. [82] Henceforth at Athens próthesis, the principal occasion for góoi, was to be conducted indoors and by close family only, without the assistance of professional threnodes. Iconographic and literary evidence shows clearly that pipers normally accompanied funeral processions, [83] but there is now little firm evidence for lyric threnody during próthesis. [84] Two vase paintings have indeed been cited in support of the practice, but in both cases the lyre is held by a mourner, not actually played. [85] The significance of this is quite clear in the famous scene of the Nereids or Muses mourning Achilles: the lyre is the hero’s own instrument, now silenced (Figure 36). [86] In the second case the lyre is held, appropriately, by a paidagōgós. [87] These images are to be connected rather with the tragic trope that occasions of death and war are ‘lyreless’ (ályros)—lacking the festive ease-of-mind normally associated with lyre-music and choruses. [88] The idea is well illustrated by a Corinthian black-figure plate: a man is laid out in a shroud, with his lyre suspended above. [89]

On the other hand, there is considerable evidence for lyric lamentations in extra-Athenian mythological contexts. Ovid has Apollo weeping in an aetiology for the Hyakinthos festival at Sparta; he will ever remember his beloved with lyre-songs (a choral context is probably assumed). [90] Ovid also has Apollo mourn his son Linos “with reluctant lyre” in the elegy for Tibullus. [91] Orpheus with his lyre moved the underworld to tears, from human shades to the very Furies. [92] Upon his own death, the natural world, over which he had power while alive, wept for him; and his lyre itself as it drifted down the Hebros “sang some tearful plaint” of its own accord—like a thing still living. [93] That these intimations of lyric lament represent real traditions of deep antiquity is confirmed both by the evidence for Linos-song (see below), and the Minoan funerary or mortuary ritual on the Hagia Triada sarcophagus, where sacrifice and libation are accompanied by male piper and lyrist, among otherwise female participants. [94] This scene gives historical depth to the proverbial expression “concert (synaulía) of Olympos”—referring to lamentation music, and as we saw the earliest context for the verb kinȳ́resthai—since Gk. synaulía could involve both pipes and strings. [95]

Lamentation customs will naturally have varied by culture and period, and there is no more reason to believe that thrênoi were always lyric productions than there is to exclude the instrument entirely, despite the undoubted prevalence of pipes in funereal settings. Nevertheless the foregoing material does present a significant dichotomy. The ‘lyreless grief’ of real situations is expressed through góoi, especially by female kin. The lyric laments relate to mythological figures and archetypal sufferings; their subject matter was still ‘lyreless grief’, but regarded from a commemorative future—often in a recurring festival, and composed and/or led by male lyrists (hence the lamenting Apollo). Here are the “ancient misfortunes” of Lucian’s threnodic repertoire. Such themes will have set a present tragedy in more general historical perspective, praising the deceased and introducing him to the heroic dead. Thrênoi were thus immortalizing, equally appropriate for subsequent memorials, often annual (a probable occasion for the thrênoi of Pindar and Simonides). [96] From here one passes easily to various forms of hero-cult, including those for which lyric lament is definitely attested (Hyakinthos, Linos). [97] The genre was inherently forward-looking, promising a return from lyreless grief. This is colorfully illustrated by a threnodic fragment of Pindar, who describes the afterlife (for the fortunate) as a perpetual banquet with games and lyre music. [98] Many such scenes are found in funerary reliefs of the Classical period, and this was not unlike the message of Orphism, with its lyre-playing prophet. [99] This also explains the dedication of lyres at gravesites, or of lekythoi with images of lyres (Figure 37). [100] Some festivals played out just such a return from lyreless grief to joyous life. The Adonis-rites at second-century CE Byblos, for instance, began with heartfelt wailing and threnodies, but culminated with acclamation of the hero’s resurrection. [101] The women of Elis lamented Achilles at the start of the Olympic games. [102] These occasions were sanctioned pretexts for lamenting one’s own woes, focused through mythological exempla. [103] The transition of mood must often have been marked by shifts in musical ‘mode’ and instrumentation: solemn pipe-dirges could be followed by more sentimental lyre threnodies, cathartically closing a complex ritual cycle. [104]

In such threnodic contexts Eustathios’ kinýra-lamenters must find their place. For the ancient lexica are generally agreed that kinȳ́resthai meant not simply ‘wail’, but ‘sing a thrênos’. [105] Eustathios’ epì toîs keiménois should therefore refer not only to songs over the dead (during próthesis ) but for the dead and buried (a common sense of keîmai ). This will also explain the presence of kinȳ́resthai in grave inscriptions. [106] There is a telling passage in the Epitaph for Bion (ca. 100), where the Memnonides lament (kinȳ́rato ) their brother while flitting “around the tomb.” [107] Although this poem is highly mannered, its accumulation of mythological misfortunes, both stock and exotic, must mimic threnodic convention. [108]

The poetics of lyric threnody will also explain the apparent contradiction between Eustathios’ assertion that kinȳ́resthai was the activity of kinýra-threnodes, and the common use of kinȳ́resthai in literary and/or mythological contexts that are ályros. Lest one suspect that Eustathios has made his own false deduction, precisely the same paradox underlies Ovid’s Kinyras, prostrate and weeping for his daughters—an image which remains underappreciated until one sees Kinyras as ‘the kinyrist’, since the emotional plight and physical posture are antithetical to lyre-playing. The same opposition is assumed by passages that pointedly call Adonis ‘son of Kinyras’ at the moment of his death, and so elicit threnodic overtones. [109] This is best illustrated by a poignant sepulchral epigram of the Greek Anthology, where a bereaved father, addressing the infernal ferryman, casts his son as an Adonis: “Give your hand to the son of Kinyras as he mounts the / boarding-ladder, black Kharon, and receive him.” [110] Through this allusion the father himself becomes the Lamenter. Much the same idea is found in an epigram of Ausonius. [111] These passages are evidently literary reflections of a threnodic trope. [112] Of particular interest is Bion’s Lament for Adonis (ca. 150–100), which, by describing as kinȳ́resthai Aphrodite’s mourning for the ‘son of Kinyras’, assumes an etymological link between the Cypriot king and threnody. [113]

It remains the case that kinȳ́resthai often seems to mean something more like góos—personal expression of raw grief, with no overt lyric context. [114] But there is a close parallel in the blurring of thrênos and góos (and derivatives) in tragic usage. That development is sometimes attributed to decreased awareness of formal distinctions due to the anti-threnodic legislations mentioned above. [115] But this is not convincing, as professional threnody persisted for centuries in other parts of the Greek world. A better explanation comes from the realities of ritual performance itself. Thrênos would naturally grow to encompass góos since it incorporated the latter formally, and yet was itself, from the perspective of the bereaved, but a vehicle for it. [116] Exactly this development lets us reconcile kinȳ́resthai as defined by Eustathios via kinýra with its commonly attested usage. One must emphasize that, leaving aside the word’s many mannered literary occurrences, its use in actual epitaphs gives no compelling reason to reject lyric threnody as the background context. [117]

I have argued that the tearful Kinyras embodies a necessary abnegation of kinýra music. That this idea goes far deeper than Ovid himself, and is not merely a Hellenistic literary contrivance, is guaranteed by a persistent oscillation between song and silence in ANE sources relating to the knr.

The Sefire steles, dating to the mid-eighth century and discovered near Aleppo, offer a precious glimpse of Old Aramaic and its traditional literary figures. The text is a treaty between Mati’el of Arpad and a nearby rival, Bar-Ga’yah, and contains numerous curses for whoever breaks its conditions. In one of these, the silencing of lyre-music epitomizes the desolation inflicted on Arpad if unfaithful: There is a similar musical stipulation in the N-A vassal treaty between the same Mati’el and Assurnerari V (754–745), this time combined with a typical agricultural curse: “may his farmers not sing the harvest song in the fields.” [119] The knr is not specified, but we must recall Herodotos’ testimony about a kind of seasonal ‘Linos-song’ in the Cypro-Levantine region (see further below).

Much the same motif—an afflicted people whose kinnōr is silenced—occurs in several Biblical passages, in both Jewish and Phoenician contexts. [120] Most famous is Psalm 137: This lyreless silence responds to the captors’ demand for a “song of Zion.” We have seen other cases of taking over an enemy’s musicians, including the Judaean lyrists given up by Hezekiah to Sennacherib. [122] Psalm 137 reminds us that such deportations not only provided the victor with musical variety, but denied the vanquished the adornments of peace, power, and (with vassal treaties) fidelity. [123]

This agreement of IA Jewish and Aramaean tradition on the symbolic force of the knr indicates their common inheritance of a more ancient idea prevalent in the BA Syro-Levantine sphere. We have seen its positive form—the knr epitomizing a harmonious realm that makes joyous music possible—in King David and the lion-lyrist of eighth-century Guzana (Tell Halaf), and I shall argue for such a view of Kinyras on LBA Cyprus. [124]

Psalm 137 also returns us to the question of lyric lament, for here too is the tension between real lyreless grief and its appearance as a motif within a predominantly lyric genre (Hebrew psalmody). The same paradox informs a willful dissonance in Isaiah’s oracle about the destruction of Moab: “In the vineyards no songs are sung … Therefore my heart throbs like a kinnōr for Moab.” [125] Moab’s silent vineyards and the undoing of its harvest are obviously akin to the curse of the Mati’el-Assurnerari treaty; but the prophet himself, at a safe remove, can envision this as a subject for plaintive lyre-song. These texts support lyric interpretations of various penitential and sorrowful Psalms, and even David’s laments for Saul, Jonathan, and Absalom—despite the lyreless narrative contexts in which they are embedded. [126] According to a ninth-century Arabic treatise, “David … had a stringed instrument (miʻzafa). When he recited, he played on it and wept, and made [others] weep.” [127] This might be dismissed as late guesswork, but that the Dead Sea Scrolls explicitly refer to a “kinnōr of lamentation” with which to mourn the sinfulness of man, which has brought about present evils. Once delivered, god’s righteousness will be praised with “the kinnōr of salvation” and other joyful instruments. [128] This imagery surely reflects real performance modes, even if instruments were not employed for psalmody at Qumran itself (as is sometimes suggested [129] ).

An especially sophisticated treatment of these tropes is found in Isaiah’s oracle about the destruction of Tyre: Following the traditional idea, the kingdom’s restoration is heralded by the resumption of the kinnōr (or rather *kinnūr, given the Phoenician context). But the prophet introduces a new inversion of the knr’s royal symbolism by combining it with another conventional motif, the idolatrous city as a ‘harlot’; the royal instrument is thus cast unclean into the streets. [131] The conflation probably pivots on the use of female lyrists in cult, as we saw in the Cypro-Phoenician symposium bowls. Note too how the prostitute’s embedded song in itself suggests a plaintive mode, as would be appropriate in the repertoire of such a kinyrístria—comfort for her own troubles, and suitable for certain sympotic moods. This intuition is corroborated by the corresponding passage of the Isaiah Targum, one of the Aramaic translations of scripture that emerged during the Second Temple period and incorporated much additional material, both innovative and traditional. This expanded version reads: While “Turn your lyre to lamentation” might by itself be interpreted as ‘Put down your lyre and lament instead’, this is excluded by the original context, which unambiguously envisions the ‘harlot’ singing to the lyre.

Greek sources have also preserved traces of the plaintive kinýra. [133] It is found in Tzetzes’ retelling of an anecdote about Gelimer, last Vandal king in Africa (530–534), who defiantly bade the besieging Byzantine commander: “send me a kinýra, Belisarios … that I may sing sad songs of my ill-fortune.” [134] In the Byzantine poetic version of the Alexander Romance, the famous Theban aulete Ismenias abases himself before the Macedonian conqueror, hoping to turn him from anger to pity—and so save the city—by threnody: The poet solved a logical conflict that was variously treated in other recensions. How can a piper simultaneously play a dirge and deliver a speech? Ismenias was wrenched from his historical profession, and made to sing his pleas while playing a kinýra alongside other anonymous (!) auletes. [136] The very violence of this revision shows that kinýra was willfully interpolated as being a true instrument of threnody. And note the strikingly appropriate context: one of lamentation’s essential purposes in the ANE—soothing an angry god—is clearly implied. Ismenias’ petition is effectively an apotropaic version of the city-lament—that ancient genre reflected in literary transmutations from Sumer down to the Biblical Lamentations, and even the Fall of Troy in Greek epic. [137]

We must conclude that Syro-Levantine knr-players, like Greek lyric threnodes, cultivated a lamentative mode that took lyreless grief as its subject matter. The deep antiquity of the tradition is indicated by the BALAĜ.DI lamenters of Ebla and their service in the royal mortuary cult. [138] Also relevant, I suggested, are scenes of the underworld gods Rāp’iu and Ninazu, featuring the kinnāru and zannāru, respectively. [139] The purposeful opposition of song and silence was perhaps central to the Ninigizibara ritual at Mari, and we saw lyres variously silent and sounding in Hittite funerary and/or mortuary rites. [140] One should also recall the rich tradition of Egyptian funerary harp-songs (see further below).

Clearly then, the Hellenistic topos of Kinyras the Lamenter is a late reflection of a much more ancient art of lyric threnody. This may be readily connected with Cyprus, given Kinyras’ dominant associations with the island. But any insular tradition must be contemplated against a larger regional backdrop coterminous with the knr itself. Crucial here is a passage from Herodotos’ Egyptian logos: The antiquity of Egyptian culture is a commonplace of Classical historiography, and Herodotos elsewhere makes Egypt the source of Greek customs of unknown but deep antiquity. [142] He seems inclined to do so here. [143] Certainly the historian, and any native informants, rightly regarded lamentation-singing as extremely ancient. Despite Herodotos’ description of the Egyptian, Phoenician, Cypriot, and Greek versions as ‘the same’, his admission of different identities for the lamented subject acknowledges substantial regional variation. Rather than dismiss his comparisons as facile and naïve, we should credit the historian with perceiving significant parallels in what he heard, or heard about—in performance practice, calendrical occasion, aetiological narratives, and so on.

To be sure, Maneros himself is probably a chimera of Greek historiography and/or folk belief. When the Egyptian funerary harp-songs were first studied, Herodotos was often invoked. But the texts of this complex tradition, already well developed by the MK, offer no confirmation of the historian’s aetiological narrative. [144] Indeed Plutarch, in his On Isis and Osiris, says that some denied that manerôs was a man’s name at all, but was rather a kind of sympotic toast. [145] Yet even this idea has proven a dead end, eluding any convincing Egyptian etymology—although it does at least approach the subject matter of the harp-songs, many of which draw on the imagery of feasting while emphasizing the transience of life, and offering visions of the afterlife. [146]

Nonetheless, Maneros, whatever his origin, enjoyed a revealing career in the Greek imagination. Later authors compared him to the subjects of other regional lamentation traditions, for instance in Anatolia. [147] He was also treated as a “first inventor of music” (Plutarch), and an “inventor of farming and student of the Muses” (Pollux). [148] These texts introduce an interesting complication, contradicting Herodotos’ statement that the Maneros-lament was the Egyptians’ “first and only” song. Rather, it implies, lamentation was invented upon the death of the first musician. This idea has much in common with the lyreless motif discussed above, and brings us to the Greeks’ very similar view about Linos-song proper.

Here, fortunately, we are much better informed, as was Herodotos himself. [149] We may reasonably hope that the material for Greek Linos-song, which is after all the basis of the historian’s comparisons, can illuminate the Cypriot tradition to which he alludes—all the more so given the important Aegean contribution to the island’s IA culture. The crucial point of contact is that Linos—like Kinyras, but unlike Maneros, so far as we know—was a lyre-player. Their respective mythologies present many suggestive parallels, though naturally one cannot expect exact correspondences: the absence of any single canonical myth about Linos’ death shows that all such tales are secondary to the ritual practice of lyric lamentation per se. In one set of tales, Linos was killed with the lyre by Herakles, his frustrated pupil. [150] Another has Apollo slay him for using linen strings, or for putting his music on a level with the god’s own—Kinyras’ own mistake in the myth discussed in Chapter 9. [151] In all variants, Linos’ death is the constant to which the laments respond. [152]

The interpretive key is a Hesiodic fragment that establishes the lyric, threnodic, choral character of Linos-song, and shows that it was already widespread, hence long traditional, by the seventh century: “Banquets and choruses” may seem an odd setting for thrênoi, but these were proper not only to festivals but funerary rites. [154] ‘Starting and ending from Linos’ rings true as a professional and distinctly lyric detail, echoing the epicletic formulas of the Homeric Hymns and confirming that Homer’s threnodes at Hektor’s funeral are indeed male lyrists. [155] The ascription of Linos-song to “all singers and lyrists” shows that this was a fundamental, ancient repertory item. Hesiod’s universalizing assertion may well imply the same international perspective as Herodotos—an awareness that lyric threnody was a general practice in and beyond the Aegean. Important here is the report that Sappho sang of “Oito-Linos together with Adonis”; this is presumably related to her fragments of lyric lament for the latter, but in any case is early evidence for the threnodic tendency to compile “ancient misfortunes.” [156] A similarly international outlook probably underlies the mother-son relationship of Ourania-Linos in Hesiod, since ‘Ourania’ is regularly applied to Aphrodite in her Cypriot and NE manifestations, while the Cypriot goddess could be invoked as a kind of Muse in her own right. [157] Although the attribution of mystical books to Linos (and similar figures) is relatively late, [158] Linos would not have become the target of forgers without the traditional reputation attested by another Hesiodic fragment, which calls him “learned in all kinds of wisdom.” This recalls the connection between lyrists and wisdom traditions in the ANE. [159]

Hesiod’s allusion to professional Linos-threnodes is fleshed out by the evidence for regional Linos cults. [160] In the grove of the Muses on Helicon, Pausanias relates, there was an annual rite in which Linos was revered before sacrifices to the Muses were conducted. [161] Note the order of offerings: celebration of the Muses—and hence other gods—depended upon efficacious music, so the performance itself was first secured by appeal to the demigod lyrist. The Thebans, Pausanias continues, had once maintained a monumental grave to Linos, [162] and the Homeric scholia preserve phrases from a traditional Linos-song said to have been inscribed there. [163] Two further Linos-tombs in the temple of Apollo Lýkios at Argos are mentioned by Pausanias, [164] and there was another on Euboea. [165] Eleutherna on Crete also claimed to be his homeland, and still another Linos is found among the fifty sons of Lykaon, the primeval Arcadian king. [166] The distribution of this material, taken together with the testimony of Hesiod and Sappho, shows that Linos-song goes back in various epichoric forms to the BA.

This is corroborated by Homer himself, who includes, among the images on the shield of Achilles that typify a peaceful city and orderly cosmos, [167] a cheerful vintage scene: We need not doubt the ancient belief that this scene depicts Linos-song. [169] True, the setting is not lugubrious. But threnody could be highly stylized and enjoyable outside of actual funerals, on occasions of more holiday humor. Compare the Adonis festival represented by Theokritos, where the ‘lament’ is closer to a concert, and the event much anticipated. [170] Homer’s harvesters, in one or more choruses, feel a pleasant yearning at the lyrist’s moving performance (himeróen kithárize). [171] Together they savor the bittersweet of waning light and another year gone—primeval feelings, which, one must concede to Frazer, found widespread poetic and musical expression in ancient agrarian calendars. [172]

Homer’s lyre-singer is a ‘youth’ (páïs) with ‘elegant voice’ (leptaléēi phōnêi), a description perfectly appropriate for Linos himself before any of his untimely deaths. One should therefore still entertain a variant rejected by Aristarkhos but championed by Zenodotos, who preferred nominative línos for accusative línon. The reading, in Zenodotos’ view (or so Aristarkhos understood him), yielded not ‘he sang (of) Linos’, but the ‘linen(-string) sang’. [173] This interpretation was probably correlated with myths of Apollo killing Linos for using linen strings, and the aílinos-song of loom-workers. [174] But the variant may be more pregnant than the ancient critic(s) appreciated. For if one can follow Aristarkhos (as most scholars do) in taking accusative línon as ‘Linos[-song]’, the nominative variant can equally be read as ‘Linos’ in apposition to páïs. This would produce a performative picture much like what I have proposed for Kinyras on other grounds: Even on the traditional reading, Homer’s description shows that the youthful, delicate-voiced lyrist is somehow enacting Linos. In this circular mimesis the musician, by hymning and invoking his semi-divine counterpart, becomes a theîos aoidós—the ‘godly singer’ who is visited with ‘god-uttered song’ (théspis aoidḗ) through devotion to the appropriate divinity. This musical interface between human and divine was canonically expressed, in Greek tradition, as a patronage relationship with Apollo and/or the Muses. [175] But the Homeric Hymns show that in practice there was more flexibility, since the deity invoked for inspiration is normally that to whom the hymn itself is addressed. G. Nagy, in a detailed reading of Sappho, has demonstrated much the same relationship with Aphrodite, the poet petitioning her divine patroness for assistance, and being ‘overcome’ in performance by the goddess, with whom she engages in dialogue. [176] This is precisely what I propose for Linos, Kinyras, and the lyrists who venerated them. Much the same relationship, we saw, was developed for divinized instruments in the ANE, and between the Biblical psalmodists and Yahweh. An important difference, however, is that Linos is dead. He is literally ályros, his music stilled. The performing lyrist makes Linos and his lyre live again, ‘reviving’ an ancient power through the ecstasy of song and dance.

This suggests a similar interpretation of Pindar’s “Cypriot voices around Kinyras.” In Chapter 10, I analyzed that passage in terms of praise-singing, but this is equally compatible with a threnodic reading, since thrênos itself could be encomiastic. [177] After all, Pindar’s Kinyras illustrated great men’s reputations after death, and Kinyras’ grave at Old Paphos clearly indicates a kind of mortuary cult. [178] Pindar’s plural phâmai will readily encompass the lamentable tales that after all are rather prominent in Kinyras’ mythology. Cypriot kinýra-singers might thus have commemorated his death at the hands of Apollo, his suicide following the seduction by Myrrha, or even his defeat by Agamemnon (a kind of city-lament?). They could also win him back from grief over his various unhappy children.

The traditional cry aílinon, understood by the Greeks as ‘Ah, Linos!’, is often thought to derive from a Semitic phrase ‘Alas for us!’. The idea is plausible, though not universally accepted. [179] Certainly Linos himself must be a back-construction from aílinon, which would have given poets free range for tragic aetiologies. While aílinon occurs in many threnodic contexts with no clear allusion to Linos-song per se, other cases seem relevant. In Euripides’ Helen, the heroine, stranded in Egypt, calls for “Libyan lotus-pipes, panpipes, or lyres (phórmingas)” to help lament her “‘Ah-Linos!’ woes” (ailínois kakoîs). [180] This confirms the existence of lyric threnodies and Herodotos’ assertion that a kind of Linos-song was known in Egypt (though possibly Euripides is himself alluding to the historian). In the Orestes, Euripides again associates the cry aílinon with eastern threnody, this time in an Anatolian context. The Phrygian eunuch, in a campy showpiece set to eerie double-pipe melodies, [181] begins his account of events inside Agamemnon’s palace as follows: While the poet’s genius is certainly on display—the ensuing exchange with Orestes is larded with amusing orientalist slurs—the Eunuch’s description of aílinon as the formal “start of a lament” confirms the Hesiodic testimony that threnodes (lyre-singers in the fragment) began and ended by invoking Linos. By the play’s own terms, of course, we are dealing not with stylized, calendrical lament, but one undertaken at a definite moment. [183] But this too fits with the threnodic use of such “ancient misfortunes.” [184]

Herodotos’ treatment of Maneros-song suggests that the historian would have viewed the lament of father for son as an intelligible mythological and performative stance for ‘Linos-song’ too. [185] This is echoed by the royal context of Euripides (“blood of kings”), whose generalizing terms equally imply an ancient tradition. The arrangement is attested for Linos himself, who in Ovid is mourned by his father (Apollo) with ‘reluctant lyre’. [186] Here, in different mythological and performative terms, is a doublet of Homer’s vintage scene—the lyrist-singer commemorating the lyrist-of-song.

A remarkable parallel for father-son threnody comes from an Arabic source, Hisham ibn al-Kalbī (died ca. 819–821), who records a tradition about Lamk, the Biblical Lamech. After Lamk’s young son (unnamed) died, he hung the body in a tree so that “his form will not depart from my eyes until he falls in pieces.” When only thigh-, leg-, foot-, and toe-bones remained, Lamk modeled these parts in wood to form soundbox, neck, pegbox, and pegs, respectively, added strings for his son’s sinews, and so invented the lute in his image (by now lutes had generally displaced lyres: see Appendix D). “Then he began to play on it and weep and lament, until he became blind; and he was the first who sang a lament.” [187] The instrument as an embodiment of the dead son, who thus achieves a kind of immortality in musical memory and indeed physical form as he is held by the lamenting father, is most suggestive vis-à-vis divinized instruments. Although the son is not named, and dies at the age of five, it is surely significant that it is precisely Lamech’s son (Jubal) who in the canonical tradition invents the lyre (kinnōr). [188] Unfortunately, the ultimate antiquity and ethnic affiliation of the present tale are unclear; in the reception of Biblical stories, the musical inventions of Lamech and his family were widely adapted to local cultural conditions. [189] Nonetheless, the myth, being utterly independent of Greek tradition, is vital for its corroboration, in an ANE context, of chordophonic lamentation-­singing and a father-son charter-myth. We should also recall here David’s lament for Absalom. [190]

Although Herodotos declines to identify the mythological subjects of Phoenician and Cypriot lament, one name he and other Greeks would certainly have offered was Adonis. The unofficial celebration of annual Adonis festivals (the Adōniá) was by now a fixture of women’s popular culture in Athens and elsewhere. [191] And Herodotos will have known Kinyras as Adonis’ father in some versions of the myth. It is assumed only slightly later by the Athenian comic poet Plato (fl. ca. 420–410), whose Adonis contained a silly but intriguing oracle warning Kinyras of his son’s impending death. [192] Antimakhos of Colophon (fl. ca. 400) paired Kinyras and Adonis soon afterwards. [193] That both authors conjoin Kinyras and Adonis in the context of the youth’s death cannot be an accident: they consciously avoided Phoinix (‘The Phoenician’), the more canonical Hesiodic father. [194] This shows that Kinyras was already understood as The Lamenter, and Herodotos very probably had Kinyras-Adonis in mind when he alleged that Cypriot and Phoenician lamentation was ‘the same’ as the songs for Linos and Maneros. [195] Like Maneros’ father, Kinyras is a primeval king and Adonis a fallen prince; if the analogy can be pressed, Kinyras becomes the fountainhead of Cypriot music, the original and most characteristic form of which was lyric threnody.

But since both Kinyras and Adonis were lovers of Aphrodite, the two also appear to be mythological doublets of a sort. [196] Note that Adonis is often portrayed with a lyre in the Classical period. [197] While this does suit his youth and the erotic context—Aphrodite also appears in these scenes—there is more to it. First there are Aphrodite’s muse-like properties, especially clear on Cyprus. [198] Moreover, given the lyre’s symbolism in the funerary scenes discussed above, Adonis’ instrument must equally mark the life he is soon to lose, with the lyreless grief and divine laments that follow. This is confirmed by the lyre’s absence in contemporary scenes showing Adonis-laments, which feature rather double-pipes and frame-drums or krótala. [199] I have suggested that much the same organological dichotomy may be seen in Ugaritic ritual and paramythological texts of the royal ancestor cult. [200]

The historical implications of this Kinyras-Adonis doublet are somewhat elusive, thanks to the vanishing nature of Adonis himself, who, as S. Ribichini showed, originated at the Hellenosemitic interface as a half-understood pastiche of Levantine religious life. [201] This generic quality is reflected in his very name, which must derive from WS ’dn (‘lord’); this has proven difficult to pin to a specific mainland god, though the Baal of Byblos is one probable reference. [202] Adonis’ death while hunting does appear to recycle a Levantine mytheme. [203] His pairing with Kinyras the Lamenter must also echo some early Levantine cult practice. Annual lamentations are famously attested at Roman Byblos for a god of the so-called dying-and-rising type who at that time was identified with Adonis/Tammuz, while his father, called Kinyras and Kauthar, was said to have lamented him at Aphaka (see further Chapter 19).

It seems likely that the Greek concoction of Adonis should be connected especially with Cyprus, where many sources locate him. [204] The appropriate cultural conditions are probably best traced to IA Aegean settlement there, followed by ninth-century Phoenician colonization. Yet Kinyras himself, as I shall show in the following chapters, was by then an ancient fixture of Cypriot life, rooted in the pre-Greek period. This suggests an historical-cultural explanation for his pairing with Adonis, since mythological relationships can encode the juxtaposition and/or coalescence of distinct cultures and analogous features thereof. [205] One figure assumes a senior or dominant role, the other a junior or subordinate one, depending on specific historical and sociological conditions. Greater mythological ‘age’ may reflect only relative antiquity or importance within a given geographical sphere and/or cultural perspective that is dominant in some respect. I have already interpreted Kinyras as the son or beloved of Apollo along such lines. [206] Given that musical syncretism, a phenomenon well known to ethnomusicology, occurs precisely around the most compatible features of two traditions, [207] Cypriot Kinyras would naturally have become secondarily associated with the Phoenician cult-music which underlies the large *kinnūr ensembles of the symposium bowls and the ‘singers’ maintained by Astarte’s temple at Kition. [208] Indeed, ‘secondarily’ does some injustice to the situation, if indeed the Cypriot Kinyras himself originated in Syro-Levantine practices of the BA. It would be a case rather of insular divergence and reconvergence with cognate Canaanite/Phoenician ideas. [209] The father-son pairing of the doublets Kinyras-Adonis would thus express this historical stratigraphy within the island, in addition to reflecting, presumably, the father-son motif that was evidently fairly typical of lyric-threnody traditions in the region.

Another advantage of this scenario is that, while Adonis is most helpful for corroborating Kinyras as The Lamenter, it allows the ancient king to be connected with further lamentation subjects in the pre-Phoenician period. This lets us explain the diverse tales with which this chapter began—Kinyras’ other lamentable children, their wide-ranging connection with cult-objects and processes, and angered and grieving gods to soothe, especially ‘Aphrodite’. There are also the several obscure names recorded as alternative Cypriot designations of Adonis, including Pygmaion, [210] Kirris, [211] Gauas, and Ao or Aoios. [212] The ‘Aphroditos’ who was honored at Amathous and elsewhere on the island recalls the gender-bending dimension of Astarte/Ishtar, and perhaps transgendered lamentation-priests (Sum. gala, Akk. kalû, surely related to the gálloi of Kybele cult). [213] Also relevant is the report that, again at Amathous, “Adonis was honored as Osiris; though Egyptian, the Cypriots and Phoenicians made him their own” [214] —for Osiris himself was an object of ritual lamentation. [215]

Having established the existence of lyric threnody to the kinýra, we may resume and complete our analysis of the phrase odyrómenos kinyrízōn, which, according to Aristonikos, Zenodotos wished to read at Iliad 9.612 “as if it meant ‘singing a threnody’ (thrēnôn).” [216] The phrasing implies that the sense of kinyrízōn was being somehow stretched. I showed that this word must mean, basically, ‘play the kinýra’, and suggested that secondary connotations of lamentation arose from the instrument’s performance contexts. With odyrómenos kinyrízōn working together naturally as single phrase, [217] Achilles’ rebuke of Phoinix effectively mimes pathetic violin-music to a would-be sob story: Zenodotos was quite right that the expression, which parallels the Homeric description of epic poetry as “singing and lyre-music,” [218] was equivalent to thrēnôn. But it alludes to a distinct performance reality with colorful connotations.

Achilles’ metaphor takes on special meaning given that an important use of ANE lamentation was to win back the affections of a wrathful ‘vanishing god’—in this case, the hero’s withdrawal with its catastrophic reversal for the Greeks. Phoinix himself makes this comparison, telling Achilles to give over his wrath, as even gods bend to incense-offerings, libations, and burnt victims. [219] His cautionary tale of Meleagros involves a wrathful hero who eventually came around to save a city, but too late to enjoy the goodwill gifts he was offered. [220] Agamemnon’s own bribes are extraordinarily rich. But only if Achilles accepts them, Phoinix says, will “the Achaeans honor you like unto a god.” [221]

Moreover, odyrómenos kinyrízōn yields vivid ethnic nuances when directed against Phoinix, whose name means simply ‘the Phoenician’. [222] To be sure, this particular Phoinix, son not of Agenor but Amyntor, is not otherwise connected with Phoenicia. [223] But that merely sharpens the sting. Achilles is ordering Phoinix to pull himself together, and not act the Phoenician—a people generally represented by Homer as dishonest sneaks. [224] There are more ominous overtones too. In Hesiod, Adonis’ father is also Phoinix. [225] And Homer has consistently characterized Phoinix as a surrogate father to Achilles. [226] Phoinix himself uses this as leverage for his petition: “I made you my son, god-like Achilles / That you might someday protect me from unworthy calamity.” [227] Reading odyrómenos kinyrízōn lets Achilles take up all of these points. For Achilles’ own death is inevitable, once he has accepted Agamemnon’s peace terms and a return to battle. Against Phoinix’ claim of the protection due a father, Achilles implies that the old man, in attempting to win him over by acting the kinýra-lamenter, will find himself in the position of a Phoenician king mourning a prince who has died unseasonably. Here one must remember the lamentations connected to hero-cults of Achilles. [228] Finally, recall the tradition that Phoinix—that is, the Phoenician king—invented the gíngras-pipes for lamenting Adonis. [229]

If we follow Aristarkhos in rejecting odyrómenos kinyrízōn as un-Homeric, we must at least recognize that this was an inspired interpolation. But the phrase is so strikingly appropriate that I am tempted to see it as original. Kinyrízōn would readily fall afoul of Aristarkhos, being otherwise alien to the lyre-vocabulary of epic, with its general preference for phórminx. But this begs the question of whether or not Homer intended some special lyric effect; for singers would naturally take professional interest in parallel ‘lyric’ traditions. The blinding of Thamyris seems to be an offhand allusion to—and hostile dismissal of—a competing lyric genre. [230] Pejorative cross-generic implications may also inform the poet’s occasional use of kítharis and kitharízein. [231] Homer’s favorable treatment of Linos-song equally acknowledges a parallel lyric tradition distinct from his own epic art. [232] Indeed, the scene of Linos-song on Achilles’ shield may be more than incidental color. The poet portrays Achilles as a beautiful young lyrist, singing kléa andrôn (when Phoinix arrives) and meditating on his basic crisis of whether or not to be epic—his choice between immortality in song (kléos áphthiton), or singing about others at his tent. [233] These parallels make it quite possible that Homer could have indulged in such genre-play with odyrómenos kinyrízōn. And after all, he was familiar with Kinyras himself. [234]

I close this examination of Cypriot lyric threnody, which has necessarily relied heavily on comparative data and systematic considerations, with a welcome inscription from Kourion. It records a threnodic tribute to the late Antinoos, Hadrian’s beloved, who, after drowning in the Nile in 130 CE, was deified by the emperor and given cult-honors far and wide, often complete with temples, priesthoods, festivals, competitive games, and music. [235] While Antinoos was identified with Osiris in Egypt, the Kourion hymn takes the appropriate form of an Adonis-lament. Its diction is predominantly lyric; the poet invokes Apollo as lyroktýpos (‘ringer of the lyre’), and says of his own performance: “For you I rouse the bárbita [baritone-lyres], for you the kítharis / by the altar-side.” [236] Given Hadrian’s injunction that Antinoos was to be “mourned as a son,” [237] the poet, as mourner of Antinoos-Adonis and (at least notional) lyric threnode, is probably assuming, or at least alluding to, the traditional image of Kinyras the Lamenter. That Greek lyre-names are used here, rather than kinýra, accords both with the non-Cypriot identity of the honored and the dedicator (seemingly a high-ranking official), and the progressive Hellenization of Cyprus in preceding centuries. [238] But kenyristḗs Apollo at Tiberian Paphos indicates that such a threnody, elsewhere on the island, could probably still have been performed by a kinýra-player.