“more barren [a-karpos] than the Gardens of Adonis”- CPG I p. 19.6–11
The rituals surrounding the Gardens of Adonis, as Marcel Detienne has argued, are a negative dramatization of fertility. For the details, the reader should consult Detienne's intuitive analysis. Suffice it here to observe that the Gardens of Adonis are planted in the most unseasonal of times, the Dog Days of summer: the plants grow with excessive speed and vigor, only to be scorched to death by the sun's excessive heat, and this death then provides the occasion for the mourning of Adonis, protégé of Aphrodite. In opposition to the normal cycle of seasonal agriculture, which lasts for eight months, the abnormal cycle of the unseasonal Gardens of Adonis lasts but eight days (cf. Plato Phaedrus 276B). Like his suddenly and violently growing plants, Adonis himself dies proēbēs 'before maturity [hēbē]' (CPG I p. 183.3–8, II p. 3.10–13; cf. II p. 93.13). Adonis is thus directly parallel to the debased second generation of mankind, the Silver Men:
“But when the time of maturing and the full measure of maturity [hēbē] arrived, they lived only for a very short time, suffering pains for their heedlessness, for they could not keep overweening outrage [hubris] away from each other” - Hesiod, "Works and Days" (132–135)
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