of Aphrodītē. While yet a youth, he dies wounded by a boar in hunting; the goddess, inconsolable, makes the anemone grow out of his blood. As she will not give up her darling, and Persĕphonē has fallen in love with him, Zeus decrees that he shall pass half the year with one and half with the other goddess. Adonis (= lord) was properly a Syrian god of nature, a type of vegetation, which after a brief blossoming always dies again. The myth was embodied in a yearly Feast of Adonis held by women, which, starting from Byblos in Syria, the cradle of this worship, came by way of Cyprus to Asia Minor and Greece, then under the Ptolemies to Egypt, and in the imperial age to Pome. When the river Adonis by Byblos ran red with the soil washed down from Lebanon by the autumn rain, they said Adonis was slain by the boar in the mountains, and the water was dyed with his blood. Then the women set out to seek him, and having found a figure that they took to be his corpse, performed his funeral rites with lamentations as wild as the rejoicings that followed over his resurrection were licentious. The feast was held, in the East, with great magnificence. In Greece the celebration was much simpler, a leading feature being the little "Adonis-gardens," viz. pots holding all kinds of herbs that come out quickly and as quickly fade, which were finally thrown into the water. At the court of Alexandria a figure in costly apparel was displayed on a silver bier, and the next morning carried in procession by the women to the sea, and committed to the waves. In most places the feast was held in the hottest season.
Adoption. (1) At Athens adoption took place either in the adopter’s lifetime or by will; or again, if a man died childless and intestate, the State interfered to bring into his house the man next entitled by the Attic law of inheritance as heir and adoptive son, so that the race and the religious rites peculiar to it might not die out. None but the independent citizen of respectable character could adopt, and he only while he was as yet without male heirs. If there were daughters, one of them was usually betrothed to the adopted son, and the rest portioned off with dowries. If after that a male heir was born, he and the adopted had equal rights.
(2) At Rome there were two kinds of adoption both requiring the adopter to be a male and childless: Arrogātio and Adoption proper. The former could only take place where the person to be adopted was independent (sui juris), and his adopter had no prospect of male offspring; at the instance of the pontifex, and after full proof of admissibility, it had to be sanctioned by the comitia curiata. Adoption proper applied to those still under paternal rule (patria potestas), the father selling his son by formal mancipātio (q.v.) to the adopter, who then, the paternal power being thus abolished, claimed the son before the court as his own, and the father allowed him to be adjudged to him. By either transaction the person adopted passed completely over into the family and rank of the adopter, and naturally took his name in full, but with the addition of a second cognōmen formed from his own former nōmen gentīlĕ by the suffix -ānus, e.g. Publius Cornelius Scipio Æmilianus (son of Lucius Æmilius Paullus). Women too could be adopted, but not arrogated; neither could they adopt. At the latter end of the Republic we find a testamentary Adoption in existence, which at first likewise produced a change of name, but not of status.
Adrasteia. See Nemesis.
Adrastus. Grandson of Bias, son of Tălăus and Lysĭmăchē. In a quarrel between the three houses reigning in Argos, the Biantĭdæ, Mĕlampŏdĭdæ, and Prœtĭdæ, he is driven out by Amphiarāus, who also killed his father, flees to his mother’s father, king Pŏly̆bus of Sĭcy̆on,and inherits his kingdom. But, reconciled to Amphiarāus, to whom he gives his sister Erĭphȳlē, he returns and rules over Argos. During one stormy night a great scuffle is heard outside the palace: two fugitives, Polyneicēs son of Œdĭpus of Thebes, and Tydeus son of Œneus of Căly̆dōn (one wrapped in a lion’s hide, the other in a boar-skin), have sought refuge in the front-court, and are fighting for a night’s lodging. Adrastus, coming forth, recognises the fulfilment of an oracle which had bidden him marry his daughters to a lion and a boar. He gives Argeia to Polyneices and Deïpy̆lē to Tydeus, promising to conduct those princes home and reinstate them in their rights. Thus began under his lead the far-famed and fatal expedition of the Seven against Thebes (q.v.). He alone escapes destruction by the help of his divine winged steed Areiōn. Ten years after, with the sons of the slain, the Epĭgŏni (q.v.), and his own son Ægiăleus, he again marches upon Thebes, takes and destroys the town, but loses his son, and
