KINYRAS AT PYLOS John C. Franklin University of Vermont Kinyras ...

Adonis. 21 Myrrha is not Kinyras; but Ovid’s description of her as virgo Cinyreïa (10.369) affords
her the benefit of her father’s etymology. Ovid’s treatment was indebted to the lost Zmyrna of
Cinna, who also mentioned Myrrha’s tears in his learned and influential neoteric screed, nine
years in the making (c. 65–56). 22 Cinna in turn relied in some way upon his mentor Parthenius,
the Bithynian poet-hostage who also treated the Adonis myth; from here several tracks lead back
to earlier Hellenistic poets, including a likely debt to Euphorion. 23 As librarian of Antioch under
Antiochus III (223–187 BCE), Euphorion is an especially promising source for local Cypro-
Syrian traditions.
These passages, when taken together with the handful of lexical sources which bind Kinyras,
kinuros, kinura, kinuresthai, and kinurizein into a single family, show that the Kinyras