Pederastic myths almost invariably concern initiations into adult male life. Like many pederastic myths, this ends in death (and transfiguration) for the eromenos: Apollo gave the boy a tame deer as a companion, but Cyparissus accidentally killed it with a javelin as it lay asleep in the undergrowth. The gift of a hunter's prey is an initiatory gift in the sphere of the hunt, a supervised preparation for the manly arts of war and a testing ground for behavior (Koch-Harnack 1983). The tameness of the deer may be purely Ovidian. In a late reversal of the boy's traditional role, perhaps an interpretation applied by Ovid, Cyparissus asks Apollo to let his tears fall forever. Apollo turns the sad boy into a cypress tree, whose sap forms droplets like tears on the trunk. Cypress was one of the trees Orpheus charmed.
No Greek hero cult devoted to Cyparissus has been identified.
According to a different tradition Cyparissus was the son of Orchomenus, the brother of Minyas, and the mythical founder of Kyparissos in Phocis, which later was called Anticyra.
Notes
References
- Kerenyi, Karl, 1951. The Gods of the Greeks, (Thames and Hudson) p 140.
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