Cyparissus

"Cypress." A youth of Cea, the son of Telephus, and loved by Apollo and Zephyrus or Silvanus. He once received a stag from the Apollo as a gift, but later accidentally killed it. He greatly mourned the loss and begged the gods to let him mourn forever, and so was metamorphosed into a cypress tree.

❧

Iconography

A mural in the Casa dei Vettii (Pompeii) shows Cyparissus changing into a cypress tree.

References

Sources

  • Ovid. Metamorphoses x, 120 ff.
  • Servius on Virgil's Aeneid iii, 64, 680; Eclogues x, 26; Georgics i, 20.
  • Smith, William. (1870). Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology. London: Taylor, Walton, and Maberly.