Myrrha.
    For her refusal to honor Aphrodite (Venus), Myrrha (also called Smyrna) was cursed by the goddess to lust after her own father, King Cinyras of Cyprus. (According to Pindar, it was Myrrha's mother, Cenchreïs, who provoked the goddess by boasting that her daughter was the fairer.) With the connivance of her nurse, Myrrha contrived to enter her father's bed in disguise. When Cinyras discovered the shameful truth, he tried to kill his daughter, now pregnant, then took his own life. Myrrha fled and was transformed by the gods into a myrrh tree, which split open to allow the birth of her child, Adonis.
    Most artistic representations of this subject depict the birth of Adonis from the myrrh tree.

RTM:    An intriguing subtext of the Roman development of elegiac poetry is veiled by the lamentable loss of C. Helvius Cinna's erudite poem Zmyrna, which Catullus (poem 95) insists will outlast all other poetry of all time. Cinna's Zmyrna was so notoriously complex that it warranted an ancient, learned commentary that explained its complexities. This led to Wendell Clausen's pithy observation: "Cinna labored for nine years to be as obscure as Euphorion, and apparently succeeded." The only substantial telling of Smyrna's disturbing story is Ovid's, in which the song of Orpheus takes a disturbing turn into overt darkness.


Bibliography:
    Clausen,W. 1964. "Callimachus and Latin Poetry." GRBS 5:181-96.
    Hollis, A.S. 2007. Fragments of Roman Poetry, c. 60 BC - AD 20. OUP. Pages 11-48.