Adonis was a strikingly good-looking young man whom both the queen of the realm of death and the goddess of love had fallen for. Aphrodite praised sex and warned Adonis of the dangers of the chase, symbolized here by the doves and the dog. When Adonis was killed by a wild boar the white anemones turned crimson from his blood. Thereafter, Adonis was to spend half the year with Persephone in the underworld and the remainder of his time with Aphrodite. The narrative is highly characteristic of a vegetation myth.