One of the references to the festival of the Adonia is supposedly in “Photius”. Perhaps his Lexicon would help, perhaps under Adonis or Adonia? This led me to wonder where this text might be found. I quickly found that a Google search needs “lexicon photii” to find anything at all. Is there no Wikipedia article, even, for this text?
Google books showed me an 1823 edition here. But unfortunately there is a lacuna of ca. 100 pages at precisely the point we want. More modern editions exist. But an 1864 edition has the same problem. All these are based on the Codex Galeanus (Cambridge, Trinity College, O.3.9/5985, once no. 306), a 12th century parchment ms. of 149 leaves.
A preview of a much more modern edition (1982, De Gruyter, vol. 1 – A-D) by Christos Theodoridis is here. And this has a much fuller text, and much of the introduction is also online, from which the following notes are taken.
It seems that in 1959 an academic at the university of Thessalonika named Linos Politis made an journey into western Macedonia for research purposes, and discovered at the monastery of Zavorda a manuscript (codex Zavordensis 95) of the 13-14th century, containing the complete text of the Lexicon. The editor comments (p.ix) that a find of this kind, outside of papyri, is a rarity. But it was 1974 before editing began. The manuscript is 406 leaves, written on bombycin in two columns. It is the only complete manuscript of the text. The manuscript contains other items also.
Besides the Cambridge and Zavorda manuscripts, there is also a manuscript in Berlin: ms. Berolinensis graec. oct. 22, a 13th century parchment ms. of 111 leaves, mostly of miscellaneous contents. It was bought in 1901 from Valentin Rose, and contains a portion of the text. It was thought lost in World War 2, but Theodoridis set out to locate it. During the war the mss. of the Prussian Staatsbibliothek were first sent to Furstenstein for safety, and then to the Benedictine monastery of Grüssau (now Krzeszow) in Silesia. The monastery escaped the war, and the manuscript ended up in 1946 in Krakow, in the Jagellonen University Library there.
There are a couple of other sources: Atheniensis 1083, a 15-16th century paper ms. containing a 4 leaf extract of the work; and a manuscript in Mar Saba in Jerusalem, Sabbaiticus 137, a miscellaneous ms. of the 14-15th century of 169 leaves, with an extract on f.162-9. A couple more minor sources are also given by Theodoridis.
But back to the Adonia in Photius. In the 1982 edition, on p.46 – 47 we get the following, which gives us exactly what we want:
Anyone care to do a translation? The latter entry (401) clearly identifies the connection with Phoenicia and Cyprus.