Daphne the Naiad Nymph

Author: Parthenius of Nicaea; Ovid

Time Period: 999 BCE–1 BCE; 1 CE–500 CE

Country or Culture: Greek; Roman

Genre: Myth

Overview

The extraordinary ancient myth of the nymph Daphne fascinates the modern world just as powerfully as it enraptured Greek and Roman audiences two thousand years ago. The story tells of a nymph who is loyal to Artemis (Diana), goddess of the hunt and chastity, and steadfastly rejects marriage but is nonetheless courted by various suitors, the most prominent of whom is the god Apollo. Not generally known for successful amorous pursuits, Apollo chases and nearly catches Daphne, who at the last moment, prays for help and is transformed into a laurel tree. In some versions, Apollo makes the tree his beloved sign. Conquered yet escaped, redefined yet intact, Daphne has an unusual hold on the modern world as readers continue to debate the meaning of her story.

Several ancient versions of the story survive, but two of the most significant are told by Parthenius of Nicaea, a first-century-BCE Greek poet, and his Roman contemporary Ovid. In Parthenius’s brief account in his Ero¯tika Pathe¯mata (Love Stories), Daphne is a virgin maiden dedicated to Artemis but loved by Leukippos, who cross-dresses to gain the nymph’s friendship. He is successful until a jealous Apollo forces a group of maidens, including the imposter, to bathe in a stream. Daphne and her attendants spear Leukippos when they discover his treachery. Apollo then pursues Daphne in a chase, but she begs Zeus to save her, which he does by changing her into a laurel tree. Ovid’s longer and quite different version appears in the first book of his Metamorphoses (1–8 CE; English translation, 1567). In Ovid’s version, Apollo’s pursuit of Daphne results from a quarrel between Apollo and Cupid, who retaliates against Apollo’s verbal attack by making him fall in love with the rejecting nymph. Daphne escapes Apollo’s clutches just in time, as her father Peneus transforms her into a laurel tree, which Apollo then makes his own.

She hated like a crime the bond of wedlock / And, bashful blushes tingeing her fair cheeks, / With coaxing arms embraced him and replied: / ‘My dear, dear father grant I may enjoy / Virginity for ever; this Diana / Was granted by her father.’ He, indeed, / Yielded, but Daphne—why, her loveliness / Thwarts her desire, her grace denies her prayer.

“Apollo and Daphne,” Metamorphoses

As with other myths, Ovid’s account is the one best known to modern readers, partly because it expands the story and offers the richest interpretation. The myth explains far more than Apollo’s love of the laurel tree because Ovid makes it one of the first stories in the whole Metamorphoses and frames it as part of a larger contest between two immortals. Thus, he diminishes Parthenius’s focus on love while he foregrounds the mysterious meaning of the huntress who finds herself hunted by Apollo. Clearly objectified by the male gods, Daphne nonetheless escapes with the help of her father Peneus, and Ovid goes out of his way to mock Apollo and his silly turf war with Cupid. A feminist interpretation of the story allows readers to explore why Ovid lampoons Apollo so ferociously and yet through him defines the significance of Daphne-as-laurel. Such interpretation also accounts for why the poet places this story in a seemingly disjointed sequence in book 1. Most important are the feminist debates over the meaning of Daphne as she saves her chastity but loses her humanity: Is she victorious, defeated, or something in between? How do women writers relate to her as the laurel, which Apollo defines as the quintessential symbol of athletic, military, and poetic honor? Perhaps more than any other ancient myth, Daphne’s story implies far more than it resolves and illustrates the impressive diversity of feminist interpretations that follow and celebrate it.

Summary

Parthenius begins his brief story of Daphne by describing her love of hunting. In his version, Daphne is said to be the daughter of Amyklas. She prizes hunting to the exclusion of all else, preferring to hunt only with her pack of dogs, a dedication that earns her the favor of the goddess Artemis, who grants her skill in archery. When a man named Leukippos falls in love with Daphne, he courts her in an unusual way by dressing as a woman and joining her in the hunt. Thus, the two become inseparable friends. The ruse fails when Apollo, also lusting after Daphne, becomes jealous and “put it into” her mind to bathe in a stream with her companions (Parthenius 33). Not wishing to be discovered, Leukippos is nonetheless revealed when he refuses to strip and the nymphs tear off his clothes. Their response to his deceit is swift and merciless as they all spear him to death. Daphne then sees Apollo pursuing her and decides to flee. She begs Zeus to be “released from humankind” (33), and the god transforms her into the bay (laurel) tree.

In Ovid’s version, Leukippos does not appear, and Ovid replaces the competition between him and Apollo with a different sort of contest between two immortals, Cupid and Apollo. However, their conflict is not over Daphne but over their realms of power. After Apollo slays a giant snake named Python, he believes the bow and arrow properly belong only to him; therefore, he chides Cupid when he sees the lesser god using these arms. In response, Cupid declares:

‘Your bow, Apollo,

May vanquish all, but mine shall vanquish you.

As every creature yields to power divine,

so likewise shall your glory yield to mine.’ (“Apollo and Daphne,” lines 14–17)

Cupid then pierces both Apollo and Daphne with two arrows of opposing force. Daphne receives an arrow that repels the force of love; Apollo is wounded by an arrow that inflicts hopeless love Daphne. She wants nothing of it and rejects her many suitors. Ovid names the river god Peneus as the father of Daphne, and when Peneus reminds his daughter of his right to a son-in-law and grandchildren, the nymph begs him to allow her to preserve her virginity just as Diana’s father did for his daughter, a request to which Peneus assents.

Apollo is so smitten by the nymph that he is even “deceived / by his own oracles” (48–49). Love wells within him as he admires Daphne’s disheveled hair and her graceful body, but she flees from him “swifter than the lightfoot wind” (62), so he chases her. As he runs, he addresses her, trying out various strategies of persuasion. He attempts to reassure her that he is no enemy, swearing that he is not chasing prey but is spurred on by love. He worries that he will cause her to fall and be scratched by briars. He complains that she runs too fast and ludicrously promises not to catch up to her if she will only slow down. He then reveals his identity, claiming that she only flees because she does not realize that he is the “lord of Delphi” and the “son of Jupiter” (77, 79). He is the god by which “things future, past and present are revealed” (80) and the god of song. In an abrupt shift, he then declares Cupid’s victory over him and bemoans his inability to cure himself; an arrow surer than his own has pierced him, and even though “[t]he art of medicine I gave the world / And all men call me ‘Healer’” (84–85), there is no herb to cure love. The healer of all cannot heal his wound.

Apollo’s words prove unconvincing, so the chase continues. As Apollo begins to close in on the nymph, Ovid compares Apollo to a beagle chasing a hare. When Daphne begins to lose strength, Apollo nearly overtakes her, but she reaches the river Peneus, her father, before she can be caught. She calls to Peneus to help her, to transform her, and to obliterate the beauty that has “pleased too well” (113). Peneus grants the request, and Ovid then describes her metamorphosis into a laurel tree. Her flight is halted as bark encloses her chest, her arms become branches, her hair changes to leaves, and her feet turn to roots. She is lovely even as a tree, and Apollo first responds to her as a lover. Touching her, he feels her heart beating beneath the wood, which recoils when he kisses it. He proclaims triumphantly that if she cannot be his wife, she will be his tree whose branches wreathe his hair, his signature lyre, and his bow. He also states that as the laurel, she will grace Roman military heroes as they conquer enemies. The tree seems to bow its leafy head in acquiescence.

Bibliography

Barnard, Mary E. The Myth of Apollo and Daphne from Ovid to Quevedo: Love, Agon, and the Grotesque. Durham: Duke UP, 1987. Print.

“Daphne.” Theoi Greek Mythology. Aaron J. Atsma, 2011. Web. 27 July 2012.

Fowler, Rowena. “‘This Tart Fable’: Daphne and Apollo in Modern Women’s Poetry.” Laughing with Medusa: Classical Myth and Feminist Thought. Ed. Vanda Zajko and Miriam Leonard. New York: Oxford UP, 2006. 381–98. Print.

Francese, Christopher. “Daphne, Honor, and Aetiological Action in Ovid’s ‘Metamorphoses.’” The Classical World 97.2 (Winter 2004): 153–57. Print.

Glück, Louise. “Mythic Fragment.” The Triumph of Achilles. New York: Ecco, 1985. 13. Print.

Nicoll, W. S. M. “Cupid, Apollo, and Daphne.” Classical Quarterly 30.1 (1980): 174–82. Print.

Ovid. “Apollo and Daphne.” Metamorphoses. Trans. A. D. Melville. New York: Oxford UP, 1986. 14–18. Print.

Parthenius. Ero¯tika Pathe¯mata: The Love Stories of Parthenius. Trans. Jacob Stern. New York: Garland, 1992. Print.

Stallings, Alicia E. “Daphne.” Archaic Smile: Poems. Evansville: U of Evansville P, 1999. Print.