The Metamorphoses of Ovid, Book I (Fable. 12)

APOLLO, falling in love with Daphne, the daughter of the river Peneus, she flies from him. He pursues her; on which, the Nymph, imploring the aid of her father, is changed into a laurel.

DAPHNE, the daughter of Peneus, was the first love of Phœbus; whom, not blind chance, but the vengeful anger of Cupid assigned to him.

The Delian God,73 proud of having lately subdued the serpent, had seen him bending the bow and drawing the string, and had said, “What hast thou to do, wanton boy, with gallant arms? Such a burden as that better befits my shoulders; I, who am able to give unerring wounds to the wild beasts, wounds to the enemy, who lately slew with arrows innumerable the swelling Python, that covered so many acres of land with his pestilential belly. Do thou be contented to excite I know not what flames with thy torch; and do not lay claim to praises properly my own.”

To him the son of Venus replies, “Let thy bow shoot all things, Phœbus; my bow shall shoot thee; and as much as all animals fall short of thee, so much is thy glory less than mine.” He thus said; and cleaving the air with his beating wings, with activity he stood upon the shady heights of Parnassus, and drew two weapons out of his arrow-bearing quiver, of different workmanship; the one repels, the other excites desire. That which causes love is of gold, and is brilliant, with a sharp point; that which repels it is blunt, and contains lead beneath the reed. This one the God fixed in the Nymph, the daughter of Peneus, but with the other he wounded the very marrow of Apollo, through his bones pierced by the arrow. Immediately the one is in love; the other flies from the very name of a lover, rejoicing in the recesses of the woods, and in the spoils of wild beasts taken in hunting, and becomes a rival of the virgin Phœbe. A fillet tied together74 her hair, put up without any order. Many a one courted her; she hated all wooers; not able to endure, and quite unacquainted with man, she traverses the solitary parts of the woods, and she cares not what Hymen,75 what love, or what marriage means. Many a time did her father say, “My daughter, thou owest me a son-in-law;” many a time did her father say, “My daughter, thou owest me grandchildren.” She, utterly abhorring the nuptial torch,76 as though a crime, has her beauteous face covered with the blush of modesty; and clinging to her father’s neck, with caressing arms, she says, “Allow me, my dearest father, to enjoy perpetual virginity; her father, in times, bygone, granted this to Diana.”

He indeed complied. But that very beauty forbids thee to be what thou wishest, and the charms of thy person are an impediment to thy desires. Phœbus falls in love, and he covets an alliance with Daphne, now seen by him, and what he covets he hopes for, and his own oracles deceive him; and as the light stubble is burned, when the ears of corn are taken off, and as hedges are set on fire by the torches, which perchance a traveller has either held too near them, or has left there, now about the break of day, thus did the God burst into a flame; thus did he burn throughout his breast, and cherish a fruitless passion with his hopes. He beholds her hair hanging unadorned upon her neck, and he says, “And what would it be if it were arranged?” He sees her eyes, like stars, sparkling with fire; he sees her lips, which it is not enough to have merely seen; he praises both her fingers and her hands, and her arms and her shoulders naked, from beyond the middle; whatever is hidden from view, he thinks to be still more beauteous. Swifter than the light wind she flies, and she stops not at these words of his, as he calls her back:

“O Nymph, daughter of Peneus, stay, I entreat thee! I am not an enemy following thee. In this way the lamb flies from the wolf; thus the deer flies from the lion; thus the dove flies from the eagle with trembling wing; in this way each creature flies from its enemy: love is the cause of my following thee. Ah! wretched me! shouldst thou fall on thy face, or should the brambles tear thy legs, that deserve not to be injured, and should I prove the cause of pain to thee. The places are rugged, through which thou art thus hastening; run more leisurely, I entreat thee, and restrain thy flight; I myself will follow more leisurely. And yet, inquire whom thou dost please; I am not an inhabitant of the mountains, I am not a shepherd; I am not here, in rude guise,77 watching the herds or the flocks. Thou knowest not, rash girl, thou knowest not from whom thou art flying, and therefore it is that thou dost fly. The Delphian land, Claros and Tenedos,78A and the Pataræan palace pays service to me. Jupiter is my sire; by me, what shall be, what has been, and what is, is disclosed; through me, songs harmonize with the strings. My own arrow, indeed, is unerring; yet one there is still more unerring than my own, which has made this wound in my heart, beforeunscathed. The healing art is my discovery, and throughout the world I am honored as the bearer of help, and the properties of simples are79 subjected to me. Ah, wretched me!80that love is not to be cured by any herbs; and that those arts which afford relief to all, are of no avail for their master.”

The daughter of Peneus flies from him, about to say still more, with timid step, and together with him she leaves his unfinished address. Then, too, she appeared lovely; the winds exposed her form to view, and the gusts meeting her fluttered about her garments, as they came in contact, and the light breeze spread behind herB her careless locks; and thus, by her flight, was her beauty increased. But the youthful God81 has not patience any longer to waste his blandishments; and as love urges him on, he follows her steps with hastening pace. As when the greyhound82 has seen the hare in the open field, and the one by the speed of his legs pursues his prey, the other seeks her safety; the one is like as if just about to fasten on the other, and now, even now, hopes to catch her, and with nose outstretched plies upon the footsteps of the hare. The other is in doubt whether she is caughtalready, and is delivered from his very bite, and leaves behind the mouth just touching her. And so is the God, and so is the virgin;83 he swift with hopes, she with fear.

Yet he that follows, aided by the wings of love, is the swifter, and denies her any rest; and is now just at her back as she flies, and is breathing upon her hair scattered upon her neck. Her strength being now spent, she grows pale, and being quite faint, with the fatigue of so swift a flight, looking upon the waters of Peneus, she says, “Give me, my father, thy aid, if you rivers have divine power. Oh Earth, either yawn to swallow me, or by changing it, destroy that form, by which I have pleased too much, and which causes me to be injured.”

Hardly had she ended her prayer, when a heavy torpor seizes her limbs; and her soft breasts are covered with a thin bark. Her hair grows into green leaves, her arms into branches; her feet, the moment before so swift, adhere by sluggish roots; a leafy canopy overspreads her features; her elegance alone84 remains in her. This, too, Phœbus admires, and placing his right hand upon the stock, he perceives that the breast still throbs beneath the new bark; and then, embracing the branches as though limbs in his arms, he gives kisses to the wood, and yet the wood shrinks from his kisses. To her the God said: “But since thou canst not be my wife, at least thou shalt be my tree; my hair, my lyre,85 my quiver shall always have thee, oh laurel! Thou shalt be presented to the Latian chieftains, when the joyous voice of the soldiers shall sing the song of triumph,86 and the long procession shall resort to the Capitol. Thou, the same, shalt stand as a most faithful guardian at the gate-posts of Augustus before his doors,87 and shalt protect the oak placed in the centre; and as my head is ever youthful with unshorn locks, do thou, too, always wear the lasting honors of thy foliage.”

Pæan had ended his speech; the laurel nodded assent with its new-made boughs, and seemed to shake its top just like a head.

Footnotes:

73. The Delian God.]—Ver. 454. Apollo is so called, from having been born in the Isle of Delos, in the Ægean Sea. The Peneus was a river of Thessaly.

74. A fillet tied together.]—Ver. 477. The ‘vitta’ was a band encircling the head, and served to confine the tresses of the hair. It was worn by maidens and by married women also; but the ‘vitta’ assumed on the day of marriage was of a different form from that used by virgins. It was not worn by women of light character, or even by the ‘libertinæ,’ or female slaves who had been liberated; so that it was not only deemed an emblem of chastity, but of freedom also. It was of various colors: white and purple are mentioned. In the later ages the ‘vitta’ was sometimes set with pearls.

75. Hymen.]—Ver. 480. Hymen, or Hymenæus, was one of the Gods of Marriage; hence the name ‘Hymen’ was given to the union of two persons in marriage.

76. The nuptial torch.]—Ver. 483. Plutarch tells us, that it was the custom in the bridal procession to carry five torches before the bride, on her way to the house of her husband. Among the Romans, the nuptial torch was lighted at the parental hearth of the bride, and was borne before her by a boy, whose parents were alive. The torch was also used at funerals, for the purpose of lighting the pile, and because funerals were often nocturnal ceremonies. Hence the expression of Propertius,— ‘Vivimus inter utramque facem,’ ‘We are living between the two torches.’ Originally, the ‘tædæ’ seem to have been slips or lengths of resinous pine wood: while the ‘fax’ was formed of a bundle of wooden staves, either bound by a rope drawn round them in a spiral form, or surrounded by circular bands at equal distances. They were used by travellers and others, who were forced to be abroad after sunset; whence the reference in line 493 to the hedge ignited through the carelessness of the traveller, who has thrown his torch there on the approach of morning.

77. Here in rude guise.]—Ver. 514. ‘Non hic armenta gregesve Horridus observo’ is quaintly translated by Clarke, ‘I do not here in a rude pickle watch herds or flocks.’

78. Claros and Tenedos.]—Ver. 516. Claros was a city of Ionia, famed for a temple and oracle of Apollo, and near which there was a mountain and a grove sacred to him. There was an island in the Myrtoan Sea of that name, to which some suppose that reference is here made. Tenedos was an island of the Ægean Sea, in the neighborhood of Troy. Patara was a city of Lycia, where Apollo gave oracular responses during six months of the year. It was from Patara that St. Paul took ship for Phœnicia, Acts, xxi. 1, 2.

79. The properties of simples.]—Ver. 522. The first cultivators of the medical art pretended to nothing beyond an acquaintance with the medicinal qualities of herbs and simples; it is not improbable that inasmuch as the vegetable world is nourished and raised to the surface of the earth in a great degree by the heat of the sun, a ground was thereby afforded for allegorically saying that Apollo, or the Sun, was the discoverer of the healing art.

80. Ah! wretched me!]—Ver. 523. A similar expression occurs in the Heroides, v. 149, ‘Me miseram, quod amor non est medicabilis herbis.’

81. The youthful God.]—Ver. 531. Apollo was always represented as a youth, and was supposed never to grow old. The Scholiast on the Thebais of Statius, b. i., v. 694, says, ‘The reason is, because Apollo is the Sun; and because the Sun is fire, which never grows old.’ Perhaps the youthfulness of the Deity is here mentioned, to account for his ardent pursuit of the flying damsel.

82. As when the greyhound.]—Ver. 533. The comparison here of the flight of Apollo after Daphne, to that of the greyhound after the hare, is considered to be very beautifully drawn, and to give an admirable illustration of the eagerness with which the God pursues on the one hand, and the anxiety with which the Nymph endeavors to escape on the other. Pope, in his Windsor Forest, has evidently imitated this passage, where he describes the Nymph Lodona pursued by Pan, and transformed into a river. His words are—

‘Not half so swift the trembling dove can fly,
When the fierce eagle cleaves the liquid sky;
Not half so swiftly the fierce eagle moves,
When through the clouds he drives the trembling doves;
As from the God she flew with furious pace,
Or as the God more furious urged the chase.
Now fainting, sinking, pale, the nymph appears;
Now close behind, his sounding steps she hears;
And now his shadow reached her as she run,
His shadow lengthened by the setting sun;
And now his shorter breath, with sultry air,
Pants on her neck, and fans her parting hair.’

The greyhound was probably called ‘canis Gallicus,’ from having been originally introduced into Italy from Gaul. ‘Vertagus’ was their Gallic name, which we find used by Martial, and Gratian in his Cynegeticon, ver. 203.

83. And so is the virgin.]—Ver. 539. ‘Sic Deus et virgo est’ is translated by Clarke, ‘So is the God and the young lady;’ indeed, he mostly translates ‘virgo,’ ‘young lady.’

84. Her elegance alone.]—Ver. 552. Clarke translates ‘Remanet nitor unus in illa,’ ‘her neatness alone continues in her.’

85. My lyre.]—Ver. 559. The players of the cithara, the instrument of Apollo, were crowned with laurel, in the scenic representations of the stage.

86. The song of triumph.]—Ver. 560. The Poet here pays a compliment to Augustus and the Roman people. The laurel was the emblem of victory among the Romans. On such occasions the ‘fasces’ of the general and the spears and javelins of the soldiers were wreathed with laurel; and after the time of Julius Cæsar, the Roman general, when triumphing, wore a laurel wreath on his head, and held a branch of laurel in his hand.

87. Before his doors.]—Ver. 562. He here alludes to the civic crown of oak leaves which, by order of the Senate, was placed before the gate of the Palatium, where Augustus Cæsar resided, with branches of laurel on either side of it.