The myth of Apollo and Daphne is one of the most famous and moving love stories of classical mythology: a god in love, a nymph who refuses to be his and a metamorphosis that turns her flight into a tree. It is also the story that explains why the laurel became the symbol of victory and poetry.
The quarrel between Apollo and Cupid
The best-known version is by the Roman poet Ovid, in the first book of the Metamorphoses. It all begins with an act of pride. Apollo, god of light, music and poetry, had just killed the serpent Python with his arrows. Seeing Cupid, the son of Venus, with his bow and arrows, he mocked him: those weapons, he said, were fit for a warrior like himself, not for a child.
The two arrows
Offended, Cupid took revenge by shooting two different arrows. With a golden arrow, which kindles love, he struck Apollo. With a lead arrow, which makes love flee, he struck Daphne, a nymph, daughter of the river god Peneus, who wanted to stay free and devote herself to hunting like the goddess Diana.
The chase
Apollo fell madly in love with Daphne and began to chase her, begging her to stop. Daphne fled with all her strength. Just as the god was about to catch her, exhausted, the nymph called on her father for help, asking him to transform the body that so attracted the god's love.
The transformation into a laurel
Her prayer was heard. As Apollo reached her, Daphne's body began to change: her skin became bark, her hair turned into leaves, her arms into branches and her feet into roots. In a few moments the nymph had become a laurel tree (in Greek daphne). Embracing the trunk, Apollo promised that the tree would be his forever: its leaves would crown victors and poets.
The laurel: from Daphne to "laureate"
This myth is the origin of the laurel wreath, given in antiquity to the winners of the Pythian Games held in Apollo's honour and to triumphant generals. In the Middle Ages and the Renaissance it became the symbol of poets: Petrarch, who loved a woman named Laura, often played on the link between her name and the laurel (lauro). The word survives today in "laureate" – poet laureate, Nobel laureate – and in Italy, a university degree is still called a laurea.
The meaning of the myth
- Freedom. Daphne would rather lose her body than her freedom.
- Unrequited love. Apollo, god of all the arts, is powerless against rejection.
- Transformation. Pain turns into something eternal: the laurel, symbol of glory.
- Pride punished. Apollo pays for his arrogance towards Cupid.
Bernini's Apollo and Daphne
The masterpiece that made this myth immortal is the marble group by Gian Lorenzo Bernini, carved between 1622 and 1625 and kept in the Galleria Borghese in Rome. Bernini captures the exact instant of the metamorphosis: Daphne's fingers turning into leaves, her feet taking root, the bark wrapping her legs as Apollo reaches her. The same gallery houses his Rape of Proserpina, which we discuss in our guide to Persephone.
An Apollo and Daphne statue for your home
Our Apollo and Daphne statue in white plaster-effect resin depicts the very moment of the metamorphosis, with the nymph turning into laurel as Apollo reaches towards her. It is hand-finished in Turin and available from 10 to 30 cm: a refined gift for a graduation, for art lovers or for someone in love. Find the other gods in the Greek Gods collection.