Every poet laureate's title traces back to a nymph who became a tree
Fleeing Apollo, the nymph Daphne begged for rescue and turned into a laurel tree. The lovesick god adopted the laurel as his own, and wreaths of it crowned winners at his Pythian Games in Delphi. That custom passed to generals, athletes and poets, which is why Britain still appoints a Poet Laureate.
Her name is simply the Greek word for laurel. Ancient writers could not agree on her parents: she was the daughter of the Thessalian river god Peneus, or of the Arcadian river Ladon, or of Amyclas, a king of Amyclae. The Pythian prize wreaths were cut from laurel in the Vale of Tempe in Thessaly, and the travel writer Pausanias said the custom existed purely because of Apollo's passion for her.
The best-known version belongs to Ovid, who died in AD 17. In his Metamorphoses, Apollo mocks Cupid's archery, so Cupid shoots him with a golden arrow that inflames desire and hits Daphne with a lead-tipped one that makes her flee. Apollo, god of healing herbs, complains that none of his remedies can cure this wound. As he catches her, her father transforms her: bark closes over her, her hair becomes leaves and her feet take root. Apollo, still feeling her heartbeat under the bark, declares that if she cannot be his bride she will be his tree.
The oldest written account, from the historian Phylarchus as preserved by Parthenius, is quite different. Here Daphne is a mortal huntress sworn to virginity, courted by a youth named Leucippus who disguises himself as a girl to join her band. His trick is exposed when the huntresses bathe, and he dies for it; only then does Apollo take up the chase, and Zeus, not a river god, makes her a laurel. In yet other tellings the earth goddess Gaia shelters her, and some writers moved the whole scene to the Orontes River near Antioch. The satirist Lucian has Apollo grumble that Daphne preferred becoming a tree to accepting him.
The story fed centuries of art. Bernini carved his marble Apollo and Daphne between 1622 and 1625, catching the instant of transformation. Jacopo Peri's Dafne of 1598 is counted among the first operas, and Richard Strauss returned to the legend in 1938. Botany borrowed the name too: Linnaeus gave it to a genus of nearly 90 fragrant shrubs with poisonous berries, which are not true laurels at all.
Source: Daphne
