Metamorphoses. Ovid
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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,78 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, before unscathed. 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!80 that 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 her 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 caught already, 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.
EXPLANATION.
To explain this Fable, it must be laid down as a principle that there were originally many Jupiters, and Apollos, and Mercuries, whose intrigues being, in lapse of time, attributed to but one individual, that fact accounts for the great number of children which claimed those respective Gods for their fathers.
Some prince probably, for whom his love of learning had acquired the name of Apollo, falling in love with Daphne, pursued her to the brink of the river Peneus, into which, being accidentally precipitated, she perished in her lover’s sight. Some laurels growing near the spot, perhaps gave rise to the story of her transformation; or possibly the etymology of the word ‘Daphne,’ which in Greek signifies a laurel, was the foundation of the Fable. Pausanias, however, in his Arcadia, gives another version of this story. He says that Leucippus, son of Œnomaus, king of Pisa, falling in love with Daphne, disguised himself in female apparel, and devoted himself to her service. He soon procured her friendship and confidence; but Apollo, who was his rival, having discovered his fraud, one day redoubled the heat of the sun. Daphne and her companions going to bathe, obliged Leucippus to follow their example, on which, having discovered his stratagem, they killed him with the arrows which they carried for the purposes of hunting.
Diodorus Siculus tells us that Daphne was the same with Manto, the daughter of Tiresias, who was banished to Delphi, where she delivered oracles, of the language of which Homer