moonlitmyths

[moonlitmyths]

Greek myth blog cuz I love Greek myth

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[moonlitmyths]

The story of Apollo and Daphne in Ovid’s Metamorphoses (I.438-567) took place right after Apollo killed the Python, the great snake that terrorized mankind. Apollo, called Phoebus by Ovid, pierced the Python with 1,000 arrows and founded the sacred Pythian Games named after the serpent. The sanctuary of Delphi, home to the famous oracle, called Pythia, was built on top of the Python’s dead body.

After his triumph over such a powerful enemy, Apollo was full of arrogance. Seeing the god of love, Eros, better known as cupid, who was also a famous bowman, Apollo started making fun of him:

“Impudent boy, what are you doing with a man’s weapons?”

Cupid was often depicted as a winged boy which explains Apollo’s comment. Apollo felt that Cupid was stealing his glory by gaining fame as a famous archer. Having defeated the Python, he believed that he and only he was worthy of holding a bow and a quiver:

“I can hit wild beasts of a certainty, and wound my enemies, and not long ago destroyed with countless arrows the swollen Python that covered many acres with its plague-ridden belly. You should be intent on stirring the concealed fires of love with your burning brand, not laying claim to my glories!”

Cupid’s Reaction To Apollo’s Remarks

Apollo and the Python, Cornelis de Vos, after Peter Paul Rubens, 1636-1638, Museo del Prado, Madrid

Cupid did not take the offense lightheartedly:

“You may hit every other thing Phoebus, but my bow will strike you: to the degree that all living creatures are less than gods, by that degree is your glory less than mine.”

The next thing Cupid did was something Apollo did not see coming. The god of love stroke his wings and flew right next to the god of music. He then shot him on the chest with a “golden arrow with a sharp glistening point”. This arrow did not kill or hurt Apollo. The true injury was not corporeal, it was sentimental, but Apollo would learn that soon.

With a second arrow, a “blunt one with lead beneath its shaft”, Cupid shot Daphne, a nymph who also happened to be a virgin huntress of the goddess Artemis. Daphne was very beautiful and many men came to ask her hand. However, she was devoted to hunting and following the laws of the goddess Artemis, who demanded chastity and virginity. Ovid writes that her father, the river god Peneus, disagreed with her life and asked her to settle down and give him grandchildren:

“It is my due, child of my heart, to be given grandchildren”, said Peneus.

“Dearest father, let me be a virgin forever! Diana’s father granted it to her”, Daphne always replied.

Apollo’s Love Meets Daphne’s Disgust: A Tragic Dead-End

Apollo and Daphne, Francesco Albani, 1615-1620, Louvre, Paris

Coming back to Cupid’s arrows, they both had special abilities. The one that hit Apollo, was an arrow of love and intense passion. The moment he got hit by the arrow, Apollo spotted Daphne hunting in the wild and unable to contain his passion went after her. However, the arrow that hit Daphne, was an arrow that filled the nymph’s heart with disgust for the god who appeared in front of her.

Cupid’s revenge was cruel. Apollo was madly in love with a woman who hated him with every ounce of her being.

Apollo’s love for Daphne was so strong that the god of prophecy was unable to foretell his future but still, his emotions were uncontrollable. He approached the nymph whom he now saw more beautiful and virtuous than she actually was. He started praising her again and again. But Daphne could not even stand his presence. Before Apollo could even get a proper response, Daphne had fled.

Apollo Chases Daphne

Apollo and Daphne, Peter Paul Rubens, Musée Bonnat

“Wait nymph, daughter of Peneus, I beg you!”, screamed Apollo but Daphne did not even look back.

The god kept begging Daphne to stop. He tried to explain that he posed no threat to her and that his intentions were good:

“I who am chasing you am not your enemy. Nymph, Wait! This is the way a sheep runs from the wolf, a deer from the mountain lion, […] but it is love that is driving me to follow you! Pity me!”

The chase went on as Apollo was becoming more and more paranoid. He was afraid that Daphne might fall and get hurt. In a hopeless attempt to make her stop he started explaining to her who he was. Besides, he was the god of beauty, prophecy, medicine, and music, no woman should be able to resist him:

“Rash girl, you do not know, you cannot realize, who you run from, and so you run. Delphi’s lands are mine, Claros and Tenedos, and Patara acknowledges me, king. Jupiter (Zeus) is my father. Through me what was, what is, and what will be, are revealed. Through me, strings sound in harmony, to the song. My aim is certain, but an arrow truer than mine has wounded my free heart! The whole world calls me the bringer of aid; medicine is my invention; my power is in herbs. But love cannot be healed by any herb, nor can the arts that cure others cure their lord!”

Apollo pursuing Daphne, Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, c. 1755-1760, National Gallery of Art, Washington

“Like a hound of Gaul starting a hare in an empty field, that heads for its prey, she for safety”

With these words Ovid (Metamorphoses 525-550) describes Apollo and Daphne’s chase as the story was nearing its tragic conclusion.

Apollo focused on catching Daphne. He was running and running while the nymph could see that she was getting closer and closer to getting caught. At times Apollo could almost grab her but she escaped him at the last second. However, it was becoming clear that Daphne would be caught sooner or later. As moments passed Daphne was becoming exhausted. And then, finally, Apollo grabbed her:

“So the virgin and the god: he driven by desire, she by fear. He ran faster, Amor giving him wings, and allowed her no rest, hung on her fleeing shoulders, breathed on the hair flying round her neck. Her strength was gone, she grew pale, overcome by the effort of her rapid flight”

Apollo and Daphne, Piero del Pollaiolo, c. 1441, The National Gallery, London

Right at that moment Daphne saw the waters of her father’s river, Peneus and screamed:

“Help me father! If your streams have divine powers change me, destroy this beauty that pleases too well!”

Peneus helped his daughter who was now firmly in the hands of Apollo. Daphne started transforming into a tree. Her hair became leaves, her arms branches, and her legs roots. Before Apollo could have a look at her face, she was gone. The only thing standing where Daphne stood was a beautiful laurel tree (literally a daphne tree in Greek).

Apollo’s Love Never Dies

Apollo and Daphne, John William Waterhouse, 1908, Private Collection

Even after Daphne’s transformation, Apollo’s love did not wither away. The god took the leaves of the tree in his hands and kissed the wood of the tree. He then whispered:

“Since you cannot be my bride, you must be my tree! Laurel, with you my hair will be wreathed, with you my lyre, with you my quiver. You will go with the Roman generals when joyful voices acclaim their triumph, and the Capitol witnesses their long processions. You will stand outside Augustus’s doorposts, a faithful guardian, and keep watch over the crown of oak between them. And just as my head with its uncropped hair is always young, so you also will wear the beauty of undying leaves.”

And truly since then, the laurel became the sacred tree of Apollo. In the Delphi, the oracle would chew laurel leaves before receiving the divine wisdom that she translated into a prophecy. Also, the prize of the Pythian Games, the second most important Games in antiquity after the Olympics was a crown of laurel.

[moonlitmyths]

Aphrodite was notoriously free with her love. Her husband Hephaistos (Vulcan) was frequently cuckolded as she had children by Ares (Mars), the probable father of Eros (Cupid), with Hermes, who fathered Hermaphroditus, with Poseidon who was responsible for two more children, with Dionysus, who was father to the Graces and Priapus, and finally with the mortal Anchises, resulting in Aeneas. The last brought Aphrodite to watch over the safety of the lead character in Virgil’s Aeneid in his flight from Troy to be the founding father of Rome.

Lovis Corinth (1858–1925), Homeric Laughter (1909), oil on canvas, 98 × 120 cm, Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen, Munich.

Aphrodite’s affair with Ares is another popular theme for paintings. My favourite of these is Lovis Corinth’s Homeric Laughter from 1909.

This refers to a section in Homer’s Odyssey in which its hero is being entertained by King Alcinous, after meeting Nausicaä on the island of the Phaeacians. To cheer Odysseus up, the bard Demodocus tells a tale of the illicit love affair between Ares and Aphrodite. One day Hephaistos catches the couple making love in his marriage bed, and throws a very fine but unbreakable net over them. Hephaistos summons the other gods, who come and roar with laughter at the ensnared couple.

[moonlitmyths]

Alexandre Cabanel (1823–1889), The Birth of Venus (1863), oil on canvas, Musée d'Orsay, Paris

The older accounts of the birth of Aphrodite link her to the myth of the Titan Cronos/Saturn castrating his father Uranus, whose severed genitals are thrown into the sea. There, they float past the islands of Cythera and Cyprus, giving rise to alternative epithets for Aphrodite of Cytherea and Cypris. On the shore of Cyprus, Aphrodite is then born from them, with allusions to semen as foam of the waves.

A later origin is given by Homer in his Iliad, in which Aphrodite is the daughter of Zeus by Dione, a Titaness and Oceanid who was one of Zeus’s early wives. Subsequent accounts of the origins of Aphrodite are attempts to reconcile these two conflicting stories.

Depictions of the birth of Aphrodite are among the oldest European mythological paintings of which we have records. Apelles of Kos, one of the most renowned of the great painters of ancient Greece, is claimed to have been active around 330 BCE. Among the eight or more major works attributed to him is Aphrodite Anadyomene, in which the goddess Aphrodite rises from the sea. This achieved fame in part because his model for Aphrodite was a former mistress of Alexander the Great, Campaspe, according to the writings of Pliny the Elder.

Unknown, Aphrodite Anadyomenes (before 79 CE), fresco, dimensions not known, The House of Venus, Pompeii.