1. Apollo and Daphne Ovid, Metamorphoses I.452-567
Apollo and Daphne, Bernini, ; Galleria Borghese, Rome
Credit: galleriaborghese.it
Sarah Ellery & Kat Byrd

2. Structure of Book I DAPHNE Prologue Creation The Four Ages The Giants
Lycaon
The Flood
Deucalion and Pyrrha
Python
DAPHNE Io
Interlude: Pan and Syrinx
Phaethon

3. A Few Notes on Ovid’s Style
Poetic grammatical forms:
-ēre for -ērunt
“poetic” plural
preference for -que over et
-īs for -ēs
Vivacious, free flowing narrative
Vivid present
Metrically swift, few elisions
Compact sense units
couplets (cf. elegy)
close relationship between the verb / participle and the noun-adjective group
caesura employed to clarify narrative rather than to create an emphatic break
Vocabulary
Look for the ways Ovid repeats and repurposes vocabulary among and within his stories. His word choice can provide the reader a thread with which to follow the labyrinth of interconnected themes, motifs, etc. throughout the whole work.

4. Apollo as Archer
(Apollo Saettante)
Roman, 100 B.C.–before A.D. 79.
Discovered in Pompeii in A.D
Credit: blogs.getty.edu

5. Apollo, Attic Red Figure krater
ca B.C.
Musée du Louvre, Paris
Apollo is pictured drawing his bow, about to kill the Niobides. Note the laurel crown and the pharetra hanging at his side.
Credit: theoi.com

6. Attic Red Figure Kylix, ca. 500 B.C.; Antikenmuseen, Berlin, Germany
HERMES APOLLO HERAKLES
Attic Red Figure Kylix, ca. 500 B.C.; Antikenmuseen, Berlin, Germany

7. Pollaiuolo: Apollo and Daphne
Antonio del Pollaiuolo, late 15th century; oil on wood; The National Gallery, London
Renaissance: classicizing, allegory
What aspects of this portrayal are similar to or different from the Ovidian version?
What are the limitations in portraying this myth visually?

8. Sintenis: Daphne Renée Sintenis, 1930 Museum of Modern Art, New York
Bronze
58 ¾ inches high, including the sandstone base
Almost 5 feet tall including pedestal

9. Renée Sintenis: Daphne
Almost 5 feet tall including pedestal

10. Bernini’s Apollo and Daphne
Gian Lorenzo Bernini, ; Rome, Galleria Borghese
Baroque: reaction against the pure, straight lines of the Classical period

11. Credit: Cavetocanvas.com

12. Credit: www.mcah.columbia.edu

13. Credits: www.mcah.columbia.edu

15. Apollo Belvedere
Roman copy of a Greek original by Leochares, ca (Hadrianic); Rome, Vatican Museum.
Compare this Apollo’s staid posture and classical lines with his portrayal by Bernini.

16. Gian Lorenzo Bernini (1598-1680) Self portrait, ca. 1623
Rome: Galleria Borghese

17. Baroque Architecture: Baldacino, St. Peter’s Basilica, Rome

18. Baroque Architecture: Bernini, Fontana dei Quattro Fiume,
Piazza Navona, Rome

19. Baroque Architecture: Trevi Fountain, Rome

20. Baroque Music:

21. The Laurel Laurus nobilis Uses Ancient symbolism evergreen, aromatic
cooking and ornamental herb
medicinal (salve for wounds, folk remedy for ear/headaches, high blood pressure, cough, poison ivy/oak and stinging nettle, arthritis)
Ancient symbolism
healing
prophecy
Pythia
victory
Pythian Games
cf. Baccalaureate, “rest on laurels”
poet’s calling
cf. poet laureate
Bible: resurrection and eternal life
Credit: Theoi.com

22. The Laurel: Mythic Sources
The Pythia, Apollo’s priestess at Delphi, was preeminent among ancient oracles. Celibate for life, she gave prophecies on a single day for nine months of the year. She sat on the tripod where hallucinogenic vapors may have put her in an altered state. Her utterances came forth in hexameters (the “Pythian meter”).
In this image, the Pythia holds the laurel (symbol of Apollo) in her right hand and stares intently into the phiale dish as she prophecies to Aegeus.
Attic Red-figure. Themis (Pythia) - Aegeus Consults the Pythia Seated on a Tripod. By the Kodros Painter, c B.C. Antiken-sammlung, Berlin, Germany. Credit: Ancienthistory.about.com.

23. The Laurel: Mythic Sources
From Theoi.com:
Ovid places the aetion in the Valley of Tempe in Thessaly, which is where the river Peneios flows into the Aegean sea. In the valley was a sacred laurel tree, the fronds of which were used to crown the victors of the Pythian games. The contests were originally musical, but athletic events were added in 585 B.C.
In a festival at Delphi, a branch of a sacred laurel tree was fetched from the Thessalian vale of Tempe. This rite would suggest that the Thessalian version of the Daphne myth was the older than the one told by Ovid as an aetion.
There was also a Delphic myth about Daphnis, an oreiad nymph who was Gaia's prophetic priestess at Delphoi before Apollo took control of the oracle.
Valley of Tempe and the Peneus River

24. The Laurel: Mythic Sources
Mosaic from Antioch, House of Menander;  
ca. 2nd - 3rd century A.D.

25. The Laurel: Mythic Sources
From Theoi.com:
Pausanias, Description of Greece (trans. Jones) (Greek travelogue C2nd A.D.) : "The reason why a crown of laurel is the prize for a Pythian victory is in my opinion simply and solely because the prevailing tradition has it that Apollo fell in love with the daughter of Ladon [Daphne].”
Philostratus, Life of Apollonius of Tyana (trans. Conybeare) (Greek biography C1st to 2nd A.D.) : "[In Antiokhos (Antioch) in Asia Minor is] the temple of Apollo Daphnaios, to which the Assyrians attach the legend of Arkadia. For they say that Daphne, the daughter of Ladon, there underwent her metamorphosis, and they have a riving flowing there, the Ladon, and a laurel tree is worshipped by them which they say was substituted for the maiden.”
Pseudo-Hyginus, Fabulae 203 (trans. Grant) (Roman mythographer C2nd A.D.) : "When Apollo was pursuing the virgin Daphne, daughter of the river Peneus, she begged for protection from Terra [Gaia the Earth], who received her, and changed her into a laurel tree. Apollo broke a branch from it and placed it on his head."

26. The Laurel: Mythic Sources
From Theoi.com:
Nonnus, Dionysiaca ff (trans. Rouse) (Greek epic C5th A.D.) :
"She told how the knees of that unwedded Nymphe [Daphne] fled swift on the breeze, how she ran once from Phoibos quick as the north wind, how she planted her maiden foot by the flood of a long-winding river, by the quick stream of Orontes, when the Earth (Gaia) opened beside the wide mouth of a marsh and received the hunted girl into her compassionate bosom the god never caught Daphne when she was pursued, Apollo never ravished her and [he] always blamed Gaia (earth) for swallowing the girl before she knew marriage.”
Nonnus, Dionysiaca ff :
"How the daughter of Ladon [Daphne], that celebrated river, hated the works of marriage and the Nymphe became a tree with inspired whispers, she escaped the bed of Phoibos but she crowned his hair with prophetic clusters."

27. The Laurel: Mythic Interpretations
The myth of Daphne is one that has inspired many interpretations, and Joseph Campbell offers his take in The Hero with a Thousand Faces. His approach is to view the phenomenon of the hero in various cultures as the “monomyth,” the basis of all great deeds and stories of societies.
On the “call to adventure” of the hero:
“(The) first stage of the mythological journey– which we have designated the “call to adventure”– signifies that destiny has summoned the hero and transferred his spiritual center of gravity from within the pale of his society to a zone unknown.”
On the refusal of the call:
“Often in actual life, and not infrequently in the myths and popular tales, we encounter the dull case of the call unanswered; for it is always possible to turn the ear to other interest. Refusal of the summons converts the adventure into its negative. Walled in boredom, hard work, or “culture,” the subject loses the power of significant affirmative action and becomes a victim to be saved.”

28. The Laurel: Mythic Interpretations
On Daphne’s flight from Apollo:
“This is indeed a dull and unrewarding finish. Apollo, the sun, the lord of time and ripeness, no longer pressed his frightening suit, but instead simply named the laurel his favorite tree and ironically recommended its leaves to the fashioners of victory leaves. The girl had retreated to the image of her parent and there found protection…”
Jungian psychoanalysis:
“The literature of psychoanalysis abounds in examples of such desperate fixations. What they represent is an impotence to put off the infantile ego, with its sphere of emotional relationships and ideals. One is bound in by the walls of childhood; the father and mother stand as threshold guardians, and the timorous soul, fearful of some punishment, fails to make the passage through the door and come to birth in the world without.”

29. What do the laurels on the front of Augustus’s house symbolize?
Why was this such an important symbol for him?
Credit: Paul Zanker
The decoration of coins was a practical method of conveying propaganda throughout the empire, and Augustus made frequent use of the laurel as a symbol of victory in his coinage. Coin a shows the House of Augustus, flanked by two laurel trees with the oak wreath above the doors (aureus from Rome, 12 B.C.). Coins b and c (both aurei from Spain and Gaul, both 19/18 B.C.) again depict the two laurels , and on coin c, laurels grow on either side of the clipeus virtutis.

30. Res Gestae Divi Augusti
In consulatu sexto et septimo, postquam bella civilia exstinxeram, per consensum universorum potitus rerum omnium, rem publicam ex meā potestate in senatūs populique Romani arbitrium transtuli. Quo pro merito meo senatūs consulto Augustus appellatus sum et laureis postes aedium mearum vestiti publice coronaque civica super ianuam meam fixa est et clupeus aureus in curia Iulia positus, quem mihi senatum populumque Romanum dare virtutis clementiaeque et iustitiae et pietatis causa testatum est per eius clupei inscriptionem. Post id tempus auctoritate omnibus praestiti, potestatis autem nihilo amplius habui quam ceteri qui mihi quoque in magistratu conlegae fuerunt.
--Augustus, Res Gestae 34
In my sixth and seventh consulships, when I had extinguished the flames of civil war, after receiving by universal consent the absolute control of affairs, I transferred the republic from my own control to the will of the senate and the Roman people. For this service I was named Augustus by decree of the Senate. The doorposts of my house were officially decked out with young laurel trees, the corona civica was placed over the door, and in the Curia Iulia was displayed the golden shield (clipeus virtutis), which the Senate and the people granted me on account of my bravery, clemency, justice, and piety (virtus, clementia, iustitia, pietas), as is inscribed on the shield itself. After that time I took precedence of all in rank, but of power I possessed no more than those who were my colleagues in any magistracy.