Birth of the Laurel Tree

In the Galleria Borghese in Rome stands a statue by Gian Lorenzo Bernini (1598 – 1680) that is widely regarded as one of the masterpieces of marble sculpture in the Western world. Executed from 1622 to 1625, Bernini captured the moment Daphne escapes Apollo and transforms into a laurel tree. Her fingers are already becoming laurel leaves, her skin already becoming bark. Apollo has caught her at the exact instant she escapes him forever. Bernini is transforming cold stone into something that seems to breathe, to move, to cry out.

Crucially, in the story of Apollo and Daphne neither of the two central figures acts entirely by free will. Both Apollo and Daphne are moved by forces beyond themselves — arrows loosed in revenge by the child-god Cupid — and yet the consequences fall almost entirely upon Daphne. This tension gives the myth a startling relevance to our own age, resonating powerfully with the questions raised by the #MeToo movement: Who is responsible when power is abused? What does consent mean when one party is overwhelmed by forces they did not choose?

In the first book of his Metamorphoses, composed in the first century AD, the Roman poet Ovid tells the tale of Apollo and Daphne. The story unfolds in six movements, each preserved in Ovid’s verse, and each illustrated by painters, sculptors, and illuminators. Let us follow it from beginning to end:

1. Apollo kills Python
2. The dispute between Apollo and Cupid
3. Cupid’s revenge: the two arrows and Apollo goes after Daphne
4. Daphne begs her father for help
5. Daphne turns into a Laurel Tree
6. The Evergreen Tree and the Laurel Wreath

1. Apollo kills Python

The story begins not with love but with slaughter. Apollo killed Python, the great snake that terrorized mankind. As an allegory, Python represents the fogs and clouds of mist that arise from ponds and marshes, and evaporate when the rays of the sun appear — Apollo being the sun-god, and his arrows the rays of sunshine.

The archer god, with lethal shafts that he had only used before on fleeing deer, destroyed the creature with a thousand arrows, almost emptying his quiver, the venom running out from Python's black wounds.

Ovid, Metamorphoses, Book I (643-648)

2. The dispute between Apollo and Cupid

Flushed with triumph, Apollo encounters Cupid — the small, winged god of love. Apollo, in his pride, cannot resist mockery. Why, Apollo demands, does this little boy need weapons suited for war? The bow belongs to mighty gods like himself, to those who hunt and fight and conquer monsters. Let Cupid content himself with his love-torch and leave glory to those who have earned it.

Cupid’s reply is dangerously calm. Your arrow may pierce all things, he tells Apollo, but my arrow will pierce you.

Apollo, proud of his recent conquest of the snake, saw Cupid flexing his bow, pulling back the string, and said to him: Boy, what are you doing with strong weapons? Those arrows and bow are fitting for my shoulders — I who can shoot wild beasts and never miss, and wound my enemies, I who with my countless arrows has just killed that Python. You, be satisfied to stir up some love affair with your torch, and do not lay claim to my praises!

Cupid then replied to him: Oh Apollo, your arrow may strike all things, but mine can strike at you.


Ovid, Metamorphoses, Book I (665-677)

Here is a divine comedy playing out with tragic consequences for a mortal — or rather, for a nymph. Apollo’s arrogance triggers Cupid’s revenge, and that revenge will be visited not merely on Apollo himself, but on an entirely innocent third party: Daphne, daughter of the river god Peneus, who has never wronged either of them and is simply going about her life in the forests she loves.

3. Cupid’s revenge: the two arrows and Apollo goes after Daphne

Ovid then describes Cupid’s vengeance with great precision. He tells us that the little god flies to the top of Mount Parnassus and takes two arrows — arrows of entirely opposite powers. The first is golden with a razor-sharp head: it kindles love. The second is blunt-tipped, leaded: it repels love and makes its victim flee from even the name of it. He shoots the golden one at Apollo and the leaden one at Daphne.

Apollo sees Daphne and is immediately consumed by burning love. Daphne is equally consumed by burning aversion, running from the very idea of love. Both are robbed of choice. Both are puppets of a Cupid’s arrows and revenge. Yet it is Daphne who pays the higher price.

Cupid pulled out two arrows, each with a different force. The arrow which arouses love is gold with a sharp, glittering head, while the arrow which inhibits love is blunt and has lead below the shaft. With this second arrow Cupid hit Daphne, the daughter of Peneus, but with the first he struck Apollo’s bones, piercing right through them, into the marrow.

Apollo is immediately in love, but she runs away, swifter than a soft breeze, and does not stop when he calls her. With increasing speed, he chases after her. That’s how the god and virgin race away, he driven on by hope and she by fear. Daphne grows pale as her strength fails, exhausted by the strain of running away so fast.

Ovid, Metamorphoses, Book I (680-801)

4. Daphne begs her father for help

With Apollo almost upon her, Daphne turns to the one source of help available. She calls on her father, the river god Peneus, whose waters flow through the valley. It is a cry for transformation, for escape from the body that has become a trap:

Gazing at the waters of Peneus, she cries out: 'Father, help me! If your streams have heavenly power, change me! Destroy my beauty which has brought too much delight!'


Ovid, Metamorphoses, Book I (803-805)

Daphne does not ask to be saved so that she can go on living as herself. She asks to be unmade. She asks for her beauty — the very quality that drew both Cupid’s arrow and Apollo’s eye — to be destroyed. In a world where she cannot control the effect her appearance has on those around her, the only freedom available is to stop being what she is. Her father Peneus, the great river God, complies. And the transformation begins.

5. Daphne turns into a Laurel Tree

Then Ovid gets to the core of the story, Daphne’s transformation. It happens mid-stride, at the moment Apollo’s hands almost reach her:

Scarcely has she made this plea, when she feels a heavy numbness move across her limbs, her soft breasts are enclosed by slender bark, her hair is changed to leaves, her arms to branches, her feet, so swift a moment before, stick fast in sluggish roots, a covering of foliage spreads across her face. All that remains of her is her shining beauty.


Ovid, Metamorphoses, Book I (806-810)

The transformation is complete — and yet not complete, for what persists is beauty itself. Daphne has changed form, but not vanished. And Apollo, reaching the tree, still reaches for her:

Apollo loved her in this form, as well. He placed his hand on her trunk, where he felt her heart still beating under the new bark. He hugged the branches as though they were still human limbs and he kissed the wood.


Ovid, Metamorphoses, Book I (813-818)

Apollo’s love does not end with the transformation. The god who could not accept refusal from a living woman, now declares his love for a tree:

Apollo spoke: 'Since you cannot be my bride, you will certainly be my tree. My hair will always be decorated with your leaves. You will accompany the Roman emperors, when joyful voices acclaim their triumph. And just as my head with its golden hair is always young, so you also will wear the beauty of evergreen leaves.'


Ovid, Metamorphoses, Book I (820-831)

At the heart of Apollo’s speech is a promise: as his hair is always young — as the god of light — so the laurel will bear the beauty of evergreen leaves throughout winter. This is the mythological explanation for a natural fact: the laurel (Laurus nobilis) is indeed an evergreen, its aromatic leaves glossy and dark throughout the year. In the ancient world, evergreens were associated with immortality, with the persistence of life beyond ordinary death. The laurel thus became the perfect symbol of Apollo — the god of undying light, the sun that does not permanently fail even in midwinter.

Apollo turns his loss into an enduring program, although it is quite a self-glorifying solution. Daphne will adorn Apollo’s hair and his lyre. Daphne will stand at the doors of emperors. Daphne will crown the victorious and the powerful. Apollo claims her, even in her transformation — even in what was meant to be her escape.

6. The Evergreen Tree and the Laurel Wreath

The story ends when the laurel tree bends its new branches, in what Ovid calls a nod — a tree’s equivalent of consent, as Apollo certainly will understand it.

The laurel bowed her newly made branches, nodding in agreement, and seemed to shake her leafy crown like a head giving consent.


Ovid, Metamorphoses, Book I (832-833)

But perhaps it was only the wind that moved the leaves?

The final image of Ovid’s story is the laurel bowing its branches — or seeming to. Daphne, who asked to be unmade, who prayed for her own transformation, has become permanent. She is the tree that does not die. She is in Apollo’s hair and she is on the heads of emperors and generals. She is in the hand of every poet and laureate who ever received a wreath.

Every time you see a laurel wreath — in a painting, on a coin, at a graduation ceremony, above a doorway — you are seeing Daphne. The girl who ran. The nymph who asked to be dissolved and was instead immortalised. The body that fled possession and was possessed anyway, in a form that cannot speak, cannot run, cannot refuse.

The myth is two thousand years old. The laurel is on every door. Daphne is everywhere.

The laurel wreath, then, is not only a symbol of triumph. It is also a reminder — worn at every moment of victory, present at every crowning — that somewhere behind glory there may be a story of someone who ran, and who ran in vain.