Awhile ago I wrote a blog about how the gods and goddesses were always interfereing with the humans and that there life would be much simpler if the gods had just stayed out of it. I think that a really good example of this, though there are many, is the story of Apollo and Daphne. Though I don't think we touched on this story in class it is one of my favorites and in recently rereading it I noticed the involvment of Cupid, or Eros, more so than I did the first time I read the story.

Daphne is the daughter of Peneus, which is a river oddly enough, and Apollo fell in love with her because of a dispute between Cupid and himself. Apparently Apollo was making fun of Cupid when he was practicing shooting his bow, naturally this made Cupid mad and to take revenge on Apollo he shot him with one of his love arrows causing him to fall in love with Daphne and then shot Daphne with a lead arrow which stopped her from falling in love with him, causing a bit of a dilema. After discovering that she could never escape Apollo she prayed to her father which in return turned her into a tree, a laurel tree. Even then Apollo fell in love with the laurel tree and it became sacred to him. There is one particular piece of art that I found that is both very beautiful and very prominent in the time that it was painted. It is called Apollo and Daphne by Antonio del Pollaiolo and was painted sometime between 1470 and 1480 which is significant because prior to this there was a long absense of mythological art work due to the rise of Christianity.

My favorite passage from this poem is this,

"Such was the god, and such the flying fair,

She urged by fear, her feet did swiftly move,

But he more swiftly, who was urged by love,

He gathers ground upon her in the chase;

Now breathes upon her hair, with nearer pace,

And just is fastening on the wished embrace,

The nymph grew pale, and in a mortal fright,

Spent with the labor of so long a flight,

And now despairing, cast a mournful look,

Upon the streams of her paternal brook,

'Oh help', she cried, 'in this extremest need!

If water gods are deities indeed:

Gape earth, and this unhappy wrench intomb;

Or change my form, whence all my sorrows come'.

Scarce had she finished, when her feet she found

Benumbed with cold, and fasted to the ground;

A filmy rind about her body grows.

Her hair to leaves, her arms extend to boughs:

The nymph is all into a lawrel gone;

The smoothness of her skin remains alone."