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The story of Apollo and Daphne was written around the year zero by Roman poet Ovid in the . Ovid was a trainee lawyer and student of rhetoric. In the story, a woman named Daphne becomes a laurel tree to escape the unwanted advances of the sun god, Apollo.

It’s part of a collection of his stories in which humans transform into plants and animals (and vice-versa) amid the mountains and woodlands of early Greece. But I believe it must be reviewed in the era of #MeToo – a period marked by widespread awareness, activism and accountability around sexual harassment and assault.

The first literary celebrity, Ovid, was “cancelled” in his own day. There’s no record of an actual crime he committed, but he was for something he called carmen et error (a poem and mistake).

This article is part of Rethinking the Classics. The stories in this series offer insightful new ways to think about and interpret classic books and artworks. This is the canon – with a twist.

Metamorphoses begins with Apollo slaying the monster python, a feat celebrated with the first Olympic Games. In competition with Cupid, Apollo is struck with an arrow that makes him fall him love. He then pursues Daphne, an unwilling nymph until, in desperation to escape his advances, she turns herself into a tree.

Like the , (by , and to name a few) this transformation of lady into tree still emphasises her curves. “There with all about hir breast did grow a tender barke” and “a thin bark closed around her gentle bosom”.

Beyond this objectifying treatment, the poem focuses on the hurt feelings of Apollo at her rejection, effectively saying: “Don’t you know who I am?”

In a 1960s edition of the poem, retold by , it’s all made out to be a misunderstanding: “You should not have been so fearful of me, I would not have harmed you.” But this isn’t what the aroused sun god tells Daphne in the classic text: “Resistless are my shafts.”

Daphne wishes to stay unwed, but her father, the river god Peneus, says that she is too pretty for spinsterhood. In the 1632 translation by , he explains: “thy owne beautie thy desire with-stands” and in a the young woman is told she’s fair game: “For so much youth, and so much beauty join’d / Oppos’d the state, which her desires design’d.”

Apollo’s fragile ego is prioritised and the affront to his self esteem is not permissible: “Perhaps thou know'st not my superior state/ And from that ignorance proceeds thy hate.” The sun god makes it clear who is the more insulted but, while he is listing his accomplishments (he invented music and medicine), Daphne runs away.

Even her escape is framed as erotic. In : “Hir running made hir seeme more fayre”. The Puritan poet’s gaze lingers on her: “And as she ran the meeting windes hir garments backewarde blue / So that hir naked skinne apearde behinde hir as she flue.” And English poet and literary critic , too, found her fear titillating: “the wind … left her legs and thighs expos’d to view / Which made the God more eager to pursue”. In agonising rhyming couplets, the translators follow her flight.

Daphne’s looks are a curse – it is no blessing to be beautiful. Her pleas reach Peneus as she races with attacker in hot pursuit: “Destroy the beauty that has injured me / or change the body that destroys my life.” So finally, her feet take root, the toes digging in; her arms become branches, her fingertips leafy. In imagery more fit for horror than romance, the bark closes over her mouth and she says no more.

But Apollo still gropes her, though he calls it love. The poets describe him embracing the trunk, handling the boughs, kissing the boles, : “fixt his lips upon the trembling rind / It swerv’d aside, and his embrace declin’d”.

If the sun god couldn’t tell she didn’t fancy him as a woman, he’s even less clear about her feelings now. : “Although thou canst not bee / The wife I wisht, yet shalt thou be my Tree.” In another version he says: “Because thou canst not be / My mistress, I espouse thee for my tree.” He gleefully claims her leaves, wreathed around his own head, to symbolise his greatness for ever.

Does Daphne consent? She may be nodding in the account by Golding, “and wagging of hir seemely toppe, as if it were hir crowne”. Or is she coerced? In the 1922 translation by : “unto him the Laurel bent her boughs, and it seemed to him her graceful nod gave answer to his love.”

The latest version of Metamorphoses (updated by in 2018) emphasises the unreliability of Apollo: “He hopes for what he wants – all wishful thinking! – Is fooled by his own oracles.”

The tale’s awful moral can still be heard; men may use passion as a weapon and love as a reason to attack. Perhaps it’s finally time for a translation that offers the point of view of the tree, too.

Beyond the canon

As part of the Rethinking the Classics series, we’re asking our experts to recommend a book or artwork that tackles similar themes to the canonical work in question, but isn’t (yet) considered a classic itself. Here is Alison Habens’s suggestion:

The Chilean group translate feminist theory into public performances. In 2019, they created perhaps the best example of a contemporary riposte to Apollo in the Daphne story, with their performance Un Violodor en tu Camino (A Rapist in Your Path).

Performing Un Violodor en tu Camino in 2021.

Inspired by the writings of Argentine anthropologist Rita Segato, this popular protest was seen and heard around the world. It made a strong statement about victim-blaming and authoritarian violence against women. Its work of genius is to resist the silence and stillness of the laurel tree, using poetry and dance.

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