Daphnis
In
Mythology
According to tradition, he was the son of
Daphnis became a follower of the goddess Artemis, accompanying her in hunting and entertaining her with his singing of pastoral songs and playing of the panpipes. A naiad (possibly Echenais or Nomia) was in love with him and prophesied that he would be blinded if he loved another woman. However, he was seduced, with the aid of wine, by the daughter of a king, and, in revenge, this nymph blinded him[3][7] or changed him into stone.[8][9]
Daphnis, who endeavoured to console himself by playing the flute and singing herdsmen's songs, soon afterwards died. He fell from a cliff, or was changed into a rock, or was taken up to heaven by his father Hermes, who caused a spring of water to gush out from the spot where his son had been carried off.
Ever afterwards the
Daphnis (nymph)
The geographer Pausanias mentions a mountain nymph called Daphnís (Greek Δαφνίς, with a different accentuation). He writes: "Many and different are the stories told about Delphoi (Delphi), and even more so about the oracle of Apollo. For they say that in earliest times the oracular seat belonged to Ge (Gaea, the Earth), who appointed as prophetess Daphnis, one of the Nymphai (Nymphs) of the mountain [Mount Parnassos]." (Pausanias, Description of Greece, 10.5.5, trans. Jones).
Cultural depictions
- Daphnis is the subject of Theocritus's first Idyll, which describes his death.
- Virgil's Fifth Eclogue contains two songs sung by herdsmen, one lamenting the death of Daphnis, and the other celebrating his acceptance into heaven as a god. In his Tenth Eclogue he imagines his friend the poet Cornelius Gallus dying of love in Arcadia, taking parts of Idyll I as his model.
Gallery
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Sculpture ofPanteaching Daphnis to play the pan flute; ca. 100 B.C. Found in Pompeii
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Daphnis, Roman copy from a group from the 2nd century AD at the Cinquantenaire Museum
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Cavaliere Tempesta showing Pan and Daphnis by Pieter Mulier, c. 1668-1676
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The Wooing of Daphnis by Arthur Lemon, 1881
Notes
- ^ "δάφνη", Henry George Liddel, Robert Scott, A Greek-English lexicon, 9th ed., 1940, Oxford University Press.
- ^ "Daphnis" The Oxford Companion to Classical Literature. Edited by M. C. Howatson. Oxford University Press Inc. Oxford Reference Online. Oxford University Press. 16 June 2012
- ^ a b c Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). . Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 7 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 826.
- ^ Aelian, Varia Historia 10.18
- ISBN 978-90-04-11618-4.
- . Clement, a Christian pope, was trying to discredit pagans and their beliefs in his works, however other finds seem to support this particular claim.
- ^ Diodorus Siculus, Historic Library 4.84.1
- ^ Ovid, Metamorphoses 4.275 ff
- ^ Smith, s.v. Daphnis
- ^ public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Daphnis". Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 7 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 826. One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from a publication now in the
External links
- Daphnis Encyclopædia Britannica
- The Death of Daphnis A poem by Theocritus