in Mythology, daughter of the river-god Ladon in Arcadia, or of the river-god Peneus in Thessaly, by the goddess Terra, was a nymph of surpassing beauty, of whom Apollo became deeply enamoured. This passion had been incited by Cupid, with whom Apollo, elated at his recent conquest of the serpent Python, had disputed the power of his darts. Daphne, filled with terror at the importunities of the god, endeavoured to elude his embraces by flight; and when on the point of being overtaken by her pursuer, she invoked the assistance of the gods, and was metamorphosed into a laurel—in Greek called ἀλαρένη—which tree was thenceforward sacred to Apollo. According to another legend, Daphne was beloved by Leucippos, son of Κενομάς, king of Pisa in Elis, who disguised his sex, and attended her in the woods in the habit of a huntress; but his sex having been discovered by his rival Apollo, Leucippos was killed by the companions of Daphne. (Ovid, Met. i. 452, &c.)

Daphne was also the name of a daughter of the soothsayer Tireias, a priestess in the temple of Delphi. She is more generally called Manto.

a grove, temple, and oracle of Apollo, about five miles from Antioch in Syria, and one of the most renowned and sumptuous places of devotion in the whole Pagan world. In the words of Gibbon,—"The perpetual resort of pilgrims and spectators insensibly formed in the neighbourhood of the temple the stately and populous village of Daphne, which emulated the splendour without acquiring the title of a provincial city. The temple and village were deeply bosomed in a thick grove of laurels and cypresses, which reached as far as a circumference of ten miles, and formed in the most sultry summers a cool and impenetrable shade. A thousand streams of the purest waters issuing from every hill preserved the verdure of the earth and the temperature of the air; the senses were gratified with harmonious sounds and aromatic odours, and the peaceful grove was consecrated to health and joy, to luxury and love." Daphne first became famous in the reign of Seleucus Nicator, who designed it. Under the Romans its reputation was not suffered to decline till the days of the Apostate Julian. When that emperor visited the place, he complained that, instead of hecatombs of fat oxen sacrificed by the tribes of a wealthy city to their tutelary deity, he found only a single goose provided at the expense of a priest, the pale and solitary inhabitant of this decayed tem- ple. In the reign of Zeno, Daphne became a third-rate provincial town. For a very detailed history of Daphne, see Gibbon's History of the Decline and Fall, chap. xxiii.

No remains that can with certainty be pronounced those of the ancient village and grove have been discovered.