Apollo and Daphne - Part One

In Greek mythology Apollo was the God of prophecy and oracles. He was also the God of Archery, healing, plague and disease. 

Aphrodite was the Goddess of Love and her son was Eros. 

Eros was the God of love and he often struck people with his bow and arrow to bring about a powerful feeling of love in the people who were struck with it.

There was a time when Apollo had just won a war against Python. Python was a dragon that had lived at Delphi and after defeating Python, Apollo felt very proud of himself.

When Apollo saw Eros with his bow and arrow, Apollo became very arrogant and smirked at Eros. “Leave the war-like weapons to warriors. Do not meddle with my weapons.”

Eros was angry when he heard Apollo’s arrogant words. “Your arrows strike everything else, but my arrow will strike you.”

Eros then pulled out two different kinds of arrows from his quiver - one of the arrows was made of gold and was sharp and pointed and the other was a leaden arrow that was blunt. 

The sharp golden arrow could generate the powerful emotion of love in a person. Whereas when the lead arrow struck anyone, the person would never want to fall in love.

Eros stood on a rock in Mount Parnassus, pulled back both the arrows and fired both the arrows at the same time on two different persons. The golden arrow struck Apollo and the lead arrow hit Daphne. 

Daphne was the daughter of Peneus, the River God and Daphne’s greatest joy was to hunt in the forests and she was not interested in anything else.

Seeing Daphne’s beautiful face, many lovers had sought Daphne’s hands, but she refused because she had no interest in falling in love.

Once when her father asked Daphne about whether she intended to ever get married, Daphne told her father that she intended to remain unmarried like Artemis who was the Goddess of the Hunt.

Her father granted her the boon, but Peneus acknowledged that Daphne’s face would be the reason that this would not come true.

Adapted from Greek Mythology