Daphne flees Apollo’s hungry advances. When he catches up to her, she sacrifices her human body and assumes the form of a laurel tree. Even then, as Ovid explains, Apollo doesn’t let up: “[He] loved her still. He placed his hand where he had hoped and felt the heart still beating …

Under the bark and he embraced the branches, as if they were still limbs, and kissed the wood.” Daphne, however, still resisted: “And the wood shrank from his kisses.”