This failed to win Helios back to her, and she was left lovingly staring at him from the ground; eventually she turned into a heliotrope, a violet flower that gazes at the Sun each day in its diurnal journey.

Clytie's story is mostly known from and fully preserved in Ovid's narrative poem Metamorphoses, though other brief accounts and references to her from other authors survive as well.

Her name, spelled both Klytie and Klytia (Κλυτίη, Κλυτία), is derived from the ancient Greek adjective κλυτός (klutós), meaning "glorious" or "renowned".

[2] Although Ovid does not mention Clytie's parentage or homeland (if not Babylon), Hesiod includes her name in his list of the 3,000 Oceanids,[3] daughters of the water deities Oceanus and Tethys, two of the original Titans.

[6] Since Helios had defiled Leucothoe, Orchamus had her put to death by burial alive in the sands despite the girl's protest and proclaiming of her innocence.

[11] Helios arrived too late to save the girl, but he did make sure to turn her into a frankincense tree by pouring nectar over her dead body, so that she would still breathe air (in a certain fashion).

[15] In despair, she stripped herself and sat naked, accepting neither food nor drink, for nine days on the rocks, staring at the Sun and mourning his departure, but he never looked back at her.

[19][20] The flower turns its head always to look longingly at Helios the Sun as he passes through the sky in his solar chariot, even though he no longer cares for her, her form much changed, her love for him unchanged.

[7] Pliny the Elder wrote that: I have spoken more than once of the marvel of heliotropium, which turns round with the sun even on a cloudy day, so great a love it has for that, luminary.

[30][31] Modern traditions substitute the purple[a] turnsole with a yellow sunflower, which according to (incorrect) folk wisdom turns in the direction of the sun.

[27][35] Both however lived in the post-Hellenistic period after the conquests of Alexander the Great, and could have been aware of the heliotropium indicum, a variant that can have a purplish or bluish corolla.

It remained a favorite both with him (it figures prominently in Johann Zoffany's iconic painting of Townley's library (illustration, right), was one of three ancient marbles Townley had reproduced on his visiting card, and was apocryphally the one which he wished he could carry with him when his house was torched in the Gordon Riots – apocryphal since the bust is in fact far too heavy for that) and with the public (Joseph Nollekens is said to have always had a marble copy of it in stock for his customers to purchase, and in the late 19th century Parian ware copies were all the rage.

Some modern scholars even claim the bust is of eighteenth century date, though most now think it is an ancient work showing Antonia Minor or a contemporaneous Roman lady in the guise of Ariadne.