'laurel'),[1] a figure in Greek mythology, is a naiad, a variety of female nymph associated with fountains, wells, springs, streams, brooks and other bodies of freshwater.

At the Pythian Games, which were held every four years in Delphi in honour of Apollo, a wreath of laurel gathered from the Vale of Tempe in Thessaly was given as a prize.

Hence it later became customary to award prizes in the form of laurel wreaths to victorious generals, athletes, poets and musicians, worn as a chaplet on the head.

The pursuit of a local nymph by an Olympian god, part of the archaic adjustment of religious cult in Greece, was given an arch anecdotal turn in the Metamorphoses[8] by the Roman poet Ovid (died AD 17).

When Apollo finally caught up with her, Daphne prayed for help to her father, the river god Peneus of Thessaly,[10] who immediately commenced her transformation into a laurel tree (Laurus nobilis): a heavy numbness seized her limbs, thin bark closed over her breast, her hair turned into leaves, her arms into branches, her feet so swift a moment ago stuck fast in slow-growing roots, her face was lost in the canopy.

This makes Apollo angry and he puts it into the girl's mind to stop to bathe in the river Ladon; there, as all strip naked, the ruse is revealed, as in the myth of Callisto, and the affronted huntresses plunge their spears into Leucippus.

[16] Leucippus then thought of the following trick; he grew his hair and wore women's clothes, and this way managed to get close to Daphne, to whom he introduced himself as a daughter of the prince.

[19] When Apollo pursued the virgin Daphne, who in Hyginus' version is a daughter of the river god Peneus, it was the earth goddess Gaia to whom she begged for protection.

[24] A sixth century AD poet, Dioscorus of Aphrodito, composed a poem where Apollo calls Daphne and Hyacinthus his two greatest loves, and mourns their loss.

Artemis Daphnaia, who had her temple among the Lacedemonians, at a place called Hypsoi[27] in antiquity, on the slopes of Mount Cnacadion near the Spartan frontier,[28] had her own sacred laurel trees.