Parnasso in festa his own love life, when, enamoured of the nymph Daphne, he pursued her with lustful intent, but she prayed to the gods to be spared and was transformed into a laurel tree. As if embarrassed by this story, Apollo invites all to join him in drinking in praise of Bacchus. Mars, god of war, leads everyone in a drinking song, and Clio joins in the spirit of things so much that she begins to feel inebriated, much to the amusement of Orpheus' mother, Calliope, muse of epic poetry, and the chorus. The muses sing in turn in praise of Orpheus'
Greek sea gods gods in the "Iliad", while in the seventh century BC the Spartan poet Alcman made the sea-nymph Thetis a demiurge-figure. Orpheus's song in Book I of the "Argonautica" hymns the sea-nymph Eurynome as first queen of the gods, as wife of the ocean-born giant Ophion. The pre-Socratic cosmogony of Thales, who made water the first element, may be seen as a natural outgrowth of this poetic thinking. The primacy of aquatic gods is reminiscent of, and may even have been influenced by, ancient Near Eastern mythology - where Tiamat (salt water) and Apsu (fresh water) are the first gods of