Daphne the slopes of Mount Cnacadion near the Spartan frontier, had her own sacred laurel trees. At Eretria the identity of an excavated 7th- and 6th-century BCE temple to "Apollo Daphnephoros", "Apollo, laurel-bearer", or "carrying off Daphne", a "place where the citizens are to take the oath", is identified in inscriptions. Daphne Daphne (; , meaning "laurel") a minor figure in Greek mythology, is a naiad, a variety of female nymph associated with fountains, wells, springs, streams, brooks and other bodies of freshwater. She is said by ancient sources variously to have been a daughter of the river god Peneus and
Modern understanding of Greek mythology mythology to the still poorly understood pre-Hellenic societies of Greece, such as the Minoans and so-called Pelasgians. This is especially true in the case of chthonic deities and mother goddesses. Historians of religion were fascinated by a number of apparently ancient configurations of myth connencted with Crete: the god as bull — Zeus and Europa; Pasiphaë who yields to the bull and gives birth to the Minotaur; agrarian mysteries with a sacred marriage (Demeter's union with Iasion) etc. Crete, Mycenae, Pylos, Thebes and Orchomenus figure so large in later Greek mythology. For some, the three main generations of gods in