Daphne At this moment Apollo's attention becomes engaged, and he begins his own pursuit. Daphne, fleeing to escape Apollo's advances, prays to Zeus to help. Zeus turns her into laurel tree. Parthenius' modern editor remarks on the rather awkward transition, linking two narratives. "Why should she wish to escape? Because she is Artemis Daphnaia, the god's sister," observed the Freudian anthropologist Géza Róheim, and Joseph Fontenrose concurs; boldly stating such a one-to-one identity doubtless oversimplifies the picture: "the equation of Artemis and Daphne in the transformation myth itself clearly cannot work". The laurel became sacred to Apollo, and crowned the victors
Thalia (nymph) Thalia (nymph) In Greek mythology, Thalia or Thaleia ( ; "Tháleia" or Θάλια "Thália", "the Joyous, the Flourishing", from θάλλειν / thállein, "to flourish, to be green") is a nymph, the child of Hephaestus. She is also given as an anthropomorphic secondary deity of plant life and shoots, possibly as the culmination of the transmission of knowledge on volcanic ash's use as a fertiliser, characteristic of ancient viticulture in volcanic soils such as those of the island of Santorini. The tradition surrounding her is confused, but she is probably confused with the Muse, Grace or Nereid of the same name.