Alison Habens’s answer is that readers should revisit the episode with contemporary attention to sexual coercion—and pay close attention to how translations frame it. In Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Daphne is unwilling: Apollo pursues her, and she becomes a laurel to escape him. His desire does not make that pursuit consensual. The question is not whether Apollo calls his feeling love, but whether Daphne agrees.
Habens’s article was published by Scroll on December 10, 2025, after first appearing in The Conversation. The #MeToo lens is a way to interpret and teach the ancient poem today, not a claim that Ovid wrote with modern categories or intentions in mind.
What happens to Daphne in Ovid’s story?
After Cupid’s arrow makes Apollo desire Daphne, he pursues the nymph, who does not want him. She ultimately transforms into a laurel tree to get away. The transformation can be read as an act of escape and protest. But later depictions can also turn the scene into an aesthetic spectacle, making Daphne’s body—and Apollo’s response to it—the focus.
That tension matters when the ending is presented as though Daphne has answered Apollo’s love. A tree’s branches cannot establish consent, and Apollo’s interpretation of them is not evidence of Daphne’s agreement.
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How can translation change the scene?
Translation is not only a matter of finding equivalent words. Choices about pursuit, Apollo’s speech, Daphne’s body and the transformation can lead readers toward very different accounts: a coercive chase, a romance, or an apparent answer to Apollo’s desire. Habens points to English versions whose language makes the ending seem affirmative.
- George Sandys describes the transformation with the line, “There with all about hir breast did grow a tender barke.”
- In the 1922 translation by Brookes More, “unto him the Laurel bent her boughs, and it seemed to him her graceful nod gave answer to his love.” The wording makes clear that this apparent answer is what seemed true to Apollo—not a statement of Daphne’s consent.
- Rolfe Humphries’s version, updated in 2018, calls Apollo’s interpretation “all wishful thinking!” That phrase puts distance between the narrator’s account and Apollo’s wishful reading.
These examples show why a reader should notice who is interpreting the ending. Language that casts Daphne’s transformation as a response to Apollo’s love can blur the distinction between his desire and her will.
What does McCarter argue about rendering sexual violence?
Classicist and translator Stephanie McCarter argues that translation can euphemize rape or add sensual detail that the Latin does not warrant. Discussing David Raeburn’s version of Apollo and Daphne, she singles out descriptors including “teasingly tempting,” “delicate” and “shapely,” and argues that together they intensify the male gaze. That is McCarter’s analysis of a particular translation, not a neutral consensus about every English version.
Her own principle is to let the force of Ovid’s language remain visible in English: “I took care to use English words that reflect his own language of violence, which ties rape to the epic’s larger theme of abusive power.” In her 2022 essay, McCarter estimates that nearly 50 acts of rape or attempted rape appear in the epic; that figure is her combined estimate, not a separately verified count here.
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Habens likewise describes the episode as a “glamorized rape scenario” in the abstract of her 2023 peer-reviewed article. That article examines English translations, consent and coercion in teaching, and uses performance poems to give creative voice to Daphne/Laurel. The classroom question is not just what an old text says, but how a translation invites students to see—or overlook—coercion.
Which translations can readers compare?
Two recent translations offer readers concrete starting points for comparison: Stephanie McCarter’s Metamorphoses for Penguin Classics and C. Luke Soucy’s Ovid’s Metamorphoses: A New Translation, published by the University of California Press in 2023. McCarter’s translation aims to render sexual violence directly and accurately. Princeton Classics describes Soucy’s edition as engaging sexuality, violence and politics; the UC Press listing notes commentary, translation notes and a glossary. Neither edition should be treated as settling the debate. Comparing choices is more useful than assuming one English version is definitive.
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For this episode, readers can look at how each version handles the pursuit, Apollo’s words, the transformation and the narrator’s attention to Daphne’s body. Verse form, readability and notes also affect how readily a translation supports close reading alongside the Latin.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.Why connect the myth to #MeToo-era performance?
Habens connects Daphne’s silence and stillness as a laurel to the public, poetic movement of the Chilean feminist performance group Lastesis. Their 2019 performance Un Violador en tu Camino (“A Rapist in Your Path”) responds to victim-blaming and authoritarian violence against women; Habens relates it to the writings of Argentine anthropologist Rita Segato. This is an interpretive connection, not evidence of measured audience impact or a claim that the ancient myth and the modern performance are the same.
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The contrast is useful: Daphne’s transformation removes her from Apollo’s reach, but it also leaves her without a human voice in the story’s ending. Habens’s creative and teaching work asks what it means to make space for Daphne/Laurel’s perspective rather than allowing Apollo’s account to define what happened.
Quick Recap
Sources and further reading
- Alison Habens, Scroll / The Conversation, December 10, 2025.
- Stephanie McCarter, “Classical poetry is full of sexual violence. We shouldn’t hide that,” The Washington Post, November 8, 2022.
- University of Portsmouth record for Alison Habens’s 2023 peer-reviewed article, “‘The nymph is all into a lawrel gone’: creative writing, consent or coercion, in Ovid’s Metamorphoses,” Writing in Practice 9, pp. 47–61.
- Princeton Classics listing for C. Luke Soucy, Ovid’s Metamorphoses: A New Translation (University of California Press, 2023).
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