various times, although, I confess that some things seem in their nature impossible.
This much, however, I will say for the benefit of posterity, and that it may not be imagined this writing is from beginning to end the figment of a poet's fancy: Daphne was, without question, by far the most beautiful woman of her time, and excited a most violent and extreme passion in some of the wisest and most celebrated Athenians, before the events occurred which I am about to record. And I do not think it at all incredible that a man, driven by the madness of his love for her, should be induced to sacrifice everything he held most dear. Nor do I think it wonderful, considering the haughty ambition of many of no great worth or power, that a man who had a marvellous genius in making discoveries of the hidden nature of things, should try to emulate the might of far-darting Apollo, who
