A group of young people, two of them wearing laurel wreaths to mark their graduation, arrived in the piazza at 6pm. They joined the mass of kids recently released into a three-month summer holiday, as well as all the locals, visitors, drinks, dripping ice-creams, balls, bikes and dogs that fill the square.
The use of laurel wreaths for the newly graduated traces back to ancient Greece, and the variously told and interpreted myth of Daphne and Apollo. In short, the nymph Daphne is pursued by the god Apollo, intoxicated by Cupid’s arrow. To avoid him, she turns herself/is turned into a laurel tree, at which point he marks the tree into a sacred symbol (one of his many god roles was to make mortals aware of their own guilt and purify them of it). As well as being a creep, Apollo was an archer and athlete, and was also associated with music and poetry. This is why a laurel crown twisted from his sacred symbol became associated with and used to crown victorious athletes, heroes and appointed poets, and then, later, great minds and laureate/graduates. And why we are reminded not to rest on our laurels.
