Arrows of Cupid
The arrows of Cupid in Ovid's Metamorphoses are of two kinds: the golden-headed shaft that kindles love and the blunt leaden one that drives love away, and the pair together explain the passions of gods and mortals alike. When Apollo taunts Cupid about his bow, the boy shoots the golden arrow into Apollo and the leaden into the nymph Daphne, so that the god burns with desire while she flees him in terror, and the chase ends only when Daphne is changed into the laurel tree. The two arrows turn love and rejection into a kind of physics of the heart, a divine mechanism behind human obsession and