DAPHNE dăf’ nĭ (Δάφνη). A park or pleasure resort in a suburb of Syrian Antioch, consecrated by Seleucus I to the royal gods and esp. to Apollo (Apoc., 2 Macc 4:33). It was a beautiful precinct of temples and gardens with associated theaters and stadia, similar to Delphi and all other religious centers of the Greeks in which worship of the Olympian gods, ritual, drama, and sport were inevitably linked. Daphne became a haunt of pleasure seekers and merry-making Antiochenes and tourists, winning a worldwide reputation for vice and carnality. Gibbon gave a description of the place in his Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (II, ch. 23, pp. 395, 396, J. B. Bury, ed., Everyman’s Ed).

Bibliography R. Stillwell, Antioch on the Orontes (1934).