excessive jealousy because he writes that Helios's passion was never "moderate" when he loved her. Clytie intended to win Helios back by taking away his new love, but even though "her love might make excuse of grief, and grief may plead to pardon jealous words" her actions only hardened his heart against her, and now he avoided her altogether, never going back to her. In despair, she stripped herself and sat naked, accepting neither food nor drink, for nine days on the rocks, staring at the sun, Helios, and mourning his departure, but he never looked back at her. After nine days she was eventually transformed into a purple flower, the heliotrope (meaning "sun-turning"), also known as turnsole (which is known for growing on sunny, rocky hillsides), which turns its head always to look longingly at Helios the Sun as he passes through the sky in his solar chariot, even though he no longer cares for her, her form much changed, her love for him unchanged. Variations The episode is most fully told by Roman poet Ovid in his poem the Metamorphoses; Ovid's version is the only full surviving narrative of this story, but he must had had a Greek original source, for the myth's origins and plot lie in the etymology of the flower's Greek name. According to Lactantius Placidus, he got this myth from seventh or sixth century BC Greek author Hesiod. Some scholars however doubt this particular attribution to Hesiod. Like Ovid, Lactantius does not explain how Clytie knew about Helios and Leucothoe, or how Helios knew it was Clytie who had informed Orchamus. It is possible that originally the stories of Leucothoe and Clytie were two distinct ones before they were combined along with a third story, that of Ares and Aphrodite's affair being discovered by Helios who then informed Hephaestus, into a single one either by Ovid or Ovid's source. One of the ancient paradoxographers identifies the girl who betrayed the secret as Leucothoe's sister instead, and their father's name as Orchomenus, giving her neither a name nor a motivation behind her actions. Orchomenus is also the name of a town in Boeotia, implying that this version of the story took place there rather than Persia. Pliny the Elder wrote that: I have spoken more than once of the marvel of heliotropium, which turns round with the sun even on a cloudy day, so great