Apollo
(
Ἀπόλλων). Son of Zeus by Leto (Latona), who, according
to the legend most widely current, bore him and his twin-sister Artemis at the foot of Mt.
Cynthus, in the island of Delos. Apollo appears originally as a god of light, both in its
beneficent and its destructive effects; and of light in general, not of the sun only, for to
the early Greeks the deity that brought daylight was Helios, with whom it was not till
afterwards that Apollo was identified. While the meaning of his name Apollo is uncertain, his
epithets of
Phoebus and
Lycius clearly mark him as the bright,
the life-giving, the former also meaning the pure, the holy; for, as the god of pure light, he
is the enemy of darkness, with all its unclean, unhallowed brood. Again, not only the seventh
day of the month, his birthday, but the first day of the month, i. e. of each new-born moon,
was sacred to him, as it was to Ianus, the Roman god of light; and according to the view that
prevailed in many seats of his worship, he withdrew in winter time either to Lycia, or to the
Hyperboreans who dwell in perpetual light in the utmost north, and returned in spring to
dispel the powers of winter with his beams. When the fable relates that immediately after his
birth, with the first shot from his bow he slew the dragon Python (or Delphyné), a
hideous offspring of Gaea and guardian of the Delphic oracle, what seems to be denoted must be
the spring-god's victory over winter, that filled the land with marsh and mist. As the god of
light, his festivals are all in spring or summer, and many of them still plainly reveal in
certain features his original attributes. Thus the Delphinia, held at Athens in April,
commemorated the calming of the wintry sea after the equinoctial gales, and the consequent
reopening of navigation. As this feast was in honour of the god of spring, so was the
Thargelia, held at Athens the next month, in honour of the god of summer. That the crops might
ripen, he received first-fruits of them, and at the same time propitiatory gifts to induce him
to avert the parching heat, so hurtful to fruits and men. About the time of the sun's greatest
altitude (July and August), when the god displays his power, both for good and for harm, the
Athenians offered him hecatombs, whence the first month of their year was named Hecatomboeon,
and the Spartans held their Hyacinthia. (See
Hyacinthus.) In autumn, when the god was ripening the fruit of their gardens and
plantations, and preparing for departure, they celebrated the
Pyanepsia (q.v.), when they presented him with the first-fruits of
harvest.
Apollo gives the crops prosperity, and protection not only against summer heat, but against
blight, mildew, and the vermin that prey upon them, such as field-mice and grasshoppers. Hence
he was known by special titles in some parts of Asia. He was also a patron of flocks and
pastures, and was worshipped in many districts under a variety of names referring to the
breeding of cattle. In the story of
Hermes (q.v.)
stealing his oxen, Apollo is himself the owner of a herd, which he gives up to his brother in
exchange for the lyre invented by him. Other ancient legends speak of him as tending the
flocks of Laomedon and Admetus, an act afterwards represented as a penalty for a fault. As a
god of shepherds he makes love to the nymphs, to Daphué (q. v.), to Coronis (see
Aesculapius), and to Cyrené, the
mother of Aristaeus, likewise a god of herds. Some forms of his worship and some versions of
his story imply that Apollo, like his sister Artemis, was regarded as a protector of tender
game and a slayer of rapacious beasts, especially of the wolf, the enemy of flocks, and
himself a symbol of the god's power, that now sends mischief, and now averts it. Apollo
promotes the health and well-being of man himself. As a god of prolific power, he was invoked
at weddings; and as a nurse of tender manhood and trainer of manly youth, to him (as well as
the fountain-nymphs) were consecrated the first offerings of the hair of the head. In gymnasia
and palaestrae he was worshipped equally with Hermes and Heracles; for he gave power of
endurance in boxing, with adroitness and fleetness of foot. As a warlike god and one helpful
in fight, the Spartans paid him peculiar honours in their Carneia (q. v.), and in a measure
the Athenians in their Boëdromia. Another Athenian festival, the Metageitnia,
glorified him as the author of neighbourly union. In many places, but above all at Athens, he
was worshipped as Agyieus, the god of streets and highways, whose rude symbol, a conical post
with a pointed ending, stood by streetdoors and in court-yards, to watch men's exit and
entrance, to let in good and keep out evil, and was loaded by the inmates with gifts of
honour, such as ribbons, wreaths of myrtle or bay, and the like.
At sea, as well as on land, Apollo was a guide and guardian, and there especially under the
name Delphinius, taken from his friend and ally the dolphin, the symbol of the navigable sea.
Under this character he was widely worshipped, for the most part with peculiar propitiatory
rites, in seaports and on promontories, as that of Actium, and particularly at Athens, being
also regarded as a leader of colonies. While he was
Ἀλεξίκακος (averter of ills) in the widest sense, he proved his power most
especially in times of sickness; for, being god of the hot season, and himself the sender of
most epidemics and the dreaded plague, sweeping man swiftly away with his unerring shafts, he
could also lend the most effectual aid; so that he and his son Asclepius were revered as the
chief gods of healing. As a saviour from epidemics mainly, but also from other evils, the
paean (q.v.) was sung in his honour.
In a higher sense also, Apollo was a healer and preserver. From an early time an ethical
tinge was given to his purely physical attributes, and the god of light
became a god of mental and moral purity, and therefore of order, justice, and legality in
human life. As such, he, on the one hand, smote and spared not the insolent offender, Tityus,
for instance, the Aloidae, the presumptuous Niobé, and the Greeks before Troy; but,
on the other hand, to the guilt-laden soul, turning to him in penitence and supplication, he
granted purification from the stain of crime (which was regarded as a disease clouding the
mind and crushing the heart), and so he healed the spirit, and readmitted the outcast into
civic life and religious fellowship. Of this he had himself set the pattern, when, after
slaying the Delphian dragon, he fled from the land, did seven years' menial service to Admetus
in atonement for the murder, and, when the time of penance was past, had himself purified in
the sacred grove of bay-trees by the Thessalian temple; and not until then did he return to
Delphi and enter on his office as prophet of Zeus. Therefore he ex
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The Pythian Apollo. (Audran, Proportion du Corps Humain , pl. 18.)
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acts from all a recognition of the atoning power of penance, in the teeth of the old
law of vengeance for blood, which only bred new murders and new guilt. The atoning rites
propagated by Apollo's worship, particularly from Delphi, contributed largely to the spread of
milder maxims of law, affecting not only individuals, but whole towns and countries. Even
without special prompting, the people felt from time to time the need of purification and
expiation; and hence certain expiatory rites had from of old been connected with his
festivals.
As the god of light who pierces through all darkness, Apollo is the god of divination,
which, however, has in his case a purely ethical significance; for he, as prophet and minister
of his father Zeus, makes known his will to men, and helps to further his government in the
world. He always declares the truth; but the limited mind of man cannot always grasp the
meaning of his sayings. He is the patron of every kind of prophecy, but most especially of
that which he imparts through human instruments, chiefly women, while in a state of ecstasy.
Great as was the number of his oracles in Greece and Asia, all were eclipsed in fame and
importance by that of
Delphi (q.v.).
Apollo exercises an elevating and inspiring influence on the mind as god of music, which,
though not belonging to him alone any more than atonement and prophecy, was yet pre-eminently
his province. In Homer he is represented only as a player on the lyre, while song is the
province of the Muses; but in course of time he grows to be the god, as they are the
goddesses, of song and poetry, and is therefore
Μουσαγέτης
(leader of the Muses) as well as master of the choral dance, which goes with music and song.
And as the friend of all that beautifies life he is intimately associated with the Graces.
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Belvedere Apollo. (Rome, Vatican Museum.)
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Standing in these manifold relations to nature and man, Apollo at all times held a prominent
position in the religion of the Greeks; and as early as Homer his name is coupled with those
of Zens and Athené, as if between them the three possessed the sum total of divine
power. His worship was diffused equally over all the regions in which Greeks were settled; but
from remote antiquity he had been the chief god of the Dorians, who were also the first to
raise him into a type of moral excellence. The two chief centres of his worship were the
island of Delos, his birthplace, where, at his magnificent temple standing by the sea, were
held every five years the festive games called Delia, to which the Greek states sent solemn
embassies; and Delphi, with its oracle and numerous festivals. (See
Pythia;
Theoxenia.) Foremost
among the seats of his worship in Asia was Patara in Lycia, with a famous oracle.
To the Romans, Apollo became known in the
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Apollo Musagetes. (Osterley Denkm. der alten Kunst, taf. 32.)
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reign of their last king, Tarquinius Superbus, the first Roman who consulted the
Delphic oracle, and who also acquired the
Sibylline Books (q.v.). By the influence of these writings the worship of Apollo soon
became so naturalized among them that in B.C. 431 they built a temple to him as god of
healing, from which the expiatory processions (see
Supplicationes) prescribed in the Sibylline Books used to set out. In the Lectisternia
(q. v.), first instituted in B.C. 399, Apollo occupies the foremost place. In B.C. 212, during
the agony of the Second Punic War, the Ludi Apollinares were, in obedience
to an oracular response, established in honour of him. He was made one of the chief gods of
Rome by Augustus, who believed himself to be under his peculiar protection, and ascribed the
victory of Actium to his aid; hence he enlarged the old temple of Apollo on that promontory,
and decorated it with a portion of the spoils. He also renewed the games held near it,
previously every two years, afterwards every four, with gymnastic and artistic contests and
regattas on the sea. At Rome he reared a splendid new temple to him near his own house on the
Palatine, and transferred the Ludi Saeculares (q. v.) to him and Diana.
The manifold symbols of Apollo correspond with the multitude of his attributes. The
commonest is either the lyre or the bow, according as he was conceived as the god of song or
as the far-hitting archer. The Delphian diviner, Pythian Apollo, is indicated by the tripod,
which was also the favourite offering at his altars. Among plants, the bay, used for purposes
of expiation, was early sacred to him. (See
Daphné.) It was planted round his temples, and plaited into garlands of
victory at the Pythian Games. The palm-tree was also sacred to him, for it was under a
palm-tree that he was born in Delos. Among animals, the wolf, the dolphin, the snow-white and
musical swan, the hawk, raven, crow, and snake were under his special protection; the last
four in conuection with his prophetic functions.
In ancient art he was represented as a longhaired but beardless youth, of tall yet muscular
build, and handsome features. Images of him were as abundant as his worship was extensive:
there was scarcely an artist of antiquity who did not try his hand upon some incident in the
story of Apollo. The ideal type of this god seems to have been fixed chiefly by Praxiteles and
Scopas. The most famous statue preserved of him is the Apollo Belvedere in the Vatican, which
represents him either as fighting with the Pythian dragon, or with his ægis
frightening back the foes who threaten to storm his sanctuary. Other great works, as the
Apollo Musagetes in the Vatican, probably from the hand of Scopas, show him as a Citharoedus
in the long Ionian robe, or nude. The Apollo Sauroctonus (lizard-killer), copied from a bronze
statue by Praxiteles, is especially celebrated for its beauty. It represents a delicate
youthful figure leaning against a tree, dart in hand, ready to stab a lizard that is crawling
up the tree. It is preserved in bronze at the Villa Albani in Rome, and in marble at Paris.