Apollo, the Greek God of the Sun, Music, and Prophecy

The Greek god Apollo was the son of Zeus and the twin brother of Artemis, goddess of the hunt and the moon. In later periods, Apollo was commonly considered to have been the driver of the solar disc, but Apollo was not associated with the sun during Homeric Greek times. In this earlier period, he was the patron of prophecy, music, intellectual pursuits, healing, and plague. His brainy, orderly interests caused writers of many ages to contrast Apollo with his half-brother, the hedonistic, disorderly Dionysus (Bacchus), god of wine.

Apollo and the Sun

Perhaps the earliest conflation of Apollo and the sun god Helios occurs in the surviving fragments of Euripides' "Phaethon." Phaethon was one of the chariot horses of the Homeric goddess of the dawn, Eos. It was also the name of the son of the sun god who foolishly drove his father's sun-chariot and died for the privilege. By the Hellenistic period and in Latin literature, Apollo was associated with the sun. The firm connection with the sun may be traceable to the "Metamorphoses" of the major Latin poet Ovid. The Romans called him Apollo, and also sometimes Phoebus Apollo or Sol. He is unique among the major Roman gods in that he retained the name of his counterpart in the Greek pantheon.

Apollo's Oracle

The Oracle at Delphi, a renowned seat of prophecy in the classical world, was intimately connected with Apollo. The Greeks believed that Delphi was the site of the omphalos, or navel, of Gaia, the Earth. Stories vary, but it was at Delphi that Apollo slew the serpent Python, or alternately, brought the gift of prophecy in the form of a dolphin. Either way, the Oracle's guidance was sought by Greek rulers for every major decision and was respected in the lands of Asia Minor and by the Egyptians and Romans as well. Apollo's priestess, or sybil, was known as Pythia. When a supplicant asked a question of the sybil, she leaned over a chasm (the hole where Python was buried), fell into a trance, and began to rave. The translations were rendered into hexameter by the temple priests.

Attributes and Animals

Apollo is depicted as a beardless young man (ephebe). His attributes are the tripod (the stool of prophecy), lyre, bow and arrows, laurel, hawk, raven or crow, swan, fawn, roe, snake, mouse, grasshopper, and griffin.

Apollo's Lovers

Apollo was paired with many women and a few men. It wasn't safe to resist his advances. When the seer Cassandra rejected him, he punished her by making it impossible for people to believe her prophecies. When Daphne sought to reject Apollo, her father "helped" her by turning her into a laurel tree.

Myths of Apollo

He is a healing god, a power he transmitted to his son Asclepius. Asclepius exploited his ability to heal by raising men from the dead. Zeus punished him by striking him with a fatal thunderbolt. Apollo retaliated by killing the Cyclops, who had created the thunderbolt.

Zeus punished his son Apollo by sentencing him to a year of servitude, which he spent as a herdsman for the mortal king Admetus. Euripides' tragedy tells the story of the reward Apollo paid Admetus.

In the Trojan War, Apollo and his sister Artemis sided with the Trojans. In the first book of the "Iliad," he is angry with the Greeks for refusing to return the daughter of his priest Chryses. To punish them, the god showers the Greeks with arrows of plague, possibly bubonic, since the plague-sending Apollo was associated with mice.

Apollo was also linked to the laurel wreath of victory. In one myth, Apollo was fated to a disastrous and unrequited love for Daphne. Daphne metamorphosed into a laurel tree to avoid him. Leaves from the laurel tree were thereafter used to crown victors at the Pythian games.