Phoebos-Apollo
Phoebos-Apollo was the son of Zeus and Leto. In Homer he is the god of archery, music, and prophecy.
From: Unknown To: 1838 C.E.
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“Phoebos-Apollo,” from The Mythology of Ancient Greece and Italy by Thomas Keightley, 1838.
Chapter VIII
Leto:—Phoebos-Apollo, Artemis
Phoebos-Apollo, Apollo.
Phoebos-Apollo was the son of Zeus and Leto. In Homer he is the god of archery, music, and prophecy. His arrows were not merely directed against the enemies of the gods, such as Otos and Ephialtes: all sudden deaths of men were ascribed to his darts; sometimes as a reward, at other times as a punishment. He was also by his shafts the sender of pestilence, and he removed it when duly propitiated. At the banquets of the gods on Olympos, Apollo played on his phorminx or lyre, while the Muses sang.
Thus they the whole day long till set of sun Feasted; nor wanted any one his part Of the equal feast, or of the phorminx fair Which Phoebos held, or of the Muses' lay, Who sang responding with melodious voice.
Eminent bards, such as Demodocos, were held to have derived their skill from the teaching of Apollo or of the Muses. Prophets in like manner were taught by him; at Pytho he himself revealed the future.
As in Homer and Hesiod no birth-place of any of the gods is noticed, we must regard the tale of the birth of Phoebos-Apollo in the isle of Delos as being posterior to the time of these poets. According to the Homeridian hymn in his honour, it took place in the following manner. Leto, persecuted by Hera, besought all the islands of the AEgaean to afford her a place of rest; but all feared too much the potent queen of heaven to assist her rival. Delos alone consented to become the birth-place of the future god, provided Leto would pledge herself that he would not contemn her humble isle, and would erect there the temple vowed by his mother.
Leto assented with an oath, and the friendly isle received her. For nine days and nights the pains of labour continued. All the goddesses, save Hera and Eileithyia, (whom the art of Hera kept in ignorance of this great event,)were assembled in the isle. Moved with compassion for the sufferings of Leto, they dispatched Iris to Olympos, who brought Eileithyia secretly to Delos.
Leto then grasped a palm-tree in the soft mead, on the banks of the Inopos, Earth smiled around, Apollo sprang to light, and the goddesses shouted aloud to celebrate his birth. They washed and swathed the infant deity, and Themis gave him nectar and ambrosia. As soon as he had tasted the divine food, his bands and swaddling-clothes no longer retained him: he sprang up, and called to the goddesses to give him a lyre and a bow, adding that he would thenceforth declare to men the will of Zeus. He then, to the amazement of the assembled goddesses, walked firmly on the ground; and Delos, exulting with joy, became covered with golden flowers.
Callimachus relates the birth of Apollo somewhat differently. According to him, Hera, knowing that the son of Leto would be dearer to Zeus than her own son Ares, was resolved if possible to prevent his birth. Determined therefore that no place should receive the travailing goddess, she took her own station in the sky: she placed her son Ares upon the Thracian mountain Haemos, and her messenger Iris on Mount Mimas, to watch the islands.
All the lands, hills, and rivers of Hellas refused to hearken to the prayers of the goddess. Moved with wrath, the unborn Apollo menaced Thebes for her discourteous refusal, and foretold the future fate of the children of Niobe. The river-god Peneios alone valued justice and humanity more than the wrath of Hera: he checked his stream to give a shelter to the goddess; but instantly Ares arose, clashed his arms, that the mountains and all Thessaly trembled at the sound, and was about to fling the peaks of Pangaeos on the generous stream, who undauntedly awaited the issue; when Leto passed further on, entreating him not to expose himself to danger on her account. She now turned to the islands, but none would receive her; and the god called out to her that a floating island was to be his birth-place.
At length she met Delos, then called Asteria, which floated among the Cyclades. Delos generously invited the wearied goddess to enter her, expressing her willingness to encounter the anger of Hera. This last goddess, when informed by her messenger, remits her anger; Apollo is born; a choir of swans comes from the Maeonian Pactolos, and flies seven times round the isle to celebrate his birth; the Delian nymphs receive and sing the sacred verses of Eileithyia; the sky gives back the joyful cry; and Delos, as before, becomes invested in gold.
In the Homeridian hymn to the Pythian Apollo, the manner of his first getting possession of Pytho is thus related. When Apollo resolved to choose the site of his first temple, he came down from Olympos into Pieria: he sought throughout all Thessaly; thence went to Euboea, Attica, and Boeotia, but could find no place to his mind. The situation of Tilphussa, near Lake Copais, in Boeotia, pleased him; and he was about to lay the foundations of his temple there, when the nymph of the place, afraid of having her own fame eclipsed by the vicinity of the oracle of Apollo, dissuaded him, by representing how much his oracle would be disturbed by the noise of the horses and mules coming to water at her stream.
She recommends to him Crissa beneath Mount Parnassos as a quiet sequestered spot, where no unseemly sounds would disturb the holy silence demanded by an oracle. Arrived at Crissa, the god is charmed by the solitude and sublimity of the scene. He forthwith sets about erecting a temple, which the hands of numerous workmen speedily raise, under the direction of the brothers Trophonios and Agamedes. Meanwhile Apollo slays with his arrows the monstrous serpent which abode there and destroyed the people and cattle of the vicinity. As she lay expiring, the exulting victor cried," Now rot there on the man-feeding earth;" and hence the place and oracle received the appellation of Pytho.
The fane was now erected, but priests were wanting. The god, as he stood on the lofty area of the temple, cast his eyes over the sea, and beheld far south of the Peloponnese a Cretan ship sailing for Pylos. He plunged into the sea, and in the form of a porpoise sprang on board the ship. The crew sat in terror and amazement: a south-wind carried the vessel rapidly along: in vain they sought to land at Taenaron; she would not obey the helm. When they came to the bay of Crissa a west-wind sprang up, and speedily brought the ship into port; and the god in the form of a blazing star left the vessel, and descended into his temple.
Then quick as thought he came as a handsome youth with long locks waving on his shoulders, and accosted the strangers, inquiring who they were and whence they came. To their question in return, of what that place was to which they were come, he replies by informing them who he is, and what his purpose was in bringing them thither. He invites them to land, and says, that as he had met them in the form of a porpoise they should worship him as Apollo Delphinios, whence the place should also derive its name. They now disembark: the god playing on his lyre precedes them, and leads them to his temple, where they become his priests and ministers.
As might be expected, the legends of so celebrated an event as the establishment of the oracle of Apollo at Delphi, the sacred counsellor of all Greece, are various. The names Pytho and Delphi alone sufficed to give a foundation for some of them. The former, which evidently signifies the Place of Enquiry, a title well suited to an oracle, gave occasion to the legend above related, and also to one of a huge serpent named Python, which, it is said, came out of his den and attacked Leto when she was going by with her children in her arms; she stood then on a rock, holding the infant Artemis, and urged on her son by calling to him, and he dispatched the monster with his arrows. This serpent, another version of the legend says, was named Delphine, for the formation of which name, as we may perceive, Delphi probably gave its aid, as it did also for that of the change of the god into the porpoise, and for his title Delphinios.
The Homeric Apollo is a being of remarkable purity, and the poet seems to have had a strong feeling of the dignity of his character, for he never ventures to use the same familiarity with him as with the other gods, Zeus himself not excepted. Apollo is the friend of man, he protects his worshipers, and he punishes the unjust and impious.
At all periods of the Grecian literature we find the character of the pure god, as he was emphatically called, still the same. There is a serene cheerfulness always ascribed to him, he is averse from gloom and the promoter of joy and innocent pleasure; but at the same time dignified in his sentiments and actions.
The purity of his character appears also in this, that no amours with either goddesses or mortals are ascribed to him in the Homeric poems. When however, in subsequent times, heroes and heroic families were made to derive their lineage from the residents of Olympos, Phoebos-Apollo was also provided with his love-adventures by the poets; yet it is observable that he was not remarkably happy in his love, either meeting with a repulse, or having his amour attended with a fatal termination, and that none of these heroic families could claim him as the head of their genealogy.
"The first love of Phoebos," says Ovid, "was Daphne, the daughter of Peneios." Apollo, proud of his victory over the Python, beholding Eros bending his bow, mocked at the efforts of the puny archer. Eros incensed flew, and taking his stand on Parnassos shot his golden arrow of love into the heart of the son of Leto, and discharged his leaden one of aversion into the bosom of the nymph of Peneios. Daphne loved the chase, and it alone, indifferent to all other love. Phoebos beheld her, and burned with passion. She flies, he pursues; in vain he exhausts his eloquence, magnifying his rank, his power, his possessions; the nymph but urges her speed the more.
Fear gave wings to the nymph, love to the god. Exhausted and nearly overtaken, Daphne on the banks of her father's stream stretched forth her hands, calling on Peneios for protection and change of form. The river-god heard; bark and leaves covered his daughter, and Daphne became a bay-tree. The god embraced its trunk, and declared that it should be ever afterwards his favourite tree.
Of this legend we need only observe, that it is one of the many tales devised to give marvel to the origin of natural productions, and that its object is to account for the bay-tree being sacred to Apollo.
Apollo, it is also said by the same poet, thought himself happy in the love and fidelity of Coronis, a maiden of Larissa. His ignorance was his bliss, for the nymph was faithless. The raven, the favourite bird of the god, and then white as his swans, saw the maiden in the arms of a Haemonian youth, and bore the tidings to his master, who immediately discharged one of his inevitable arrows into the bosom of the frail fair one. Dying she deplores the fate, not of herself, but of her unborn babe. The god repents when too late; he tries in vain his healing art, and, dropping celestial tears, places her on the funereal pyre: extracting the babe, he gave him to be reared by Cheiron, the centaur. To punish the raven, he changed his hue from white to black.
This is probably a legend of some antiquity, for in a fragment of one of the poems ascribed to Hesiod, it is said that the raven brought tidings to Phoebos of the marriage of Ischys, the son of Eilatos, with Coronis, the daughter of Phlegyas. The tale is also told by Pindar, but he says nothing of the raven, making the god himself, though at Pytho, discover what was done through his divine power. At his desire Artemis shot the fair offender with her arrows.
Marpessa, the daughter of Evenos, was beloved by Apollo, whose suit was favoured by her father. Idas, another lover, having obtained a winged chariot from Poseidon, carried off the apparently not reluctant maid. Her father pursued the fugitives, but coming to the river Lycormas, and finding his progress stopped by it, he slew his horses and cast himself into the stream, which from him derived its name Evenos.
Meantime Apollo met and took the fair prize from Idas. The matter being referred to Zeus, he allowed the maiden to choose for herself; and fearing that when she grew old Apollo would desert her, she wisely chose to match with her equal, and gave her hand to her mortal lover.
Cassandra, daughter of Priamos king of Troy, also attracted the love of this god: the price she set on her favours was the gift of prophecy. The gift was freely given, but the royal maid refused the promised return; and the indignant deity, unable to recall what he had bestowed, made it useless by depriving her predictions of credit.
Cyrene, a daughter of the river Peneios, was another of the loves of Phoebos; he carried her in his golden chariot over the sea to Libya, where she bore him a son named Aristaeos.
The only celestial amour recorded of Apollo is that with the muse Calliope, of which the fruit was Orpheus. No parents more suitable could be assigned to the poet, whose strains could move the woods and rocks, than the god of poetry and the muse Fair-voice.
Cyparissos and Hyacinthos were two beautiful youths, favourites of Apollo; but that favour availed not to avert misfortune. The former, having by accident killed a favourite stag, pined away with grief, and was changed into the tree which bears his name. The latter, a youth of Amyclae, was playing one day at discus-throwing with the god. Apollo made a great cast, and Hyacinthos running too eagerly to take up the discus, it rebounded and struck him in the face. The god, unable to save his life, changed him into the flower which was named from him, and on whose petals Grecian fancy saw traced the notes of grief. Other versions of the legend say that Zephyros [West-wind), enraged at Hyacinthos having preferred Apollo to himself, blew the discus, when flung by Apollo, against the head of the youth, and so killed him. A festival called the Hyacinthia was celebrated for three days in the summer of each year at Amyclae, in honour of the god and his unhappy favourite.
The babe saved from the pyre of Coronis was Asclepios, who became so famous for his healing powers. Extending them so far as to restore the dead to life, he drew on himself the enmity of Hades, on whose complaint Zeus with his thunder deprived him of life. Apollo incensed slew the Cyclopes who had forged the thunderbolts, for which bold deed Zeus was about to hurl him down to Tartaros, but, on the entreaty of Leto, he was so far mollified as to be content with the offenders becoming a servant to a mortal man for the space of a year.
Admetos, king of Pherae, in Thessaly, was the person selected to be honoured by the service of the god, who, according to the more dignified and probable view of the mythe, pastured this prince's flocks and herds on the verdant banks of the river Amphrysos, making the kine under his charge all bear twins; while according to another he discharged for him even the most servile offices. When the term of his servitude was expired he was permitted to return to Olympos.
In this mythic tale of Apollo serving Admetos, Muller sees matter of deeper import than might at first sight be supposed. According to the Delphian tradition, it was for slaying the Python that the god was condemned to servitude. Every eighth year the combat with the Python was the subject of a mimic representation at Delphi. A boy who personated Apollo, having in mimic show slain the Python, fled and took his way along the Sacred Road to the vale of Tempe in the north of Thessaly, to be purified as it were from the guilt of the bloodshed; and having there plucked a branch of bay, in imitation of the act of the god, he returned to Delphi at the head of a theoria.
This mimic flight also represented the servitude of the god, which the legend placed at Pherae in Thessaly. Muller therefore, who views in the whole transaction a deep moral sense, and a design to impress upon the minds of men a vivid idea of the guilt of bloodshed, by representing even the pure god Apollo as being punished for slaying the Python, a being of demon-origin, deems the original legend to have been a still bolder stretch of fancy, and that it was to the god of the under-world, to Hades himself, that Apollo was obliged to become a servant. This hypothesis he thinks is confirmed by the names which occur in the legend: for Admetos, he says, must have been an epithet of Hades; Clymene, the name of Admetos' mother, is one of Persephone; and Pherae was a town sacred to the goddess Hecate, who was connected with the lower-world.
It cannot be said positively whether this mythe (which is apparently a temple-legend of Delphi,)was known to Homer. In the Catalogue, the mares of Eumelos Pheretiades are highly praised for their beauty and swiftness, and it is added that Apollo had reared them in Pieria. At the funeral-games, toward the close of the poems, Eumelos, named Pheretiades and son of Admetos, is one of the competitors in the chariot-race. These notices however, we may observe, occur in the parts of the Ilias of which the antiquity is most dubious.
It may also be doubted if the temple-legend of Delphi could be as old as the age to which Homer is usually referred. In another of the latter books of the Ilias it is said that Poseidon and Apollo, by the command of Zeus (we know not why given), served Laomedon, king of Troy, for a year; at the end of which time he refused to pay them their wages, and threatened to cut off the ears of both, and even to sell the latter for a slave. The task of Apollo had been to tend the herds of the Trojan king in the valleys of Ida.
Apollo, it is said, was taught divination by Pan, the son of Zeus and the nymph Thymbris. For his musical instrument he was indebted to the invention of his half-brother Hermes. Pan, the god of shepherds, venturing to set his reed-music in opposition to the lyre of Apollo, was pronounced overcome by Mount Tmolos, who had been chosen judge; and all present approved the decision except king Midas, whose ears were, for their obtuseness, lengthened by the victor to those of an ass. The Silen Marsyas, having found the pipe which Athena for fear of injuring her beauty had flung away, contended with Apollo before the Muses, and was by him flayed for his temerity when vanquished; and the tears of the nymphs and rural gods for the fate of their companion gave origin to the stream which bore his name.
This last legend admits of a very simple explanation. Marsyas was a river-god of Phrygia, the country in which the music of wind-instruments was employed in the service of the gods; the lyre was used by the Greeks in that of Apollo.
Hence, to express the superiority of the latter, a contest was feigned between Apollo and Marsyas. At the cavern in the town of Celaenae in Phrygia, whence the stream Marsyas issues, was hung, for some reason which is not very clear, a leathern bag, and hence it was fabled that Apollo flayed his vanquished rival.
The Homeric Apollo is a personage totally distinct from Helios, though probably, as will shortly appear, originally the same. When mysteries and secret doctrines were introduced into Greece, these deities were united, or perhaps we might say re-united. Apollo at the same period also took the place of Paeeon, and became the god of the healing art.
This god was a favourite object of Grecian worship, and his temples were numerous. Of these the most celebrated were that of Delphi in Phocis,—his acquisition of which we have above related, and where, as the mythe of Python would seem to intimate, a conflict took place between the religion of Apollo, proceeding southwards from Pieria, or westwards from Delos, and the ancient religion of the place, the worship of Gaea or Themis,—and those of Delos, of Patara in Lycia, Claros in Ionia, Grynion in AEolis, Didyma at Miletus; in all of which his oracles revealed the future.
A very able mythologist of the present day maintains that the worship of Apollo was originally peculiar to the Dorian race, who were at all times his most zealous votaries. As the Homeric poems prove the worship of this deity to have been common to the Achaean race, and well known on the coasts of Asia long before the Dorian migration, the critic is forced to have recourse to the not very probable supposition of a Dorian colony having left the mountains of Thessaly many years before the Trojan war, and carried the Apollo-religion to Crete, whence it was spread to the coast of Asia, and also conveyed to Delos and Delphi.
We cannot assent to this theory. Apollo seems to have been one of the original gods of the Grecian race; and he was worshiped by one people more than another, on the same principle as in India Vishnoo is in some places more worshiped than Seeva; Thor was most honoured by the ancient Norwegians, and Odin by the Swedes; St. Jago is more frequently invoked in Spain, and St. Anthony in Italy,—without the existence and the rights of the others being denied.
Apollo was supposed to visit his various favourite abodes at different seasons of the year:
Such as, when wintry Lycia and the streams Of Xanthos fair Apollo leaves, and comes To his maternal Delos, and renews The dances; while around his altars shout Cretans, Dryopians, and the painted race Of Agathyrsians; he, along the tops Of Cynthos walking, with soft foliage binds His flowing hair, and fastens it in gold; His arrows on his shoulders sound.
One of the most beautiful descriptions of these progresses of Apollo was that given by the lyric poet Alcaeus. The poem has unfortunately perished, but we find the following analysis of it in the works of the sophist Himerius.
"When Apollo was born, Zeus adorned him with a golden headband and lyre, and gave him moreover a team to drive (the team were swans). He then sent him to Delphi and the streams of Castalia, thence to declare prophetically right and justice to the Hellenes. He ascended the car, and desired the swans to fly also to the Hyperboreans. The Delphians, when they perceived this, arranged a Psean and song, and setting choirs of youths around the tripod, called on the god to come from the Hyperboreans. Having given laws for a whole year among those men, when the time was come which he had appointed for the Delphic tripods also to resound, he directed his swans to fly back from the Hyperboreans.
It was then summer, and the very middle of it, when Alcosus leads Apollo back from the Hyperboreans; for when summer shines and Apollo journeys, the lyre itself whispers in a summer-tone of the god. The nightingales sing to him, as the birds should sing in Alczeus; the swallows and cicadas also sing, not narrating their own fate when among men, but tuning all their melodies to the god. Castalia too flows with poetic silver streams, and Cephissos swells high and bright with his waves, emulating the Enipeus of Homer. For, like Homer, Alcaeus ventures to make the very water capable of perceiving the access of the god.”
It was probably on account of their pure white hue that the swans were assigned to the pure god Phoebos-Apollo; and this connection with the god of music gave origin to the fable, as it is esteemed, of the melody of these birds. The wolf was also assigned to this god, on account of his bright colour, as some think, but it is far more likely that it was the similitude of his name to an epithet of the god which gave occasion to it. The noisy chirping tettix (cicada), or tree-hopper, was naturally associated with the god of music; and as the god of augury Apollo was the patron of the hawk and raven. The bay-tree was the plant dedicated to this deity.
Apollo was represented by the artists in the perfection of united manly strength and beauty. His long curling hair hangs loose, or bound with the strophium behind; his brows are wreathed with bay; in his hands he bears his bow or lyre. The wonderful Apollo Belvidere shows at the same time the conception which the ancients had of this benign deity, and the high degree of perfection to which they had attained in sculpture.
Few deities had more appellations than the son of Leto. He was called Delian, Delphian, Pataraean, Clarian, etc. from the places of his worship; and Smynthian from a Phrygian word signifying mouse, of which animal a legend said he had been the destroyer in Troas. He was also styled 1. Crooked, probably from the position of the archer when shooting; 2. Herding, as keeping the flocks and herds of the gods, or those of Admetos; and by the poets, 3. Silver-bowed; 4. Far-shooter; 5. Gold-sworded; 6. Well-haired, and Gold-haired; 7. Unshorn-locked; 8. People-rouser, etc.
This god had several epithets apparently connected with the Greek name of the wolf ; but as there was an ancient Greek word signifying light, of a similar form, the great probability, in the eyes of all who regard Apollo as the sun-god, or as a moral being of great purity, will be that this last is the real root of these names, and that, as we said above, it was merely similarity of sound that caused the wolf, or the country Lycia, to be regarded as their origin.
Thus the god is called by Homer, which may be rendered with the utmost propriety Light-born, whereas the usual interpretation, Lycia-born, contradicts the fact of the Homeric gods not having birth-places on earth. Two other epithets of Apollo, usually rendered Lycian, or Wolf-destroying, or rather Wolfish, may signify Lighted, or Lighting. There are two others which evidently signify Wolf-killing, but they are of late origin, and formed after the derivation from wolf, had become the prevalent one.
Apollo was also named Agyieus, as the guardian of the streets and roads. Stone-pillars with pointed heads, placed before the doors of the houses, were the images of the god under this name. This practice was peculiar to the Dorians. Apollo was called Paean, either from his healing power, in which case he would be identical with Paeeon; or from his protecting and avenging character. The hymn sung to him on the cessation of a plague, or after a victory, was thus named.
Keightley, Thomas. The Mythology of Ancient Greece and Italy. Whittaker, 1838.
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