Apollo / Apollo
God of music, prophecy, healing, and the sun
Apollo was the most many-sided of the Greek gods: god of music and poetry, of prophecy and healing, of archery and the sun. Beautiful, brilliant, and dangerous, he could cure a plague with one hand and cause it with the other.
How they were born
Apollo was the son of Zeus and the Titaness Leto, and the twin brother of Artemis. When Leto was pregnant, the jealous Hera forbade every land on earth to give her shelter, so Leto wandered the world until she reached Delos, a small floating island that had nothing to lose. There Artemis was born first, and then — after nine days of labor, because Hera had kept Eileithyia, the goddess of childbirth, away — Apollo was born. He was fed nectar and ambrosia, and grew from a baby to a god in a single day, declaring at once that the lyre and the bow would be his.
The greatest stories
Apollo and Daphne
Apollo once mocked Eros for playing with a bow, and Eros took revenge with two arrows: a golden one that made Apollo fall desperately in love, and a leaden one that made the nymph Daphne hate love entirely. Apollo chased Daphne through the woods, and just as he caught her, she cried out to her father, the river god Peneus, to save her. Her skin turned to bark, her hair to leaves, her arms to branches — she became a laurel tree. Apollo embraced the tree anyway, and declared the laurel sacred to him forever; from then on, victors and poets wore wreaths of laurel, and Apollo's priestess at Delphi chewed laurel leaves before giving her prophecies.
Apollo Slays the Python
The great serpent Python guarded the oracle at Delphi and had tormented Apollo's mother Leto during her wanderings. When Apollo was only days old, he took up his silver bow and hunted the monster to its lair beneath Mount Parnassus. Python had once been the child of the earth goddess Gaia, and it was no easy kill, but Apollo's arrows found their mark. Having slain the serpent, Apollo claimed the oracle for himself and founded his sanctuary at Delphi, where his priestess, the Pythia, would speak his prophecies for a thousand years. The games held there in his honor, the Pythian Games, were second only to the Olympics.
Apollo and Hyacinthus
Apollo loved the beautiful Spartan prince Hyacinthus, and the two spent their days together hunting and playing games. One day they were throwing the discus, and Apollo hurled it high into the sky — but the west wind, Zephyrus, who was jealous of their love, blew it off course, and the discus struck Hyacinthus in the head. Apollo caught the dying boy in his arms and tried in vain to heal him, but no god can undo death. Where Hyacinthus' blood fell, a flower sprang up, marked with the letters 'AI AI' — the Greek cry of grief. The hyacinth flower still carries his name, and the Spartans held a festival, the Hyacinthia, in his honor every year.
The Curse of Cassandra
Cassandra, princess of Troy, was so beautiful that Apollo fell in love with her and offered her the gift of prophecy if she would accept him. She took the gift — and then refused him. Apollo could not take back a god's gift, so he twisted it instead: Cassandra would see the future perfectly, but no one would ever believe her. She warned Troy that Paris would bring ruin, that the wooden horse was a trap, and that Agamemnon would be murdered on his return home — and every warning was ignored. After Troy fell, Agamemnon took her as his prize, and she foresaw both their deaths. Her name is still used today for someone whose true warnings are dismissed.
Apollo and Marsyas
Marsyas was a satyr who found the flute Athena had thrown away — she had invented it, then discarded it because playing it puffed out her cheeks. Marsyas grew so skilled that he challenged Apollo himself to a contest of music, with the Muses as judges. Apollo played his lyre beautifully, and then, to settle the contest, he played it upside down — a trick Marsyas could not match with his flute. The punishment for challenging a god was terrible: Apollo had Marsyas tied to a tree and flayed alive. The story was a warning the Greeks told often: never measure yourself against a god.
Family & connections
Symbol, animal & weapon
Fun facts
- Apollo is one of the very few Greek gods who kept the same name in Rome — the Romans simply adopted him as Apollo.
- The Oracle at Delphi was the most famous fortune-telling shrine in the ancient world, and the Greeks believed Delphi was the center of the world, marked by a sacred stone called the omphalos, the 'navel of the earth.'
- Apollo was both the god who sent plagues with his arrows and the god of healing — his son Asclepius became the god of medicine, and the snake on the doctor's staff comes from him.
- The laurel tree was sacred to Apollo because of Daphne, and winners at the Pythian Games at Delphi were crowned with laurel — the origin of the word 'laureate.'
- His twin sister Artemis was born first and, according to tradition, helped their mother deliver him after nine days of labor.
Gallery — sculpture & art
