Apollo
Apollo carries more names than any other Olympian. He is the archer god, the healer, the prophet, the musician, the shepherd's patron, the founder of cities, the averter of evil, the lord of light. He was born on a floating island in the Aegean called Delos, the son of Zeus and a woman named Leto, twin brother to Artemis. Ancient Greeks regarded him as the most beautiful of all the gods. His face was young and beardless, his hair uncut, the image of eternal youth. And they placed him at the center of their world, at a sanctuary in Delphi, where his priestess spoke prophecies that kings consulted before going to war, before passing laws, before building cities. The question this documentary will try to answer is not simply who Apollo was. It is how one deity came to gather so many identities, from a Dorian tribal god to the oracular voice of Greece, from a healer of plague to its sender, from a god of wolves to a god of light. He was something very old before Greece knew him, and something new every century after.
The name Apollo does not appear in the Linear B texts, the oldest surviving records of the Greek language. A possible trace of it exists on a tablet catalogued as KN E 842, but even there scholars are uncertain whether the word reads Apollo or Hyperion. That ambiguity points to something significant: the god was already so ancient by the time writing arrived in Greece that his origins had become genuinely obscure. The Doric form of the name, Apellon, is thought to be older than the Attic form Apollon, and it may share a root with the Doric month-name Apellaios and the family festival known as the apellai, rites marking the passage of young men into adulthood. The scholar R. S. P. Beekes rejected this connection and proposed instead a pre-Greek proto-form he reconstructed as Apallyun, a word with no certain Greek meaning. Ancient writers themselves offered competing explanations. Plato in the Cratylus linked the name to Greek words meaning redemption, purification, and simplicity. Hesychius connected it to the Doric word for assembly, making Apollo a god of political life, or alternatively to the word for sheepfold, making him a god of herds. The Hittite form Apaliunas appears in the Manapa-Tarhunta letter, evidence that a deity of this name existed in Anatolia long before the classical period. A Luwian reading of that form has been proposed that would translate the name as "the One of Entrapment," possibly in the sense of hunter. None of these etymologies is certain. What they collectively confirm is that Apollo arrived in Greece from somewhere older and was absorbed into Greek religion with such thoroughness that his foreign origins were eventually forgotten.
Leto wandered through many lands while pregnant, seeking a place where she could give birth. Every land turned her away out of fear of what her son would become. When she reached the floating island Delos, the island itself worried that Apollo would abandon it after he was born. Leto swore an oath by the river Styx that if she were allowed to give birth there, her son would honor Delos above all other lands. The deal was made. But Hera, jealous of Leto, kept Eileithyia, the goddess of childbirth, confined on Olympus. The other goddesses sent Iris to fetch her, offering a necklace of amber nine yards long as a gift. Iris succeeded, Eileithyia stepped onto the island, and Leto finally gave birth after nine days and nine nights of labor, clutching a palm tree as she did so. The newborn Apollo "leapt forth" from his mother's womb, according to the Homeric Hymn. The goddesses washed him, wrapped him in white cloth, and fastened golden bands around him. Because Leto was too weak to nurse him, Themis, the goddess of divine law, fed him nectar and ambrosia instead. The child broke free of his bands and announced that he would master the lyre and archery and interpret the will of Zeus for humankind. The Callimachus version of the birth adds that swans circled the island seven times as Apollo was born, a sign that he would later play a seven-stringed lyre. The moment he arrived, the entire island, including its trees and its waters, turned to gold. In the Hyginus account, the monster Python had been hounding Leto during her pregnancy, having foreseen that her son would kill him. Poseidon sheltered Leto by covering the island of Ortygia with waves so the sun could not touch it, fulfilling Hera's decree that Leto could only give birth in a sunless place. Apollo was born on the seventh day of the month Thargelion, according to Delian tradition, or the month Bysios, according to Delphian tradition, and the seventh and twentieth days of every month were afterward held sacred to him.
Python was a serpent-dragon born of Gaia and set as guardian of the Delphic oracle. In the Homeric Hymn, Python was female, a "bloody plague" described as a terrifying monster and nurse to the giant Typhon. Apollo killed her with a single arrow from his bow, let the corpse rot under the sun, and declared himself the oracular deity of Delphi. Other versions give him a hundred arrows or a thousand arrows to finish the job. Euripides placed the killing so early in Apollo's life that he was still being carried in his mother's arms when he leapt out and struck the serpent down on the cliffs of Parnassus. A version recorded by Strabo strips away the supernatural altogether: Python in this telling was simply a cruel and lawless man also known as Drakon, who terrorized the region of Parnassus. The residents complained to Apollo, who killed him with arrows. The cry "Hie paian" was shouted to encourage the young god during the fight, and the Pythian Games were established afterward, either as funeral games for Python or as a celebration of Apollo's victory. But killing Python created a problem. Apollo had committed a blood crime. He had to be purified before he could properly claim Delphi. Pausanias recorded multiple purification traditions: one had Apollo and Artemis flee to Sicyon; another had Apollo travel alone to Crete to be purified by a man named Carmanor. In the account preserved by Aristonous, Apollo was purified in the Vale of Tempe by the will of Zeus, then escorted back to Delphi by Athena. As a gesture of gratitude, he built a temple for Athena at Delphi, placing it at the threshold of his own. Gaea initially moved to banish Apollo to Tartarus for killing her child and seizing her oracle. Zeus intervened on his son's behalf, ending Gaea's counter-prophecies and securing Apollo's claim. Poseidon then gave Apollo the land of Delphi itself as a gift, and Artemis set her hounds to patrol the territory.
Delphi was not Apollo's only prophetic site, but it was the most powerful. The Pythia, his high priestess, received her visions by breathing vapors that rose from a spring inside the inner sanctuary called the Adyton. Croesus, the famously wealthy king of Lydia, consulted Apollo's oracle at Abae in Phocis, a shrine important enough that it appears in historical sources alongside Delphi. At Claros, on the western coast of Asia Minor, priests drank from a sacred spring to receive inspiration, and the oracle there pronounced what became known as the "theological oracles" during the second and third centuries of the common era, statements in which Apollo confirmed that all deities were aspects of a single highest god. The oracle at Didyma, near Miletus, claimed to have been founded by a figure named Branchus, who was either the son or the lover of Apollo. Priests descended from the lineage of the Branchidae received inspiration there from a healing spring inside the temple. The oracle at Patara in Lycia operated only in winter, during the months when Apollo was absent from Delphi, and like the Pythia, the oracle at Patara was a woman. In Oropus, north of Athens, the oracle Amphiaraus was said to be Apollo's own son. At Labadea, twenty miles east of Delphi, another supposed son named Trophonius killed his brother and hid in a cave, where he was afterward consulted as an oracle. Apollo's cult was already fully established in the written record by about 650 BCE. His name was woven into the names of individuals, as Apollodorus or Apollonios, and into the names of cities called Apollonia. In the third century of the common era, Apollo fell silent. Julian the Apostate, who ruled from 359 to 361, tried to revive the Delphic oracle but failed.
Apollo holds a paradox at the center of his identity that ancient Greeks never resolved: he brings plague and he removes it. In the Iliad, Apollo sends a devastating plague against the Achaean army after the Greek king Agamemnon seizes Chryseis, the daughter of Apollo's priest Chryses, and refuses to return her. The Greeks purify themselves through ritual and offer a hecatomb, a large sacrifice of cattle, to persuade Apollo to relent. He does. Medicine and healing are associated with Apollo both directly and through his son Asclepius, who eventually became the primary healing deity of the Greek world. Apollo's healing role appears in his many epithets: Acesius from the Greek word for healing; Iatrus, meaning physician; Medicus, his title in Latin. A temple was dedicated to Apollo Medicus in Rome, probably beside the temple of Bellona, following a plague in 433 BCE. The god Paean, the personification of holy healing songs that seer-doctors sang to cure disease, was eventually absorbed into Apollo's identity, becoming a mere epithet rather than a separate deity. In this same absorption, the word paean shifted meaning: by around the 4th century BCE it had become a general formula of adulation, a song either to beg protection against disease and misfortune or to offer thanks once protection arrived. Roman armies sang a paean on the march and before entering battle, when fleets left harbor, and after victories. The connection between healing and plague in Apollo's character runs parallel to the Vedic god Rudra, whose arrows similarly brought either disease or cure. Apollo's arrows, always silver or golden in classical descriptions, were the vehicle of both his wrath and his mercy.
When boys in ancient Greece came of age, they cut their long hair and dedicated it to Apollo. The ritual was called ephebeia, and it reflected something essential in how Apollo was understood: he was himself the eternal ephebe, permanently young, his own hair never cut. His epithet Acersecomes means "he who has unshorn hair." As a kourotrophos, the nurturer of the young, Apollo oversaw the health and education of children and presided over their passage into manhood. Education itself was said to have originated from Apollo and the Muses. As a child in myth, Apollo built a foundation and altar on Delos using the horns of goats that Artemis had hunted, demonstrating the building skills that earned him the title Archegetes, founder of towns. His grandmother Phoebe gave him the oracular shrine at Delphi as a birthday gift. The god Pan trained him in prophetic skill during his early years tending cattle. His pastoral role ran alongside his civic one: Apollo was the patron of herdsmen and shepherds, protecting flocks, herds, and crops from diseases, pests, and predators. Apollo Agyieus, one of his most widely attested civic forms, was the protector of streets, public places, and home entrances, his symbol a tapered stone or column. He also encouraged the founding of new towns, presided over colonists, and gave laws to cities. His oracles were consulted before laws were set in a city, giving the god direct influence over the shape of civic institutions across the Greek world. Apollo's care for youth extended into myth through the story of Niobe. When Niobe, queen of Thebes, boasted that she was superior to Leto because she had fourteen children to Leto's two, Apollo killed her sons while Artemis killed her daughters. Zeus turned the people of Thebes to stone so that no one could bury the dead for nine days, until the gods themselves performed the burial. When one of the survivors, Chloris, later married and had children, Apollo granted her son Nestor the years he had taken from the Niobids, allowing Nestor to live for three generations.
When Greek culture spread through the Mediterranean and into contact with Rome, Apollo traveled with it. In the 5th century BCE his worship reached Rome, and his name transferred intact, one of the very few Greek deities the Romans adopted without renaming. The first Roman temple built to him, dedicated to Apollo Medicus, dates to 431 BCE, following a plague two years earlier. Augustus dedicated a temple to Apollo Palatinus on the Palatine Hill in 28 BCE, a marble structure in the Ionic style, its interior displaying statues by Greek masters. In the Celtic lands of Gaul, Britain, and Noricum, Apollo was identified with local healing and sun deities rather than simply replacing them. Apollo Belenus, whose name means bright or brilliant, was a healing and sun god worshipped in parts of Gaul, northern Italy, and what is now Austria. Apollo Grannus merged with a Celtic spring deity associated with healing waters. Apollo Vindonnus, meaning clear light, had a temple at Essarois near Chatillon-sur-Seine in Burgundy and was associated specifically with healing of the eyes. Apollo Cunomaglus, the hound lord, was worshipped at a shrine at Nettleton Shrub in Wiltshire. In Etruscan religion, Apollo was known as Apulu, and a temple to him at Veii in Etruria dates from the late 6th century BCE. In Hierapolis Bambyce in Syria, the sanctuary of the Syrian Goddess housed a robed and bearded image of Apollo, and divination there was based on the spontaneous movements of this figure. The spread of Apollo's temples traces the expansion of Greek and then Roman cultural reach: the Doric temple of Apollo at Cyrene in Libya built around 600 BCE; the first entirely stone-built temple in the Greek west at Syracuse in Sicily; a temple on the island of Ikaros in the Persian Gulf, now known as Failaka Island; and a temple in Melite, the ancient name of Mdina in Malta, built in the 2nd century of the common era, its remains rediscovered as recently as 2002.
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Common questions
Who is Apollo in Greek mythology?
Apollo is an Olympian deity in ancient Greek religion, son of Zeus and Leto and twin brother of Artemis. His domains include healing, prophecy, music, poetry, archery, protection of the young, and the founding of cities. He was regarded by the Greeks as the most beautiful of all the gods and was worshipped as the patron deity of the oracle at Delphi.
Where was Apollo born according to Greek mythology?
Apollo was born on the floating island of Delos in the Aegean Sea. His mother Leto gave birth there after being rejected by many lands out of fear of the god she carried. Apollo was born on the seventh day of the month Thargelion according to Delian tradition, or the month Bysios according to Delphian tradition.
Why did Apollo kill the serpent Python?
Apollo killed the serpent Python in order to claim the oracle at Delphi as his own prophetic seat. In the Homeric Hymn, Python was a female serpent-dragon and a guardian of the Delphic Oracle. After killing her, Apollo was required to undergo ritual purification before he could properly assume his role as the oracular deity of Delphi.
What was the Delphic Oracle and how did it work?
The Delphic Oracle was Apollo's most influential prophetic sanctuary in Greece. The Pythia, Apollo's high priestess, received visions by breathing vapors rising from a spring inside the inner sanctuary called the Adyton. Kings, lawmakers, and city founders consulted the oracle before major decisions, and its authority extended across the Greek world and beyond.
What does the name Apollo mean and where does it come from?
The etymology of the name Apollo is not settled. The Doric form Apellon is considered more archaic and may be related to the festival apellai and the month Apellaios, both connected with initiations of young men. A Hittite form, Apaliunas, appears in the Manapa-Tarhunta letter, suggesting the name has pre-Greek, possibly Anatolian origins. The scholar R. S. P. Beekes proposed a pre-Greek proto-form reconstructed as Apallyun.
How was Apollo worshipped in Celtic and Roman lands?
In Rome, Apollo was adopted largely intact from Greek religion, with his first temple dedicated in 431 BCE following a plague. In Celtic regions, he was identified with local healing and sun gods: Apollo Belenus in Gaul and northern Italy, Apollo Grannus as a healing spring deity, and Apollo Vindonnus as a healer of eye ailments with a temple in Burgundy. Augustus dedicated the temple of Apollo Palatinus on the Palatine Hill in 28 BCE.
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