Apollo

Region/Culture: Southern Europe (Greek)
Mythos: Greek Mythology, Roman Mythology
Primary Type/Nature: Gods and Deities — Olympian god of light, music, prophecy, healing, and archery
Mythical Attributes: Apollo carries a silver bow whose arrows bring both plague and sudden death, and a golden lyre whose music orders the world the way his arrows disorder it.
Role in Mythos: He is the divine voice of prophecy at Delphi, leader of the Muses, patron of healing and of the plague alike, and the embodiment of measured, radiant order among the Olympians.
Relation to Humans: Apollo gave mortals the arts of music, archery, and medicine, and spoke to them through his oracle, guiding kings and founding cities. He could also turn on them without warning, raining arrows of pestilence into a camp or striking down those who insulted his family.

The arrow was already in the air before the serpent had finished its turn. It struck somewhere behind the head, and the great coils thrashed against the rocks of the gorge below the spring, loosening stones that rattled down into the dark. Python had guarded this place since the beginning, a child of the earth coiled over the chasm where the future leaked up out of the ground. The young god stood above it and watched it die, and when it was finished he claimed the spring, the chasm, and the voice that rose from it. The body was left to rot in the sun. The name stuck to the place from the verb for rotting, and Delphi became his.

He was born to run from something. Leto, pregnant by Zeus, was hounded across the world by a jealous Hera who forbade any solid ground from giving her shelter. Only Delos took her in, a barren island that floated unanchored on the sea and so technically broke no oath. There, by some accounts grasping a palm tree through nine days of labor, Leto bore twins. Artemis came first and turned at once to help deliver her brother. In gratitude, or perhaps simply to give his mother a fixed home at last, Apollo later fastened the wandering island to the floor of the ocean with four pillars, and Delos never drifted again.

What he became is harder to pin down than where he was born, because almost nothing in the Greek world stayed outside his reach. He was light and the sun, music and poetry, the straight truth of prophecy, the bow that kills at a distance, and the medicine that holds death back. These should not belong together. The same hand that taught mortals to set a broken bone could send a sickness sweeping through an army, and in the opening of the Iliad it does exactly that, the god descending from Olympus like nightfall, his arrows clattering in their quiver as he walks, loosing plague into the Greek ranks for nine days because one of his priests was dishonored. The smell of burning pyres hangs over that scene. It is the same god who, in a calmer hour, sits among the nine Muses and leads them in song so that the halls of Olympus ring with it.

His instrument came to him by theft and apology. On the day Hermes was born, the infant slipped out of his cradle, stole Apollo’s sacred cattle, and drove them backward so their tracks pointed the wrong way. When Apollo tracked him down anyway, Hermes produced a tortoise shell strung with gut and drew from it the first notes of the lyre. Apollo, who could be bought by beauty more easily than by anything else, traded the whole stolen herd for the instrument and never put it down again.

He did not always win, and when he lost he could be merciless. Daphne, a river nymph, was the first thing he ever loved, and the love was a punishment. Eros, stung by Apollo’s mockery of his archery, shot the god with a golden arrow that kindled desire and shot Daphne with a leaden one that killed it. Apollo chased her through the woods until her strength gave out, and as his breath touched the back of her neck she cried out to her father, the river, who turned her into a laurel tree. He pressed his face to the bark and felt the heart still beating under it. He made the laurel his own forever, and the wreath of victors and poets has been cut from it ever since. Others fared worse. The satyr Marsyas, who dared to match his pipe against the god’s lyre and lost, was hung from a pine and flayed alive. When Niobe boasted that her many children made her greater than Leto with only two, Apollo and Artemis emptied their quivers into her sons and daughters in an afternoon.

The cruelest story turns on the limit of his own gifts. Apollo loved the mortal woman Coronis, who betrayed him, and in his rage he had her killed, then snatched their unborn son from her body on the funeral pyre. That son was Asclepius, whom Apollo raised into the greatest healer the world had known, so skilled that he learned to raise the dead. Zeus, seeing the order of mortality itself threatened, struck Asclepius down with a thunderbolt. Apollo could not strike back at his father. So he killed the Cyclopes who forged the thunderbolts, and for that Zeus sentenced him to a year of servitude as a herdsman to a mortal king, Admetus of Pherae, tending cattle in a field under the open sky. The god of medicine, the father of medicine, had stood over his dying son with every herb he knew and watched none of them work.

That is the shape of his power and its edge. The bow reaches anyone, anywhere, with plague or with a clean killing shot, and no walls keep it out. The lyre can still a quarrel or move a stone. The oracle at Delphi gave answers that turned out true no matter how men tried to dodge them, and he could grant the gift of prophecy to mortals like the Trojan princess Cassandra. But the gifts came tangled in his temper. Spurned by Cassandra after he had already given her foresight, he could not take the gift back, so he cursed it instead: she would always see the truth and never be believed. His pride drew him into contests and losses. His desire made fools of him. And the one boundary he never crossed was the one that ran through his own son. He governed the line between sickness and health, and when it mattered most he found himself standing on the wrong side of it, holding a body he had every art to save and could not.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is Apollo in Greek mythology?

Apollo is one of the twelve Olympian gods, the son of Zeus and the Titaness Leto and the twin brother of Artemis. He presides over light, music, poetry, prophecy, healing, and archery, which makes him one of the most wide-ranging deities in the Greek pantheon. He was worshipped across the Greek and Roman worlds, with major cult centers at Delphi and his birthplace, the island of Delos.

What is Apollo the god of?

Apollo is the god of light and the sun, music and poetry, prophecy, healing and medicine, and archery. These domains can seem contradictory, since the same god who taught mortals to heal could also send plague with his arrows. He leads the nine Muses in song and speaks the future through his oracle at Delphi.

How did Apollo get the Oracle of Delphi?

Apollo took Delphi by killing Python, the earth-serpent that guarded the chasm where prophecy rose from the ground. After slaying the creature with his bow, he claimed the site and its oracular voice for himself. The name Delphi and the title Pythia, given to his prophetess there, both trace back to that founding kill.

What are Apollo’s symbols and weapons?

Apollo’s two defining attributes are the silver bow and the golden lyre. The bow represents distance, plague, and sudden death, while the lyre represents music, order, and harmony. He is also associated with the laurel wreath, which comes from the myth of Daphne, and with the sun, the raven, and the python.

What was Apollo’s greatest weakness?

Apollo’s greatest weakness was the limit of his own healing power, shown when his son Asclepius was killed by Zeus and Apollo could do nothing to restore him. As the god of medicine, he had every remedy at his command, yet death still lay beyond his reach. His pride and his susceptibility to love also repeatedly led him into loss and rash, destructive acts.