APOLLO, son of Zeus (Jupiter) and Leto (Latona), who being persecuted by the jeal ousy of Hera (Juno), after tedious wanderings and nine days' labor, was delivered of him and his twin sister, Artemis (Diana), on the island of Delos. He was the most important of the Olympian deities after Zeus and appears in mythology as the god of poetry, music and prophecy, the patron of physicians and shep herds and the founder of cities. He aided Zeus in the war with the Titans and the giants, and destroyed the Cyclopes because they forged the thunder-bolts with which Zeus killed his son and favorite Asklepios (1Esculapius). All of the male sex dying suddenly without previ ous sickness were supposed to be smitten by the arrows of Apollo. In the oldest poems Apollo is exhibited as the god of song, being known in this function as Apollo Citharcedus. Two statues of Apollo Citharcedus are extant, one of them at the Glyptothek in Munich, the other at the Vatican, but their date is unknown. In the festivals of the gods and those of men in which they took part he plays and sings while the Muses dance around him. Accord ing to some traditions he invented the lyre, though this is generally ascribed to Hermes (Mercury). Marsyas, who ventured to con tend with him on the flute, was conquered and flayed alive by the god. Apollo had an other contest with Pan, in which the former played on the lyre, the latter on the pipe. Tmo lus had already decided in favor of Apollo, when Midas, opposing the sentence, was dec orated with a pair of ass's ears for his stupid ity. That Apollo had the gift of prophecy ap pears from the Iliad, where he is said to have bestowed it upon Calchas and Cassandra; and in the Odyssey mention is made of an oracular response delivered by him in Delphi. The oracle at this place became very famous. He also revealed future events at Abie in Phocis, Didyma near Miletus, Claros near Colophon in Ionia, Tenedos and Patara in Lycia. Apollo, in later times, came to be regarded as the god of physic, and was represented to be the father of Asklepios, the god of healing. He is re ported to have taken charge for a long time of the herds of Admetus, according to some authorities voluntarily, according to others compelled by Zeus, on account of the murder of the Cyclopes, or the serpent Python. As a builder of cities, the founding of Cyzicum, Cyrene and Naxos in Sicily is ascribed to him, while Homer relates that he built the walls of Troy together with Poseidon (Neptune), and afflicted the city afterward with a pestilence, because Laomedon defrauded him of his pay.
According to the poets and sculptors, Apollo, with Ares (Mars), Hermes (Mercury) and Dionysos (Bacchus), belongs to the beardless gods, in whom the dawnings of early manhood appear. He is figured with a bow, a quiver and plectrum, a serpent, a shepherd's crook, a griffin and a swan, a tripod, a laurel, an olive tree, etc. He was originally the sun-god and though in Homer he appears distinct from Helios (the sun) yet his real nature is hinted at even here by the epithet Phoebus, the radiant or beaming. In later times the view was al most universal that Apollo and Helios were identical and by this theory of his origin we can easily understand how he should be re garded as the god of pastures (Nomios) and of flocks (Karneios), the god that protects and causes the fruits of the field to grow, the god that gives fair winds to mariners (Enibasios), etc. As he slew the Python, that is, the hos tile powers of darkness, with his arrows (the sunbeams), so in later times he was looked on as the averter of evil, the bringer of help and the punisher of overweening pride (as in the story of Niobe). From being the god of light and purity in a physical sense he gradually, as he became endowed more and more in the Greek mind with an ethical character, became the god of moral and spiritual light and purity, the source of all intellectual, social and politi cal progress. Thus he came to be considered as the god of song and prophecy, the god that purifies after the commission of crimes, that averts and heals bodily suffering and disease, the institutor and guardian of civil and politi cal order and the founder of cities. Though not one of the original gods of the Romans, his worship was introduced at Rome at an early period, probably in the time of the Tar quins. Among the ancient statues of Apollo that are extant the most remarkable, and in the judgment of the learned and acute Winck elmann the best and most perfect that art has produced, is the one called the Apollo Belve dere, from the Belvedere Gallery in the Vati can at Rome; also called the Pythian Apollo, because it is supposed that the artist has repre sented the god in the moment of his victory over the serpent Python. This statue was found in the ruins of Antium in 1503. It is conjectured to be a careful copy of a Greek original, perhaps of the 4th century a.c., or pos sibly a century or more later.