APOLLO (Gk, 'A7r6XX(ov, Apo/kin, Doric for Apellim). Next to Zeus, the most inr portant and widely worshiped divinity of Greece. Later antiquity identified Apollo with the sun, but in Homer the two are entirely distinct. As to the origin and meaning of the name Apollo, there is no general agreement among scholars. though the weight of argument is slightly in favor of those who interpret it as from 'he who wards off' or 'drives away' evil, from which conception it is easy to explain many of the varied forms of the Apollo cult. Thus Apollo is a god of healing for diseases, and of purifiert tion from moral defilement. So he was said to have purified Orestes for the murder of his mother, and so he was invoked to purify and cleanse entire communities afflicted by pesti lence. In the same way his protection was ex tended to flocks and herds, as is shown by his epithet Xonzios, and the story of his serving as the shepherd of Admetus, to the great increase of the flocks of that king. He also appears as protecting the grain from mildew, and as driving away field-mice, whence his surname Smintheus. Nor (lid he only protect his worshipers from the evil spirits of disease and guard their flocks and herds. for there are traces of Apollo as a war god, who can drive away the enemy, and mingles actively in the fray; and at the shrine in Amyche, he appeared with a helmet and lance. The pwau, which in later times was certainly a hymn to Apollo, whatever its origin may have been, was not merely a prayer for healing, but was also sung before the charge in battle. Nor is this view of the original con ception of Apollo in any way inconsistent with his very obvious connection with the light. For that he was early connected with the sun is clear, from the celebration of his departure in the autumn to a distant land, and his return in the spring. Light is regarded as a healer and protector, the bane of evil spirits who love dark ness. The light and heat, however, are not always beneficent, and Apollo thus appears as the sender of pestilence, and as bringing sudden death with his unerring arrows. As a light god, also, he is called Lyeean and Lycian: for these are probably to be connected with the same element which appears in the Latin lux, The ancients connected these epithets with the Greek word for 'wolf' (Xi/Kos, lykos), and some good modern authorities consider Apollo as originally a herdsman's divinity in the form of a wolf. He is also styled Plu•bus (4)04300, the 'bright one,' the 'brilliant one.' Whatever ncay have been his early nature, the prominent con ception of Apollo in historic times was as a god of prophecy, and so of music and song. His most famonS oracle was at Delphi (q.v.), but :there were others at Delos; at the lsmenian sanctuary near Thebes, where the ashes of the victim were supposed to reveal the future: at Abx, on the border of Phoeis; at Patara, in Lyeia : and at Claros, in Ionia, near Colophon. Apollo was also
a god of colonization, and many Greek Cities be lieved that their founders had been guided by Apollo in the form of an.animal or bird.
As is natural in the case of a god so widely worshiped, the legends of Apollo are highly diversified, though the main features show con siderable unity, due to the overpowering intim ence of the cults at Delphi and Delos, which made their versions canonical. He was the son of Zeus and Leto (Latona), born with his twin sister Artemis (see DIANA) on the island of Delo+4, which had hitherto floated on the sea, but now became fixed, and afforded a refuge for Leto, who had been driven from all other places by the wrath of Ilera. After his birth, the god hastened to Delphi and slew the dragon Python, who had pursued his mother during her sorrow. For other legends see ADMETUS ; HYPERBOREANS ; LAOMEDON ; NIOBE. In Greece, Apollo was not the god of any single race. The Ionians wor shiped him as the ancestral god, Patrons, while the great Dorian festival, Carneia (see GREEK FESTIVALS), was held in his honor. In Rome, his worship was introduced from Greece at a com paratively late date. The earliest mention of a place of worship for Apollo is in B.C. 449. and it was not till B.C. 212 that the Ludi Apollinares were celebrated. Augustus greatly increased the honor of the god in gratitude for the victory of Actium, and built him a splendid temple on the Palatine, with which a library was connected. The temple contained the celebrated statue by Scopas (q.v.).
The representations of Apollo in ancient art are almost innumerable. As Apollo Agyieus, he was worshiped in the form of a conical stone. In general, two chief types can be distin guished. As a nude youth, the ideal of youthful strength and beauty. This can be traced from the rude statues of archaic art, of Melos, Thera, and Orehomenus, through the Payne-Knight bronze, and the Choiseul-Gouffier marble in the British Museum, to the almost effeminate type of the Apollo Sauroctonos (the lizard-slayer) of Praxiteles, or the glorious divinity of the Apollo of the altar frieze from Pergamon (q.v.). The other type represents the god as clad in the long robe of the musician playing on the lyre, as he appears in the statue in the Vatican, which is probably a copy of the work of Scopas. The special attributes of Apollo are the bow and quiver, the laurel and the lyre. Con sult: Overbeck, Gricchische Kunstwythologie (Leipzig, 1871-89) ; and Wernicke in the Pauly Wissowa Realeneyklopiidic der klassisehen Alter tumswissenschaft (Stuttgart, 1900).