[16] From Shelley's translation of the Homeric Hymn to Mercury.
Poetry and the dance were also under Apollo's protection, and he was the leader of the nine muses.
His highest office was prophecy, and in all his temples the priestesses gave mystic revelations of the future. The most famous of these was at Delphi, built over an opening in the ground, whence a strange vapor rose. The priestess, a young woman called a pythia, from the python slain by Apollo, sat over this opening on a three-legged seat, or tripod, and answered the questions brought to her. Her sayings were in verses called oracles, supposed to be communicated to her by the god.
Now, as might be expected, the character of Apollo was as pure and transparent as the sunlight itself. He required clean hands and pure hearts of those who worshiped him. As the sunlight shines into the dark places of the earth, driving the shadows away, so Apollo hated all that was dark and evil in human life. He was not only the rewarder of good but the punisher of evil. In Shelley's "Hymn of Apollo" these words are put in the god's mouth:—
"The sunbeams are my shafts, with which I kill
Deceit, that loves the night and fears the day;
All men who do or even imagine ill
Fly me, and from the glory of my ray
Good minds and open actions take new might,
Until diminished by the reign of night."
The head of Apollo in our illustration is from a famous full-length statue of the god known as the Apollo Belvedere. The name Belvedere, which is useful only to distinguish the statue from others of the same subject, comes from the fact that the marble once adorned a pavilion of the Vatican called the Belvedere.