6. This naturally leads us to inquire how any ideal connexion between Apollo and the sun, if it really existed, should have been entirely overlooked for so many centuries; how was it that these deities were not identified till the Grecian mythology had ceased to have any influence upon the ideas and feelings of mankind? Even when the Egyptian interpreters identified Horus with Apollo, they were in all probability guided only by the resemblance between the destroyer of the Python and the vanquisher of Baby (Typhon in Greek).[1209] The Persian magi, however, in discovering a connexion between the worship of Apollo and their religion (on which account Xerxes preserved from injury the island where Apollo and Artemis were born),[1210] were influenced by a well-grounded comparison, which we shall find occasion to confirm in a subsequent chapter;[1211] yet, in all probability, it was not the sun, but Ormuzd, whom they supposed to be Apollo. It was [pg 301] not until the philosophers of the Ionic school identified the deities of the popular creed partly with material powers and objects, and partly with the attributes of the universal intellect (νοῦς), that the doctrine was advanced of Apollo being the sun. From them Euripides, who called Zeus the air, and Vesta the earth, was naturally among the first to receive it. In the tragedy of Phaethon, the mother of the unfortunate youth complained against his father Helius as follows; “Rightly does he who knows the secret names of the gods call thee Apollo” (the destroyer);[1212] referring, without doubt, not to any doctrine connected with, or revealed in the mysteries, but to a philosophical interpretation. This opinion, thus adopted by Euripides, became still more general at Alexandria; and Callimachus blames those “who separate Apollo from the sun, and Artemis from the moon.”[1213] Soon afterwards it was said to have originated in very early times; and the author of the astronomical treatise attributed to Eratosthenes[1214] relates, that Orpheus the Thracian had from the top of a mountain, at break of day, prayed to the sun, whom he also called Apollo, as the greatest of all the deities.[1215] Nevertheless, this statement does not authorize us to infer, that in the ancient Orphic Hymns, previous to Herodotus, Apollo and the sun were identified. For this system of religious [pg 302] speculation was chiefly concerned about Bacchus; and in all the Orphic fragments of any antiquity Apollo is hardly ever noticed.[1216]
7. It seems, therefore, that whatever might have been the poetical attributes of Apollo in late times, in his religious character he was never an elementary deity, the essence of whose godhead is a personification of the creative powers of nature. None of the characteristic marks of such a religion are discoverable in his worship. So far from being a god of generation[1217] and production, he remains unmarried and youthful; for it is easy to see that his poetical amour with the nymph Daphne, and his sons, mentioned in poetry and prophecy, have no connexion with his worship. In his sacred rites and symbols there is no trace of the adoration of the generative powers, like those occurring in the ancient Arcadian worship of Hermes, the Argive fables of Here, or the Attic legends of Hephæstus and Athene. The worship of Apollo is even still more widely removed from the boisterous and frantic orgies so conspicuous in the Thracian rites of Dionysus. And although this latter worship flourished by the side of Helicon and Parnassus, near the Pythian temple, and both kinds of religious worship were practised in the immediate neighbourhood of each [pg 303] other,[1218] yet the religious feelings and rites which distinguished the services of the two gods always remained dissimilar.
In the subsequent discussion we shall accordingly take for granted the original diversity of Apollo and the sun; and though the rites of the worship of Apollo, as preserved and recorded in later times, are doubtless of greater antiquity than any written documents which either we or the Greeks possessed, it will be convenient first to state the clearer and more intelligible accounts of Homer on the subject of Apollo, his divine character and worship.
Chapter VI.
§ 1. Homer's Conception of Apollo. § 2. Apollo as a punishing deity. § 3. Apollo as a beneficent deity. § 4. Explanation of the name Pæan. § 5. Of the name Agyieus. § 6. Of the name Apollo. § 7. Of the name Phœbus. § 8. Of the name Lyceus. § 9. Religious Attributes of Apollo.
1. Homer, as we have already seen, had, both from hearsay and personal observation, acquired a very accurate knowledge of the Cretan worship of Apollo in the Smintheum, in the citadel of Troy, in Lycia near mounts Ida and Cragus, as well as of Pytho and the Delian palm-tree. His picture of Apollo is, however, considerably changed by the circumstance of the god acting as a friend to the Trojans and an enemy to the Greeks, although both equally honour him with sacrifices and pæans. Yet he generally appears to the [pg 304] Greeks in a darker and more unfavourable view. “Dread the son of Zeus,” says the priest of Chryse to the Greeks, “he walks dark as night; the sure and deadly arrows rattle on his shoulders.” His punishments are sudden sickness, rapid pestilence, and death, the cause and occasion of which is generally unseen; yet sometimes he grants death as a blessing.[1219] His arrows are said to wound from afar, because they are unforeseen and unexpected. He is called the far-darting god;[1220] his divine vengeance never misses its aim. He appears in the terror of his might when from the heights of the citadel he stimulates the Trojans with a loud war-cry to the combat;[1221] and leads them on, a cloud around his shoulders, and the ægis in his hand, into the thick of the battle,[1222] like Ares himself,[1223] though far from showing the boisterous confidence of that deity. Achilles, to whom he is indeed particularly hostile, calls him the most pernicious of all the gods. Even when he appears amongst the gods, “all tremble before him in the palace of Zeus, and rise from their seats; while Latona alone rejoices that she has produced so strong a son and so powerful an archer.”[1224]
It is remarkable how seriously Homer (who otherwise speaks of the gods, and particularly of those friendly to Troy, with some levity of expression)[1225] describes [pg 305] the character of Apollo. He is never represented as hurried on by blind fury. He never opposes the Greeks without reason, or through caprice, but only when they disregard the sacred rights of priests and suppliants, or assume an unusual degree of arrogance. But when the gods separate into two bodies, and descend to the contest, he, unmoved by passion, shuns the combat, and speaks of the quick succession of the race of man in a manner which betokens the oracular deity of Pytho.[1226] A similar spirit is perceivable in his address to the daring Diomed: “The race of the immortal gods resembles not that of mortals.” Thus Apollo appears as the minister of vengeance, the chastiser of arrogance. Consistently with this character he destroys the proud Niobe,[1227] the unruly Aloidæ,[1228] Tityus and the Python, the enemies of the gods. His contests with Eurytus of Œchalia, and with Phorbas the Phlegyan, were grounded on historical facts; the former alluded to the enmity between the Dorians and Œchalians, the latter to that between the Pythian sanctuary and the Phlegyans.[1229]
2. We will now examine the notions of other poets on the character of Apollo as a revenging and punishing deity, in which light he is introduced by Homer. [pg 306] Archilochus calls upon Apollo to “punish and destroy the guilty as he is wont to destroy them.”[1230] Hipponax, the successor of Archilochus in vituperative satiric poetry, prays that “Artemis and Apollo may destroy thee;”[1231] and Æschylus, with manifest allusion to the name, says, Ἀπόλλων ἀπώλεσας;[1232] which, however, can hardly entitle us to infer that the name of Apollo was really derived from ἀπολεῖν;[1233] for we should lose sight of one main point, viz., the object against which his destructive powers were directed, or be reduced to consider him an universal destroyer, a character which is ill adapted to mark the nature of a divine being of any kind whatsoever. Apollo slays, indeed, but only to inflict deserved punishment. At Megara was exhibited the tomb of Corœbus, who had slain the Fury sent by Apollo against that town, to punish the crimes of the fathers by destroying their children.[1234] After this action, Corœbus was ordered to carry in his arms a tripod from Pytho, and erect on the spot where he should fall down from exhaustion, a town (Tripodiscus) and a temple to the god. This explains why many sacred fines were at Corinth, Patara, and Amphipolis,[1235] paid into the temple of Apollo, who thus appears, in some measure, as enforcing his own judgments. [pg 307] Æschylus refers to his office of avenging murder, where he speaks of Apollo, Pan, and Zeus, as the gods who send the Furies;[1236] Zeus as ruler of the world, Pan as the dæmon that disorders the intellect, Apollo as the god of punishment. Hence it was not without reason that the Romans believed Apollo to be represented in a statue of the god Vejovis, a terrible god, equipped with arrows.[1237] At least there is some connexion between him and Apollo καταιβάσιος, “who darts down in the lightning;” to whom the Thessalians vowed every year a hecatomb of men.[1238] At Argos it was the custom immediately after death for the relations to sacrifice to Apollo as a god of death; the priest of Apollo (the amphipolus) offered up the victim, and for consuming the fragments of the sacrifice a new fire was always kindled. On the thirtieth day afterwards a sacrifice was offered to Hermes as the conductor of souls.[1239]
3. Although we have thus dwelt upon the gloomy side of Apollo's character, it must not be supposed that he was considered in the light of a malevolent and destroying power. Thus Pindar declares that of all the gods “he is the most friendly to men.”[1240] His titles, also, as connected with different temples, serve to remove that impression. Thus he was called the Healer at Elis,[1241] the Assister at Phigaleia,[1242] the Defender, the Averter of Evil,[1243] at Athens, and in many [pg 308] oracles.[1244] Although some of these names were perhaps not introduced until the Peloponnesian war, and the restriction of his avenging power to physical evil is first perceptible in Pindar and the tragedians,[1245] yet the idea of the healing and protecting power of Apollo must have been of remote antiquity. Under all these names Apollo does not so much appear bestowing positive good as assuaging and warding off evil; and in this character he was invoked (according to an oracle) to send health and good fortune.[1246]