With an eternal glory, which if made
By human hands, is not of human thought,
And Time himself hath hallowed it, nor laid
One ringlet in the dust, nor hath it caught
A tinge of years, but breathes the flame with which 'twas wrought."
Byron.
But the gods grew jealous of the homage shewn to Apollo, and recalling him from earth, replaced him in his seat at Olympus.
The fable of Apollo is, perhaps, that which is most spread over the faith of antiquity. Pæans were the hymns chanted in his honour, and this was the war cry he shouted in his onset against the serpent Python. On his altars are immolated a bull or a white lamb—to him is offered the crow, supposed to read the future, the eagle who can gaze on the sun, the cock whose cry welcomes his return, and the grasshopper, who sings during his empire.
This God is represented in the figure of a young man without beard, with curling locks of hair, his brow wreathed with laurels, and his head surrounded with beams of light. In his right hand
he holds a bow and arrows; in the left, a lyre with seven chords, emblem of the seven planets to which he grants his celestial harmony. Sometimes he carries a buckler, and is accompanied by the three Graces, who are the animating deities of genius and the fine arts, and at his feet is placed a swan.