The Apollo Obsession
You might not know his face but you’ll know his name. The Taylor Swift of mythology.
Apollo was one of the most important gods in the Greek pantheon. He has been recognised as the god of archery, music and dance, truth and prophecy, healing and diseases, the Sun and light, poetry, protector of youth and more besides. He is the son of the king of the gods, Zeus, and the goddess Leto, and the twin brother of Artemis, the goddess of the hunt.
He is often considered the most Greek of all the gods, and he is the only god in the pantheon whose name did not change when inducted in Roman belief and mythology. Apollo was the god of all things considered fun - basically everything AI is trying to usurp from us.
Though Apollo, along with the other gods, stopped being actively worshipped around the 9th century, as Christianity took a firm hold across the occupied Roman Empire, he has remained a prominent figure in many European cultures in the centuries since.
But for a god that’s everywhere, Apollo’s a little difficult to pin down.
The problem with trying to understand Apollo’s true nature through the medium of ‘classic’ literature is that the ‘classic’ stretches across multiple centuries and covers at least two major periods, the Greek and Roman, at its very broadest definition. Adding to the chaos is the fact that later writers, when recounting old myths have imbued them with the sensibilities of their own eras. Sources don't stay pure, so to speak, records change in accordance to the temperament of the people and periods which create them. But let’s give it a go anyway.
Back in the good old days, Apollo was one of the most important deities in the Greek pantheon, he was universal, and arguably the most complex in nature. Apollo’s importance has even been compared to that of Zeus: king of the gods, lord of the skies etc. However, some scholars assert that this importance only came about in the Roman Hellenistic era and not the Greek, Apollo’s mythic homeland. To the Ancient Greeks he was a figure that brought both healing and pestilence. In our first written record of the god, in Homer’s epic: The Iliad, he was depicted as a warrior, capable of great wrath. In fact Judith E. Bernstock has suggested that the Greeks were more ambivalent to Apollo than we might expect today, aware he was a god of darkness as well as light; god of the sun, yes, but also a bringer of plagues and a just bit of a bad guy.
This could be backed up with suggestions by the likes of H. W. Parke, who has said that in the early days of worship, the nine muses, goddesses of the arts and sciences and now certified Apollo groupies in our collective conscience, were once more closely associated with their father Zeus than the sun god at their primary worship sites. The only exception was the oracular site of Delphi, where evidence suggests that it had been co-opted by Apollo after starting life as the muses’ haunt. In fact it was likely here that Apollo first encountered the muses’, a real meet cute. Before this, Apollo, though the god of poetry, was not associated with the Greek epic traditions, poet Homer instead called upon the muses for inspiration. Though Homer did also depict Apollo as jamming out with muses, so to some extent he was associated with ancient Greece’s hottest girl band, eventually becoming their leader.
In the Homeric hymns, Apollo is represented as a god that is characterised through facts and seen knowledge. Hermes the messenger god, in contrast, is distinguished through inventiveness and as a foil to Apollo, as noted by Christopher Brungard. It is perhaps surprising for a modern audience that the god of the arts could be seen as so reasonable.
There is also evidence from this period of Apollo’s infatuation with sacrifice and not an insignificant amount of bloodlust, called by Marcel Detienne and Anne Doueihi an ‘elegant immorality’ that is not usually mentioned when discussing the god in the later centuries. In Homer’s Hymn to Apollo, the god literally kicks butt and takes names. Those who oppose him and his world order are squared away in short order. For example, the snake Python squatting in the oracular cave of Delphi, is roundly disposed of by the god, who then assumes the name Phythian, a spoil of battle. This draws a clear line between the turbulent past and the clear and certain future Apollo guarantees, represented by his new surname, which serves as a reminder of his deeds.
Thus follows, in the 5th century Apollo was still a warrior and the master of the bow, but he had added being the god of intelligence, or knowledge to his vast repertoire, while his closeness with the muses had been established, lending more credence to his role as the patron of the arts. Walter R. Agard summarises how Apollo’s personality changes through the bias of the authors characterising him. Different Greek dramatists imbue him with certain characteristics, led no doubt by their own beliefs and the needs of their narratives. For Euripedes, Apollo was a ‘caustic debater’, for Aeschylus, a ‘resourceful attorney for defence’.
However for the Romans, it appears that Apollo was a bit of a major romantic, becoming a tragic lover weeping over his deceased boyfriend, Hyacinthus, or his deceased not really-girlfriend, Daphne. Roman poet Virgil portrays him as the prophet of Roman’s soon-to-be glory, and he is depicted in The Aeneid as a gracious god of music. Far removed from his Greek personality, which by all accounts was made of sterner stuff. Agard posits that this may reflect the role of poetry in Greek and Roman cultures, the former being an important diplomatic tool, and the latter more of a frivolous pursuit, enjoyed for pleasure.
Part of Apollo’s problem seems to be his exceptional visibility, this prominence makes complete sense, he is the god of the sun after all. Literally shining gold, Bungard helpfully points out that in myth Apollo has been drawing attention since his birth, where he burst from the womb and immediately began improv dancing. Much of his domain is characterised by this same sense of the ‘seen’, the arts were made to be witnessed, the sun our closest and most prominent star, literally lighting the world around us, even prophecy, which could be interpreted as vague and unclear is still bringing clarity to that which would otherwise be impossible to perceive: the future. Archery is less on theme, though in fairness you would probably be all too aware if someone took a shot at you.
It is interesting then, that the Roman poet Ovid declines to categorise Apollo as the god of the sun. A reading by Joseph E. Fontenrose highlights that the poet establishes differences between Apollo and a sun god, most often referred to as ‘Hyperion’. Certainly in Ovid’s tales Apollo seems a bit busy down on earth flirting to anyone that stands still long enough during the day to be much interested in spending his time pulling a chariot across the sky. Fontenrose argues that the confusion seems to have arisen when Ovid refers to both Apollo and Hyperion by the same name: ‘Phoebus’, which would do it in fairness. He argues that Phoebus translates to ‘bright’, and is one of Apollo’s given names, but its meaning also makes it a fitting epithet for a sun god, also fair. It seems that it was only in the Hellenistic period, 32 - 323 BC, that Apollo seems to have taken the mantle as official god of the sun.
No wonder Apollo was still being noticed centuries later. Of course in later European writing, Apollo is no longer an object of worship but an aesthetic symbol, co-opted by artisans to represent their muse or be the personification of culture. Case in point, during the Renaissance artists were certainly enthusiastic about Apollo, but he was chiefly characterised as a symbol of artistic inspiration. Poets loved the idea of Apollo as a sun god, the likes of Spenser and Drummond literally waxed poetic about his shining star. Shakespeare saw him as a representation of the power of music. But Apollo had lost some association with knowledge and morality, likely a result of Rome recharacterisation.
In the 18th century, Apollo was still mostly a patron of the arts, the poet Matthew Arnold described him as leader of the muses for example, and both John Keats and Robert Louis Stevenson reflected on him as the master of all artistic pursuits, upon which their own talents could be considered unworthy. Lord Byron however brought back some of the god’s original steel, and Percy Shelley cast him as a symbol of intellectual illumination. Perhaps most significantly, Keats again took a stab at Apollo, embodying him this time as the search for knowledge, recognising pain but reconciling it with joy in the same breath.
This is remarkably similar to the work of the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzche, who could be regarded to have depicted Apollo as a bit of a square. In The Birth of Tragedy, Nietzche theories that at the heart of creativity there are two impulses, the Dionyson, characterised as imbued with the freedom of nature, and Apollyon, representing measure, calm and sunlight, which we might infer to represent clarity, literally bringing light to the darkness. Where these two impulses meet is where we might find the true basis for tragedy, when the tragic hero (the Apollyon) struggles to make sense of his fate (the chaos of Dionyson), though he maintains that this has not been truly achieved since Ancient Greece. Kocku von Stuckrad suggests that Greek culture had brought the Dionyson chaos into rational order. Indeed Nietzche asserts that these two concepts need each other, Apollo provides form and structure that is balanced by the vitality and passion of Dionysus. The assumption seems to be that tragedy is the greatest expression of the human experience. Certainly it could be argued that Nietzche’s theories pulled Apollo out from his stereotype as just a symbol of the arts to contemporary audiences.
Then Johann Joachin Winkelmann made Apollo famous all over again in 1794 when he named the god’s statue in the Vatican, the Apollo Belvedere, as the greatest artistic expression, rooted in the assumption of course that Greek art represented the cream of the crop both globally and historically. It is true that Apollo, young and strong, was perhaps the god best suited for the representation of perfect beauty. Indeed he was thought of as the most beautiful of the gods and the ideal of ‘kouros’, the youth. Similarly Karl Otfried Müller places Apollo as fundamental in the ancient Greek world. By all accounts the gods was an incarnation of Greek culture most favoured by the Germans during this period, due to his positioning as important to Doric culture, the time of ancient Greece most liked by the culture in which Müller was writing, again showing how Apollo, or indeed any mythic figure can be co opted by any old individual or culture to suit their own needs.
As such, in the 20th century, artists began responding to myths in the context of the turbulent times; moral objections can mean so much more when they have the intellectual heft of the comparable myth on which to hang them, lending a sense of wise hindsight to the proceedings.
Apollo has been long established as a god of moral superiority, knowledge and order. He represents human pursuits, and this opened him to mockery in the modern era, attacked on all sides. Likely influenced by Neitzche’s near-criticism of Apollo as a bit of a killjoy, the god of restraint, harmony and proportion did not handle the chaos of post-war Europe well. Artist Alberto Savinio saw Apollo as superficial and foppish. Likewise Martha Erlebacher rejected him as overly-intellectual. Early feminist movements focused on the male god as a representation of misogyny and chauvinism, drawing on myths such as the tale of Daphne and Coronis as proof. Even today, the arts are the first to be rail-roaded in modern politics, under-funded with an overabundance of privately-educated voices. We still regard Apollo with disdain in the 21st century. Other gods do not appear to get such treatment, Bacchus, god of wine and revelry for example, is not as well-known and avoids such focus. It seems Apollo is a victim of his own span of power and visibility yet again. It is easy and tempting to criticise the god of the arts within the arts.
Even today Apollo’s place in modern society is highly contested without even considering original Greek sources. Looking briefly back at Nietzche’s writing, it seems to be laid out in simple terms that the Apollyon impulse is suffocating. Certainly theorist Ayn Rand might agree, in the present day her view of Apollo as a god of reason is widely accepted, though it is not the only interpretation. Roger E. Bissell suggests that this view is a misunderstanding of both Nietzche and original Greek myth. He argues that perhaps because Apollo as the patron of the muses, who among their ranks contain Urania the goddess of astronomy, evidently a science, can be seen on a surface-level as a deity of rationality is taking the concept of emotion vs reason to a point of no return. Is prophecy rational? Apollo is the god of that, but if you said in genuine belief you could read the future most people would consider you nuts. Rather Bissell positions Apollo as a god of exploration, of understanding the world around us, much like the role Apollo was placed in back in the 18th century poetry by Keats and Byron. And here we are back to Apollo as a god of intuition, a ‘hunter-gatherer of the human spirit’.
So it would seem that the one thing Apollo stands for is whatever you want him to stand for. God’s are the products of the cultural and historical dynamics of the ancient world. Myths have much to tell us, serving as a traditional tale with a secondary layer that speaks to the cultural climate from which they originate, entangled with history that you might as well not bother to try to untie them. Changes to myths speak clearly to societal and political changes in their time. Mythological figures such as gods, especially gods, can therefore act as a spiritual birdbox of sorts, vague enough in their realm of power that many different interpretations can be pushed upon them. So perhaps here we can find Apollo’s true essence?
I might argue that attempting to apply the arts, seen by many as the epitome of expression of humanity, to a deity, a non-human entity, is the real sticking point. Perhaps attempting to rationalise such a subjective notion as that of art, Apollo’s most famous domain, is an exercise in futility. But what do I know?
Apollo Polymorphous, Walter R. Agard, Nov., 1935, The Classical Journal
Will the Real Apollo Please Stand Up? Rand, Nietzsche, and the Reason-Emotion Dichotomy, Roger E. Bissell, Spring 2009, The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies
Apollo and the Sun-God in Ovid, Joseph E. Fontenrose, 1940, The American Journal of Philology
Utopian Landscapes and Ecstatic Journeys: Friedrich Nietzsche, Hermann Hesse, and Mircea Eliade on the Terror of Modernity, Kocku von Stuckrad, 2010, Numen
Classical Mythology in Twentieth-Century Art: An Overview of a Humanistic Approach, Judith E. Bernstock, 1993, Artibus et Historiae
Apollo and the Muses, or prophecy in Greek verse, H. W. Parke, 1981, Hermathena
Apollo's Slaughterhouse, Marcel Detienne & Anne Doueihi, Summer, 1986, Diacritics
Reconsidering Zeus' Order: The Reconciliation of Apollo and Hermes, Christopher Bungard, Summer 2012, The Classical World
Chapter Seven Modern Mythologies, Cornelia Isler-Kerényi, 2007, Dionysos in Archaic Greece: An Understanding through Images