Apollo

Apollo was born to Zeus, the king of the gods, and Leto, a Titan goddess of modest power. Hera, Zeus's wife and queen of Olympus, discovered that Leto was pregnant and in her jealousy pursued the expectant mother across the earth, forbidding any land or island to offer her shelter. Leto wandered for nine days and nine nights in labor, rejected everywhere, until she reached the floating island of Delos, which was not yet anchored to the earth. Delos, which had once been the goddess Asteria who leaped into the sea to escape Zeus's advances, welcomed Leto. Clinging to a palm tree, Leto gave birth first to Artemis, the goddess of the hunt and the moon, who then helped deliver her twin brother Apollo. The moment he was born, the island filled with gold, swans circled it seven times, and the nymphs sang hymns that reached the heavens. Zeus then anchored Delos to the ocean floor with four pillars of adamant, and the island became one of the most sacred sites in the Greek world.

Only four days after his birth, Apollo proved his divine power. The earth-goddess Gaia had given birth to a monstrous serpent called Python, a creature of immense size that had pursued Leto during her wanderings and now guarded the sacred chasm at Delphi, the navel of the world. Apollo traveled to Mount Parnassus, drew his golden bow, and shot the monster with a thousand arrows. He then claimed the site as his own, establishing the oracle of Delphi where a priestess called the Pythia would sit above a chasm and speak prophecies inspired by the god. But because Python was sacred to Gaia, Apollo had to be purified. He was banished from Olympus and sent to serve as a shepherd for the mortal king Admetus in Thessaly for nine years. During this time he blessed Admetus's herds with abundance and helped him win the princess Alcestis by yoking a lion and a boar to a chariot. When his service was complete, Apollo returned to Delphi and established the Pythian Games, where victors were crowned with laurel wreaths.

Apollo's loves were almost always tragic, and none more so than his pursuit of Daphne. The god Eros, the winged archer of love, had once seen Apollo mocking his small bow after Apollo's victory over Python. Enraged, Eros climbed Mount Parnassus and fired two arrows: one of gold, which inspired irresistible love, and one of lead, which created absolute aversion. The golden arrow struck Apollo's heart, and the leaden arrow struck Daphne, a beautiful nymph and huntress who had sworn herself to celibacy. Apollo pursued her through the forests, calling out his love, but Daphne fled in horror. When she could run no further and Apollo's hand was about to grasp her, she called upon her father, the river-god Peneus, to save her. Peneus transformed her into a laurel tree, her feet becoming roots, her arms branches, her hair leaves. Apollo embraced the tree, weeping, and declared that the laurel would forever be his sacred plant, worn by poets and victors as a crown of honor. To this day, the laurel wreath symbolizes achievement and artistic excellence.

Apollo's role in the Trojan War was decisive and destructive. He was the protector of the Trojan prince Paris, having guided the arrow that killed the Greek hero Achilles by striking his vulnerable heel. When Agamemnon, the high king of the Greeks, offended the priest of Apollo named Chryses by refusing to return his captive daughter, Apollo sent a plague upon the Greek camp. For nine days, his arrows rained sickness and death upon the Greeks, and their campfires burned with the corpses of their men. Only when Agamemnon returned the girl did the plague cease. Apollo also fought directly in the battle, wounding the Greek warrior Diomedes when Diomedes dared to attack the god himself. His support of the Trojan cause was rooted in his ancient love for the city, which he had helped build by playing his lyre, the walls rising to the music as the walls of Thebes had risen to the lyre of Amphion.

Apollo's musical power was legendary. He was the leader of the Muses, the nine goddesses who inspired all the arts, and his lyre, which he received from the god Hermes, could charm any listener. When the satyr Marsyas, a creature of the wild who had found the discarded flute of the goddess Athena, challenged Apollo to a musical contest, the god accepted. The contest was judged by the Muses, and when Marsyas lost, Apollo flayed him alive for his presumption, hanging his skin from a tree. The story became a warning against hubris, the dangerous pride that leads mortals to challenge the gods. Yet Apollo was also the god of healing and medicine, the father of Asclepius, the god of physicians, and the patron of the arts of civilization. His temples were centers of both prophecy and medicine, and his cult spread across the Mediterranean, influencing the Roman world where he was worshipped under the same name. The Apollo of Belvedere, the most famous classical statue of the god, shows him as the perfect ideal of youthful beauty and divine power, a figure that has shaped the Western imagination of what a god should look like for over two thousand years.