Apollo

Oebalus, king of Lacedaemonia, finds his son Hyacinthus mortally wounded from a discus throw. The king is joined by his daughter Melia, and the two sing this touching lament ("Natus cadit, atque Deus").

Mozart wrote the music to this two-act intermezzo when he was 11 years old.

The Cumaean Sibyl. The general designation for a prophetess was SIBYL; a Sibyl at Delphi, however, was called specifically the Pythia. The sibyls at Cumae in Italy were famous. Most famous among them was the CUMAEAN Sibyl, who was Aeneas’ guide in the Underworld. We learn about this Sibyl from Ovid. Apollo offered her anything that she wished, if only she would yield to him. She picked up a heap of sand and asked for as many birthdays as the individual grains but forgot to ask for continuous youth along with the years. Nevertheless, Apollo would have given her long life and eternal youth, if she agreed to succumb to him. When she refused him, the god granted her original wish, and she withered away eventually to become only a voice. This story of the Cumaean Sibyl once again illustrates how our ignorant wishes may be granted to our woe.

Cassandra. CASSANDRA, daughter of the Trojan King Priam agreed to give herself to Apollo, who rewarded her with the gift of prophecy. When Cassandra changed her mind and rejected his advances, Apollo asked for one kiss and spit in her mouth, thus ensuring not only that Cassandra would keep her gift, but also that her true prophecies would never be believed.

Marpessa. The daughter of Ares’ son Evenus, called MARPESSA, was wooed by IDAS, one of the Argonauts, who carried her off in his chariot to the anger and dismay of her father, who commited suicide. Apollo stole Marpessa away from Idas in a similar fashion and the two rivals met face to face. Zeus ordered that Marpessa chose between her lovers. She chose the mortal Idas because she feared the immortal Apollo would leave her when she grew old.

Cyrene. Most of Apollo’s love affairs end tragically. A notable exception is his success with CYRENE, an athletic nymph with whom he fell in love when he saw her wrestling with a lion. He whisked her away in his golden chariot to the city in Libya that would bear her name. They had a son Aristaeus,

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Apollo, as the archetypal Greek god, was also susceptible to the love of young men. He was devoted to CYPARISSUS, who was turned into a cypress tree, the meaning of his name.

Apollo’s devotion to HYACINTHUS, a handsome Spartan youth, also told by Ovid, is more famous. The god and the youth enjoyed competing with the discus. Apollo’s first throw showed magnificent skill and great strength, for he sent the discus high up into the clouds. When it eventually came back to earth, an enthusiastic Hyacinthus dashed to pick it up, but as it hit the earth it bounced back and struck him full in the face.

All of Apollo’s medical arts were of no avail, and his beloved companion died. Overcome by grief and guilt, the god vowed everlasting devotion by singing of Hyacinthus to the tune of his lyre and by causing a new flower, the hyacinth, to arise from his blood.

Apollo himself marked his laments on his petals, the mournful letters AI AI, and predicted the suicide of the valiant Ajax, whose initals (these same letters) would appear on this same flower, which would arise from his heroic blood. An annual festival, the Hyacinthia, was celebrated at Sparta in honor of Hyacinthus.

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The story of Apollo’s love for DAPHNE, explaining why the laurel was sacred to him, is one of the most famous and inspiring of all myths because of Ovid’s version.

After Apollo had just slain the Python, he boasted to Cupid (Eros) that the god of love with his bow and arrows could not compete with his glorious slaying of a dragon. Cupid got even for this slight by shooting at Daphne, the daughter of the river-god Peneus, a dull, leaden arrow that repels love and piercing Apollo’s heart with a bright, short one that arouses passion.

Daphne was extraordinarily beautiful but refused her many suitors. She vowed to remain a virgin devoted to Diana (Artemis), the forests, and the hunt; both her father and Jupiter respected her wishes. As soon as Apollo saw her he was inflamed by passion and he desired to marry her, but because of Cupid his hopes were doomed. Daphne fled in fear as Apollo made his appeals and pursued her.

Exhausted, she reached the waters of Peneus, and her prayer that the power of the river would destroy her too-enticing beauty was granted. She was transformed into a lovely laurel tree, and the heartbroken Apollo, as he embraced its trunk and branches, promised that since she could not be his wife, she would be his tree, and from it would come the laurel wreath, a symbol of love, honor, and glory forever.

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-Reflects his overall association with reason and moderation.
-Greek religion had no prescriptive commandments, but two sayings carved on the temple at Delphi are crucial for understanding the underlying presumptions of the religion. these sayings are gnothi sauton and meden agan: "Know yourself" and "nothing in Excess."
-"Know yourself" means know what kind of creature you are, remember you limitations, remember that you are not a god.
-These two maxims encapsulate a theme that runs throughout Greek myth: that humans are liable to transgress the boundaries that separate them from the gods, which inevitably bring suffering.
-Humans must remember their status and not seek to exceed it.
-In particular, humans should avoid hubris, a word that is often translated as "excessive pride" but basically means insolence and wantonness; hubris is the kind of excessiveness that leads one to claim more than is one's due.

The story of NIOBE is a particularly good example of the importance of Apollo's maxims and of the dangers of hubris.
1. Niobe, queen of Thebes and sister of Tantalus, boasted that she was more worthy of worship than Leto, mother of Artemis and Apollo, because Leto had only two children but she, Niobe, had fourteen.
2. Apollo and Artemis kill all Niobe's children. When only one remains, Niobe begs for mercy, but even the last is killed.
3. Niobe has failed to remember both maxims; she has not known herself--the vulnerability of her humanity--and she has been misled by the excess of her good fortune.
Classical Mythology - Elizabeth Vandiver

In the story of Hyacinthus, we see Apollo acting as a god of medicine, ineffective though he proved to be. His son Asclepius took over the role of god of medicine and most of the time was more successful than his father.

Apollo loved a maiden from Thessaly, CORONIS, and she was pregnant with his child. Unfortunately, Apollo’s bird, the raven, saw Coronis in the arms of another lover and told the god, who in a quick and violent rage shot her with one of his arrows. As she was dying she told him that their unborn child would die with her.

Apollo too late regretted his anger, but to no avail. He was unable through his medical arts to revive his beloved. He embraced her in anguish and performed the proper burial rites over her corpse. As the flames of the funeral pyre were about to engulf her, he saved their baby by snatching it from her womb and giving it to the wise centaur Chiron to raise. The color of the raven, which had been white, he now changed to black.

The child grew up to become ASCLEPIUS, a famous practitioner of medicine, worshiped as both a hero and a god. He had several children, among them the doctor Machaon (in the Iliad) and more shadowy figures such as HYGEIA (“health.”)

When Hippolytus died, Artemis appealed to Asclepius to bring her devoted follower back to life. He succeeded and enraged Zeus, who hurled the physician into the Underworld for such a disruption of the natural order.

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Apollo was enraged at the death of his son Asclepius and killed the Cyclopes who had forged the thunderbolt. For his crime, he was sentenced to live in exile for a year under the rule of ADMETUS, king of Pherae in Thessaly.

When Apollo found out that his master had only a short time to live, he induced the Fates (MOIRAI) to allow the king a longer life. They, however, demanded that someone else die in his place. No one (not even his aged parents) was willing to do so except for his wife, ALCESTIS. In the end, Heracles arrived to save Alcestis from death and return her to her husband.

Euripides’ entertaining play Alcestis, however controversial, presents a touching portrait of a loving and devoted wife. Although Admetus must face the just attacks of critics for allowing Alcestis to die in his place, a case may be made that he recognized his selfishness too late, after he realized that life was not worth living without his Alcestis.

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The second musical contest is also related by Ovid. While Pan was playing a dainty tune on his pipes on Mt. Tmolus in Phrygia, he dared to belittle the music of Apollo and engaged in a contest with the god. TMOLUS, the god of the mountain, was the judge. Pan played first on his rustic pipes, and then Apollo, in the stance of an artist, crowned with laurel, followed, plucking his exquisite ivory lyre, inlaid with gems, with a plectrum.

Tmolus declared Apollo the victor, but MIDAS, the king of Phrygia (who now had a loathing for riches) witnessed the contest. He still had not learned wisdom. He had become a worshiper of Pan and preferred his music and declared the verdict unjust. Apollo could not endure that such stupid ears retain their shape, and so he changed them into the ears of an ass.

Midas hid his shame by wearing a turban. His barber, however, could not help but find out. He wanted desperately to tell but did not dare reveal Midas’ secret. Since he could not keep quiet, he stole away and dug a hole into the ground and whispered into it that his master had ass’s ears. He filled up the hole again but in a year’s time a thick cluster of trembling reeds had grown up, and when the wind whistled in the reeds, you could hear the murmur of a whisper, revealing the truth: “King Midas has ass’s ears.”

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