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In antiquity, Apollo was associated with the planet Mercury. The ancient Greeks believed that Mercury as observed during the morning was a different planet than the one during the evening, because each twilight Mercury would appear farther from the Sun as it set than it had the night before. The morning planet was called Apollo, and the one at evening Hermes/Mercury before they realised they were the same, thereupon the name 'Mercury/Hermes' was kept, and 'Apollo' was dropped. |
Apollo in the arts |
Apollo is a common theme in Greek and Roman art and also in the art of the Renaissance. The earliest Greek word for a statue is "delight" (, agalma), and the sculptors tried to create forms which would inspire such guiding vision. Maurice Bowra notices that the Greek artist puts into a god the highest degree of power and beauty that can be imagined. The sculptors derived this from observations on human beings, but they also embodied in concrete form, issues beyond the reach of ordinary thought. |
The naked bodies of the statues are associated with the cult of the body which was essentially a religious activity. The muscular frames and limbs combined with slim waists indicate the Greek desire for health, and the physical capacity which was necessary in the hard Greek environment. The statues of Apollo and the other gods present them in their full youth and strength. "In the balance and relation of their limbs, such figures express their whole character, mental and physical, and reveal their central being . ,the radiant reality of youth in its heyday". |
Archaic sculpture |
Numerous free-standing statues of male youths from Archaic Greece exist, and were once thought to be representations of Apollo, though later discoveries indicated that many represented mortals. In 1895, V. I. Leonardos proposed the term kouros ("male youth") to refer to those from Keratea; this usage was later expanded by Henri Lechat in 1904 to cover all statues of this format. |
The earliest examples of life-sized statues of Apollo may be two figures from the Ionic sanctuary on the island of Delos. Such statues were found across the Greek-speaking world, the preponderance of these were found at the sanctuaries of Apollo with more than one hundred from the sanctuary of Apollo Ptoios, Boeotia alone. Significantly more rare are the life-sized bronze statues. One of the few originals which survived into the present day—so rare that its discovery in 1959 was described as "a miracle" by Ernst Homann-Wedeking—is the masterpiece bronze, Piraeus Apollo. It was found in Piraeus, a port city close to Athens, and is believed to have come from north-eastern Peloponnesus. It is the only surviving large-scale Peloponnesian statue. |
Classical sculpture |
The famous Apollo of Mantua and its variants are early forms of the Apollo Citharoedus statue type, in which the god holds the cithara, a sophisticated seven-stringed variant of the lyre, in his left arm. While none of the Greek originals have survived, several Roman copies from approximately the late 1st or early 2nd century exist, of which an example is the Apollo Barberini. |
Hellenistic Greece-Rome |
Apollo as a handsome beardless young man, is often depicted with a cithara (as Apollo Citharoedus) or bow in his hand, or reclining on a tree (the Apollo Lykeios and Apollo Sauroctonos types). The Apollo Belvedere is a marble sculpture that was rediscovered in the late 15th century; for centuries it epitomized the ideals of Classical Antiquity for Europeans, from the Renaissance through the 19th century. The marble is a Hellenistic or Roman copy of a bronze original by the Greek sculptor Leochares, made between 330 and 320 BCE. |
The life-size so-called "Adonis" found in 1780 on the site of a villa suburbana near the Via Labicana in the Roman suburb of Centocelle is identified as an Apollo by modern scholars. In the late 2nd century CE floor mosaic from El Djem, Roman Thysdrus, he is identifiable as Apollo Helios by his effulgent halo, though now even a god's divine nakedness is concealed by his cloak, a mark of increasing conventions of modesty in the later Empire. |
Another haloed Apollo in mosaic, from Hadrumentum, is in the museum at Sousse. The conventions of this representation, head tilted, lips slightly parted, large-eyed, curling hair cut in locks grazing the neck, were developed in the 3rd century BCE to depict Alexander the Great. Some time after this mosaic was executed, the earliest depictions of Christ would also be beardless and haloed. |
Modern reception |
Apollo often appears in modern and popular culture due to his status as the god of music, dance and poetry. |
Postclassical art and literature |
Dance and music |
Apollo has featured in dance and music in modern culture. Percy Bysshe Shelley composed a "Hymn of Apollo" (1820), and the god's instruction of the Muses formed the subject of Igor Stravinsky's Apollon musagète (1927–1928). In 1978, the Canadian band Rush released an album with songs "Apollo: Bringer of Wisdom"/"Dionysus: Bringer of Love". |
Books |
Apollo has been portrayed in modern literature, such as when Charles Handy, in Gods of Management (1978) uses Greek gods as a metaphor to portray various types of organizational culture. Apollo represents a 'role' culture where order, reason, and bureaucracy prevail. In 2016, author Rick Riordan published the first book in the Trials of Apollo series, publishing four other books in the series in 2017, 2018, 2019 and 2020. |
Film |
Apollo has been depicted in modern films—for instance, by Keith David in the 1997 animated feature film Hercules, by Luke Evans in the 2010 action film Clash of the Titans, and by Dimitri Lekkos in the 2010 film Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief. |
Video games |
Apollo has appeared in many modern video games. Apollo appears as a minor character in Santa Monica Studio's 2010 action-adventure game God of War III with his bow being used by Peirithous. He also appears in the 2014 Hi-Rez Studios Multiplayer Online Battle Arena game Smite as a playable character. |
Psychology and philosophy |
In the philosophical discussion of the arts, a distinction is sometimes made between the Apollonian and Dionysian impulses, where the former is concerned with imposing intellectual order and the latter with chaotic creativity. Friedrich Nietzsche argued that a fusion of the two was most desirable. Psychologist Carl Jung's Apollo archetype represents what he saw as the disposition in people to over-intellectualise and maintain emotional distance. |
Spaceflight |
In spaceflight, the 1960s and 1970s NASA program for orbiting and landing astronauts on the Moon was named after Apollo, by NASA manager Abe Silverstein: |
Genealogy |
See also |
Darrhon |
Dryad |
Epirus |
Family tree of the Greek gods |
Phoebus (disambiguation) |
Sibylline oracles |
Tegyra |
Temple of Apollo (disambiguation) |
Notes |
References |
Sources |
Primary sources |
Aelian, On Animals, Volume II: Books 6–11. Translated by A. F. Scholfield. Loeb Classical Library 447. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1958. |
Aeschylus, The Eumenides in Aeschylus, with an English translation by Herbert Weir Smyth, Ph. D. in two volumes, Vol 2, Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press, 1926, Online version at the Perseus Digital Library. |
Antoninus Liberalis, The Metamorphoses of Antoninus Liberalis translated by Francis Celoria (Routledge 1992). Online version at the Topos Text Project. |
Apollodorus, Apollodorus, The Library, with an English Translation by Sir James George Frazer, F.B.A., F.R.S. in 2 Volumes. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1921. Online version at the Perseus Digital Library. |
Apollonius of Rhodes, Apollonius Rhodius: the Argonautica, translated by Robert Cooper Seaton, W. Heinemann, 1912. Internet Archive. |
Callimachus, Callimachus and Lycophron with an English Translation by A. W. Mair; Aratus, with an English Translation by G. R. Mair, London: W. Heinemann, New York: G. P. Putnam 1921. Online version at Harvard University Press. Internet Archive. |
Cicero, Marcus Tullius, De Natura Deorum in Cicero in Twenty-eight Volumes, XIX De Natura Deorum; Academica, with an English translation by H. Rackham, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press; London: William Heinemann, Ltd, 1967. Internet Archive. |
Diodorus Siculus, Library of History, Volume III: Books 4.59-8, translated by C. H. Oldfather, Loeb Classical Library No. 340. Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press, 1939. . Online version at Harvard University Press. Online version by Bill Thayer. |
Herodotus, Herodotus, with an English translation by A. D. Godley. Cambridge. Harvard University Press. 1920. Online version available at The Perseus Digital Library. |
Hesiod, Theogony, in The Homeric Hymns and Homerica with an English Translation by Hugh G. Evelyn-White, Cambridge, MA., Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1914. Online version at the Perseus Digital Library. |
Homeric Hymn 3 to Apollo in The Homeric Hymns and Homerica with an English Translation by Hugh G. Evelyn-White, Cambridge, MA., Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1914. Online version at the Perseus Digital Library. |
Homeric Hymn 4 to Hermes, in The Homeric Hymns and Homerica with an English Translation by Hugh G. Evelyn-White, Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1914. Online version at the Perseus Digital Library. |
Homer, The Iliad with an English Translation by A.T. Murray, PhD in two volumes. Cambridge, MA., Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann, Ltd. 1924. Online version at the Perseus Digital Library. |
Homer; The Odyssey with an English Translation by A.T. Murray, PH.D. in two volumes. Cambridge, MA., Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann, Ltd. 1919. Online version at the Perseus Digital Library. |
Hyginus, Gaius Julius, De Astronomica, in The Myths of Hyginus, edited and translated by Mary A. Grant, Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 1960. Online version at ToposText. |
Hyginus, Gaius Julius, Fabulae, in The Myths of Hyginus, edited and translated by Mary A. Grant, Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 1960. Online version at ToposText. |
Livy, The History of Rome, Books I and II With An English Translation. Cambridge. Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann, Ltd. 1919. |
Nonnus, Dionysiaca; translated by Rouse, W H D, I Books I-XV. Loeb Classical Library No. 344, Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1940. Internet Archive |
Nonnus, Dionysiaca; translated by Rouse, W H D, II Books XVI-XXXV. Loeb Classical Library No. 345, Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1940. Internet Archive |
Statius, Thebaid. Translated by Mozley, J H. Loeb Classical Library Volumes. Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1928. |
Strabo, The Geography of Strabo. Edition by H.L. Jones. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press; London: William Heinemann, Ltd. 1924. Online version at the Perseus Digital Library. |
Sophocles, Oedipus Rex |
Palaephatus, On Unbelievable Tales 46. Hyacinthus (330 BCE) |
Ovid, Metamorphoses, Brookes More, Boston, Cornhill Publishing Co. 1922. Online version at the Perseus Digital Library. 10. 162–219 (1–8 CE) |
Pausanias, Pausanias Description of Greece with an English Translation by W.H.S. Jones, Litt.D., and H.A. Ormerod, M.A., in 4 Volumes. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1918. Online version at the Perseus Digital Library. |
Philostratus the Elder, Imagines, in Philostratus the Elder, Imagines. Philostratus the Younger, Imagines. Callistratus, Descriptions. Translated by Arthur Fairbanks. Loeb Classical Library No. 256. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1931. . Online version at Harvard University Press. Internet Archive 1926 edition. i.24 Hyacinthus (170–245 CE) |
Philostratus the Younger, Imagines, in Philostratus the Elder, Imagines. Philostratus the Younger, Imagines. Callistratus, Descriptions. Translated by Arthur Fairbanks. Loeb Classical Library No. 256. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1931. . Online version at Harvard University Press. Internet Archive 1926 edition. 14. Hyacinthus (170–245 CE) |
Pindar, Odes, Diane Arnson Svarlien. 1990. Online version at the Perseus Digital Library. |
Plutarch. Lives, Volume I: Theseus and Romulus. Lycurgus and Numa. Solon and Publicola. Translated by Bernadotte Perrin. Loeb Classical Library No. 46. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1914. . Online version at Harvard University Press. Numa at the Perseus Digital Library. |
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