Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 2.djvu/199

Rh APOLLO 185 employments for the service of the church; and, in 472, was chosen to succeed Eparchius in the bishopric of Cler- mont. On the capture of that city by the Goths in 480 he was obliged to retire, as he had taken an active part in its defence ; but he was soon restored by Evaric, king of the Goths, and continued to govern the church as before. He died 482 or 484 A.D, His extant works are his Pane gyrics on different emperors, and a collection of Letters and Poems, and their chief value consists in the light they shed on the political and literary history of the 5th century. The best edition is that by Sirmond, published in 1G14, and republished in 1652. APOLLIXARIS, SULPICIUS, a learned grammarian of Carthage, lived in the 2d century, under the Antonines. He is the reputed author of the poetical arguments prefixed to the comedies of Terence. He had for his pupils Helvius Pertinax, who afterwards became emperor, and Aulus Gel- lius, who speaks of the acquirements and character of his master i.n terms of the highest praise. APOLLO. The influence of the sun on nature in a country like Greece, either brightening the fields and cheering mankind, or scorching and destroying with a pestilence, or again dispelling the miasma collected from marshes by night, was taken by the Greeks to be under the control of a divine being, to whom they ascribed, on human analogy, a form and character in which were reflected their own ensations. That divine being they called Apollo, a name which applied to him in two ways, either as aTroXAvwv, from aTi-dAAt /At, &quot;the destroyer,&quot; or as d-e AAwj, from aTreXAw = a-n-etpyw, the &quot; repeller of ills.&quot; Apellon is both the Doric and the old Roman form of his name. Under the frequent title of Phoebus, he was hailed as god of the streaming ligh of the sun. Next to its daily course, which, however, was under the guidance of a special subordinate deity, Helios, the most obvious and invariable phenomenon of the sun was its withdrawal in winter and return in summer, and accordingly on this was based one of the principal features in the character of the god, which was also recog nised in annual festivals in his honour, and made more explicit by the myth, in which after his birth, amid the splendid summer light of Delos, he is carried off in a car drawn by swans to the fabulous region of the Hyperboreans, where the sun was be lieved to tarry during the winter. The other class of solar phenomena, being variable in their occurrence, appeared to be directed by a precarious will, and ApoUa From silver coin from this Was evolved for Apollo the of Clazomense. Brit. Mas. double character of a god possessed of power over the sun, and a the same time guided in the exercise of it by the con duct of mankind. Hence the prominence of expiatory offer ings in the worship of a god whom no act of wrong escaped. By his knowledge of what transpired on earth and in the councils of Olympus, he was prepared to be the god of oracles, which threw light on the future and banished the monsters begotten of terror at its obscurity. From observing the jubilant voice of nature greeting the sunshine, it was an easy step to regard Apollo as the god of music; Avhile again the function of a god of medicine was peculiarly appropriate to a deity who, if he destroyed life, also saved it. In many ways the sun gladdened the herdsman and favoured his flock. Hence both Apollo and Helios (Sol) had sacred herds of cattle of their own, while the former when in exile on earth himself acted as a herdsman. The honour of having been the birth-place of Apollo was claimed by many districts, but chiefly by Xanthus in Lycia, and the island of Delos, the latter being at last generally agreed upon. In Lycia his worship was of high antiquity, and its extent is vouched for by the identity of the name of that country with one of the favourite epithets of the god, AVKEIOS, from root VK, as in AVKO(US, Lat. luc-s = lux. There also his mother Leto (Latona) appears to have been widely worshipped, and thither the solar hero Bellerophon goes to accomplish hia labours, showing a community of religious belief between Lycia and Argohs, the home of Bellerophon, for which there is also other evidence. But when the myths concerning Apollo came to be shaped by the poets, his worship had acquired an independent standing in Delos, and had estab lished for that island a claim to the honour of being his birth-place. The belief was that Leto, pursued by the jealous Hera (Juno), after long wandering, found shelter in Delos, and there bore to Zeus (Jupiter) a son, Apollo. To this it was added, after the time of Pindar, that Delos had before been a barren rock floating about in the sea, but had been for this purpose and for ever after fastened down by pillars, as also happened to the island of Rhodes, the centre of the worship of Helios. The labour of Latona lasted nine days and nine nights. Then she seized hold of a palm tree, and when the boy was born all the island was dazzled with a flood of golden light. Sacred swans flew in a circle round the island seven times. The day was the 7th of the month Thargelion (May). The 7th of every month was sacred to him. He was styled E/JSoyuayer???, and otherwise the num ber seven played a part in his worship. His first step was to seize a bow and to announce his will to found an oracle. To this end his father Jupiter gave him, besides a lyre, and a mitra to bind his hair, a car drawn by swans, with which to proceed to Delphi. But the swans carr ed him off to their home among the Hyperboreans. Returning with the summer to Delphi, he slew with an arrow the Python, a monster dragon, which was then laying waste the district, established his oracle, and took the title of Pythios. Grea (Terra) first, and next Themis had previously given oracles there. But this, though the current belief, is at variance with the Homeric Hymn to xpollo, which describes him as selecting Delphi for its site alone, and then relating how, after a temple was built, the difficulty of finding priests was over come. Seeing a trading ship from Cnossus in Crete, under way for Pylus, the god threw himself on board in the form of a dolphin and guided it to Crissa, the harbour of Delphi, where, like the flash of a star, he resumed his divine form, appointed the traders his priesthood, and with his lyre led the first paean there. Hence his title of Delphinios. But here a confusion has been effected ; for, while in one sense Apollo Delphinios was god of the sunny voyages, in another sense he may have derived that epithet from having slain the dragon, the proper name of which was Delphine. Except on the latter theory, there seems to be no explanation of this, among other facts, that his sanctuary at Athens, the Delphinion, was a court for the trial of bloodshed. It may then be supposed that the Dorians from Crete, who had in early times established themselves on the coasts of the Peloponnesus and at Crissa, having an Apollo whose symbol was a dolphin, and finding at Delphi an Apollo styled Delphinios for another reason, combined the two in the new myth which is found in the Homeric Hymn. Besides at Delphi, which however retained the first place, Apollo gave oracles also at Colophon, and at Didyrni near Miletus ; in the latter place through the priestly family of the Branchidoe. To certain mortals he communicated the prophetic gift, as to Cassandra, the Cumcean sibyl, and the seer Epimeuides. With his oracular power was associated his function as god of music (Citharcedus), and leader of the Muses (Musagetes), in which capacity he caused Marsyas to be flayed alive because he had boasted superior skill in playing the flute, or again, caused the ears of Midas to grow long because he had decided in favour of Pan, who contended that the flute was a better instrument than fc!?a 11. - 24