Apollo and the messengers

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Ovid's version is the best known (Metamorphoses 1. 452-567): Daphne, daughter of Peneus, was the first object of Apollo's love. It was not blind fate who brought this about, but Cupid's cruel anger. Apollo, flushed with pride at his victory over Python, had seen Cupid drawing his bow and taunted him: "What business of yours are brave men's arms, young fellow? The bow suits my shoulder; I can take unerring aim at wild animals or at my enemies. I it was who laid low proud Python, though he stretched over wide acres of ground, with uncounted arrows. You should be content with kindling the fires of love in some mortal with your torch; do not try to share my glory!" To him Cupid replied: "Although your arrows pierce every target, Apollo, mine will pierce you. Just as all animals yield to you, so your glory is inferior to mine." And as he spoke he quickly flew to the peak of shady Pamassus and from his quiver drew two arrows. Different were their functions, for the one, whose point was dull and leaden, repelled love; the other, golden, bright, and sharp, aroused it. Cupid shot the leaden arrow at Peneus7 daughter, while he pierced Apollo's inmo'st heart with the golden one. Straightway Apollo loved, and Daphne ran even from the name of "lover." Companion of Diana, her joy was in the depths of the forests and the spoils of the chase; a headband kept her flowing hair in place. Many suitors courted her, while she cared not for love or marriage; a virgin she roamed the pathless woods. Her father often said, "My daughter, you owe me a son-in-law and grandchildren;" she, hating the marriage torch as if it were a disgrace, blushed and embraced her father saying, "Allow me, dearest father, always to be a virgin. Jupiter granted this to Diana." Peneus granted her prayer; but Daphne's beauty allowed her not to be as she desired and opposed her wish. Apollo loved her; he saw her and desired to marry her. He hoped to achieve his desire, misled by his own oracle. Even as the stubble bums after the harvest, or a hedge catches fire from a careless traveler's embers, so the god burned with all-consuming fire and fueled his love with fruitless hope. He sees her hair lying unadorned upon her neck and says, "What if it were adorned?" He sees her flashing eyes like stars; he sees her lips-and merely to see is not enough. He praises her fingers, hands and arms, and shoulders half-bared; those parts which are covered he thinks more beautiful. Swifter than the wind Daphne runs from him and stays not to hear him call her back: "Stay, nymph! Stay, daughter of Peneus, I pray! I am not an enemy who pursue you. Stay, nymph! A lamb runs like this from the wolf, a hind from the lion, doves with fluttering wings from the eagle. Each kind runs from its enemy: love makes me pursue!

Oh, take care you do not fall; let not the thorns scratch those legs that never should be marred and I be the cause of your hurt! Rough is the place where you run; run more slowly, I beg, and I will pursue more slowly. Yet consider who loves you; I am not a mountain peasant; I am not an uncouth shepherd who watches here his flocks and herds. Unheeding you know not whom you try to escape, and therefore do you run. I am lord of Delphi, of Claros, Tenedos, and royal Patara; Jupiter is my father! I show the future, the past, the present; through me came the harmony of lyre and song! Unerring are my arrows, yet one arrow is yet more unerring and has wounded my heart, before untouched. The healing art is mine; throughout the world am I called the Bringer of Help; the power of herbs is mine to command. Ah me! for no herb can remedy love; the art which heals all cannot heal its master!" Even as he spoke Daphne fled from him and ran on in fear; then too she seemed lovely-the wind laid bare her body and her clothes fluttered as she ran and her hair streamed out behind. In flight she was yet more beautiful. Yet the young god could not bear to have his words of love go for nothing; driven on by love he followed at full speed. Even as a Gallic hound sees a hare in an empty field and pursues its prey as it runs for safety-the one seems just to be catching the quarry and expects each moment to have gripped it; with muzzle at full stretch it is hot on the other's tracks; the other hardly knows if it has been caught and avoids the snapping jaws-so the god chased the virgin: hope gave him speed; her speed came from fear. Yet the pursuer gains, helped by the wings of love; he gives her no respite; he presses hard upon her and his breath ruffles the hair upon her neck. Now Daphne's strength was gone, drained by the effort of her flight, and pale she saw Peneus' waters. "Help me, Father," she cried, "if a river has power; change me and destroy my beauty which has proved too attractive!" Hardly had she finished her prayer when her limbs grew heavy and sluggish; thin bark enveloped her soft breasts; her hair grew into leaves, her arms into branches. Her feet, which until now had run so swiftly, held fast with clinging roots. Her face was the tree's top; only her beauty remains. Even in this form Apollo loves her; placing his hand on the trunk he felt the heart beating beneath the newformed bark. Embracing the branches, as if they were human limbs, he kisses the wood: yet the wood shrinks from 4 4 his kisses. Since you cannot be my wife," said he, "you shall be my tree. Always you shall wreathe my hair, my lyre, my quiver. You shall accompany the Roman generals when the joyous Triumph hymn is sung and the long procession climbs the Capitol . . . and as my young locks have never been shorn, so may you forever be honored with green leaves!" Apollo's speech was done: the newmade Laurel nodded her assent and like a head bowed her topmost branches. Apollo attempted to win Marpessa, the daughter of Evenus, a son of Ares. She was wooed as well by Idas, one of the Argonauts. He carried her off in his chariot against the will of her father, who unsuccessf~lly pursued the pair and in his anger and heartbreak committed suicide. Subsequently Apollo, who had also been a suitor for Marpessa's hand, stole her away from Idas in similar fashion. The outcome was that the two rivals met face to face in conflict over the girl.

At this point Zeus intervened and ordered Marpessa to choose between her lovers. She chose Idas because he was a mortal, for she was afraid that the undying and eternally handsome god Apollo would abandon her when she grew old. Apollo was also susceptible to the love of boys. His devotion to Hyacinthus, a handsome Spartan youth from Amyclae, is well known because of Ovid's account; the great god neglected his other duties in order to be in the company of his beloved (Metamorphoses 10. 174-219): The Titan sun was almost midway between the night that had passed and the one to come-equidistant from both-when Apollo and the boy took off their garments and glistening with olive oil began to compete with the broad discus. Phoebus made the first throw. He poised the discus and hurled it so far into the air that the clouds were scattered by its course and only after a long time, because of its own sheer weight, did it fall back again to solid earth. His throw exhibited great skill combined with great strength. Straightway Hyacinthus under the impulse of his enthusiasm, heedless of all but the game, made a dash to pick up the discus. But it bounced back, 0 Hyacinthus, as it hit the hard earth and struck you full in the face. The god turned as pale as the boy himself. He took up the limp body in his attempt to revive him, frantically staying the flow of blood from the sad wound and applying herbs to sustain the life that was ebbing away. His arts were to no avail; the wound was incurable. Just as when someone in a garden breaks off violets or brittle poppies or lilies that cling to their tawny stems, and suddenly these flowers droop and fade and cannot support the tops of their heavy heads which look down to the ground, so dropped the head of the dying boy and his neck, once strength was gone, gave way to the burden of its weight and sank on his shoulder. Phoebus cried: "You slip away, cheated of your youthful prime. Your wound that I look upon accuses me. You are my grief and my guilt-my own hand is branded with your death! I am the one who is responsible. But what fault was mine? Can it be called a fault to have played a game with you, to have loved you? 0 that I could give you my life as you deserve or die along with you. But we are bound by fate's decree. Yet you will always be with me, your name will cling to my lips, forever remembering. You will be my theme as I pluck my lyre and sing my songs and you, a new flower, will bear markings in imitation of my grief; and there will come a time when the bravest of heroes will be linked to this same flower and his name will be read on its petals." While Apollo spoke these words from his unerring lips, lo and behold, the blood that had poured upon the ground and stained the. grass ceased to be blood and a flower arose, of a purple more brilliant than Tyrian dye; it took the shape of a lily and differed only in color, for lilies are silvery white. Apollo, although responsible for so honoring Hyacinthus, was not yet satisfied. The god himself inscribed his laments upon the petals and the flower bears the markings of the mournful letters A1 AI. Sparta was proud to claim Hyacinthus as her son and his glory endures to this day; every year a festival, the Hyacinthia, is celebrated in his honor with ceremonies ancient in their traditions. Several of these stories emphasize Apollo's role as a god of medicine, which is taken over in large part by his son, Asclepius.

And this brings us to Apollo's affair with Coronis, the last we shall tell. Coronis (in Ovid's version) was a lovely maiden from Larissa in Thessaly whom Apollo loved; in fact she was pregnant with his child. Unfortunately the raven, Apollo's bird, saw Coronis lying with a young Thessalian and told all to the god (Metamorphoses 2. 600-34) : When Apollo heard this charge against Coronis, the laurel wreath slipped from his head, his expression changed, and the color drained from his cheeks. As his heart burned with swollen rage, he took up his accustomed weapons and bent his bow to string it; with his unerring arrow he pierced the breast which he had so often embraced. She gave a groan as she was struck and, when she drew the shaft from her body, red blood welled up over her white limbs. She spoke: "You could have exacted this punishment and I have paid with my life, after I had borne your child; as it is, two of us die in one." With these words her life drained away with her blood; the chill of death crept over her lifeless corpse. Too late, alas, the lover repented of his cruel punishment. He hated himself because he had listened to the charge against her and had been so inflamed. He hated his bow and his arrows and his hands that had so rashly shot them. He fondled her limp body and strove to thwart the Fates but his efforts came too late, and he applied his arts of healing to no avail. When he saw that his attempts were in vain and the pyre was being built and saw her limbs about to be burned in the last flames, then truly (for it is forbidden that the cheeks of the gods be touched by tears) Apollo uttered groans that issued from the very depths of his heart, just as when a heifer sees the mallet that is poised about the right ear of her suckling calf shatter the hollow temples with a crashing blow. He poured perfumes upon her unfeeling breast, clasped her in his embrace, and performed the proper rites so just and yet unjust. Phoebus could not bear that his own seed be reduced to the same ashes, but he snatched his son out of the flames from the womb of his mother and brought him to the cave of the centaur Chiron. The raven, who hoped for a reward for the truth of his utterances, Apollo forbade evermore to be counted among white birds. Meanwhile the centaur was happy to have the divine infant as a foster child and delighted in such an honorable task. Thus, like many another mythological figure, Asclepius was trained by the wise and gentle Chiron, and he learned his lessons well, particularly in the field of medicine. When he grew up, he refined this science and raised it by transforming it into a high and noble art (just as the Greeks themselves did in actual fact, particularly in the work of the great fifth-century physician, Hippocrates, with his medical school at Cos). Asclepius married and had several children, among them doctors such as Machaon (in the Iliad), or more shadowy figures such as Hygeia (Health). So skilled a physician was Asclepius (he was worshiped as both a hero and a god) that when Hippolytus died, Artemis appealed to him to restore her devoted follower to life. Asclepius agreed and was successful but incurred the wrath of Zeus for such a disruption of nature. Asclepius was hurled into the lower world by a thunderbolt. Apollo was enraged by the death of his son; he did not, of course, turn against Zeus, but killed the Cyclopes who had forged the lethal thunderbolt. Because of his crime he was sentenced (following once again the pattern of the human social order and its codes concerning blood-guilt) to live in exile for a year under the rule of Admetus, the beneficent king of Pherae in Thessaly. Apollo felt kindly toward his master and when he found out that ~dmetus had only a short time to live, he went to the Moirae and induced them, with the help of wine, to allow the king a longer life. But they imposed the condition that someone must die in his place. Admetus, however, could find no one willing to give up his life for him (not even his aged parents) except his devoted wife, Alcestis; and he accepted her sacrifice. Euripides, in his fascinating and puzzling play, the Alcestis (it is difficult to find general agreement on the interpretation of this tragicomedy), presents a touching and ironic portrait of the devoted wife.

She is, however, rescued from the tomb in the nick of time by the good services of Heracles, who happened to be a visitor in the home of Admetus and wrestled with Death himself (Thanatos) for the life of Alcestis. Apollo's skill as a musician has already been attested. But two stories that concentrate more exclusively upon the divine excellence of his art and the folly of inferiors who challenged it remain to be told. The first concerns Marsyas; he was the satyr (as we have previously mentioned) who picked up the flute after it had been invented and then discarded by Athena. The goddess gave Marsyas a thrashing for taking up her instrument, but he was not deterred by this and became so proficient that he dared to challenge the great Apollo himself to a contest. The condition imposed by the god was that the victor could do what he liked with the vanquished. Of course Apollo won, and it was his decision to flay Marsyas alive. Ovid describes the anguish of the satyr (Metamorphoses 6. 385- 400 j: Marsyas cried out: "Why are you stripping me of my very self? Oh no, I am sorry; the flute is not worth this torture!" As he screamed, his skin was ripped off all his body and he was nothing but a gaping wound. Blood ran everywhere, his nerves were laid bare and exposed, and the pulse of his veins throbbed without any covering. One could make out clearly his pulsating entrails and the vital organs in his chest that lay revealed. The spirits of the countryside and the fauns who haunt the woods wept for him; and so did his brothers, the satyrs, and nymphs and all who tended woolly sheep and horned cattle on those mountains-and Olympus, dear to him now, wept as well. The fertile earth grew wet as she received and drank up the tears that fell and became soaked to the veins in her depths. She formed of them a stream which she sent up into the open air. From this source a river, the clearest in all Phrygia, rushes down between its sloping banks into the sea. And it bears the name of Marsyas. Apollo was involved in another musical contest, this time with the god Pan, and King Midas of Phrygia acted as one of the judges (Ovid Metamorphoses 11. 146-93): Midas, in his loathing for riches, found a retreat in the woods and the country and worshiped Pan, the god who always inhabits mountain caves. But his intelligence still remained limited, and his own foolish stupidity was going to ham him once again as it had before. There is a mountain, Tmolus, that rises high in its steep ascent with a lofty view to the sea; on one side it slopes down to Sardis, on another to the little town of Hypaepa. Here while he was singing his songs to his gentle nymphs and playing a dainty tune on his pipes made of reeds and wax, Pan dared to belittle the music of Apollo as compared with his own. And so he engaged in an unequal contest, with Tmolus as judge. This elderly judge took his seat on his own mountain and freed his ears of trees; only the oak remained to wreathe his dark hair and acorns hung down around his hollow temples. He turned his gaze upon the god of flocks and said: "Now the judge is ready." Pan began to blow on his rustic pipes, and Midas, who happened to be nearby as he played, was charmed by the tune. When Pan had finished, Tmolus, the sacred god of the mountain, turned around to face Phoebus, and his forests followed the swing of his gaze. The golden head of Apollo was crowned with laurel from Parnassus, and his robe dyed in Tyrian purple trailed along the ground. His lyre was inlaid with precious stones and Indian ivory; he held it in his left hand with the plectrum in his right. His very stance was the stance of an artist. Then he played the strings with knowing hand; Tmolus was captivated by their sweetness and ordered Pan to concede that his pipes were inferior to the lyre.

The judgment of the sacred mountain pleased everyone except Midas; he alone challenged the verdict and called it unjust. At this the god of Delos could not bear that such stupid ears retain their human shape. He made them longer, covered them with white shaggy hair, and made them flexible at their base so that they could be twitched. As for the rest of him he remained human; in this one respect alone he was changed, condemned to be endowed with the ears of a lumbering ass. Midas of course wanted to hide his vile shame and he attempted to do so by covering his head with a purple turban. But his barber, who regularly trimmed his long hair, saw his secret. He wanted to tell about what he had seen, but he did not dare reveal Midas' disgrace. But it was impossible for him to keep quiet and so he stole away and dug a hole in the ground. Into it, with the earth removed, he murmured in a low whisper that his master had ass's ears. Then he filled the hole up again, covering up the indictment he had uttered and silently stole away from the scene. But a thick cluster of trembling reeds began to grow on the spot; in a year's time, as soon as they were full grown, they betrayed the barber's secret. For, as they swayed in the gentle south wind, they echoed the words that he had buried and revealed the truth about his master's ears. Thus if one listened carefully to the wind whistling in the reeds he could hear the murmur of a whisper: "King Midas has ass's ears." The many and complex facets of Apollo's character have by now become evident. He sums up in his very nature the multiple contradictions in the tragic dilemma of human existence. He is gentle and vehement, compassionate and ruthless, guilty and guiltless, healer and destroyer. The extremes of his emotion are everywhere apparent. He acts swiftly and surely against Tityus, who dared to attempt to rape Leto and for this crime was punished (as we shall see later) in the realm of Hades. Apollo shot down Tityus with his arrows; he acts in the same way against Niobe, only this time in conjunction with his sister, Artemis (the story has been told in the previous article). Can one ever forget Homer's terrifying picture of the god as he lays low the Greek forces at Troy with a plague in response to the appeal of his priest Chryses (Iliad 1.43- 52) 3 Phoebus Apollo . . . came down from the peaks of Olympus, angered in his heart, wearing on his shoulders his bow and closed quiver. The arrows clashed on his shoulders as he moved in his rage, and he descended just like night. Then he sat down apart from the ships and shot one of his arrows; terrible was the clang make by his silver bow. First he attacked the mules and the swift hounds but then he let go his piercing shafts against the men themselves and struck them down.

The funeral pyres with their corpses burned thick and fast. Yet this very same god is the epitome of Greek classical restraint, championing the proverbial Greek maxims "Know thyself' and "Nothing too much." He knows by experience the dangers of excess. From a sea of blood and guilt, Apollo brings enlightenment, atonement, and purification, wherever he may be, but especially in his sanctuary at Delphi. The origins of Apollo are obscure. It is not unlikely that he was in the beginning one of the gods brought into Greece by the northem invaders of 2000; if not, at any rate, he was probably very soon absorbed by them in the period 2000-1500. Some scholars imagine Apollo as originally the prototype of the Good Shepherd with his many protective powers and skills, especially those of music and medicine." It is not until the classical period that he becomes a sun-god and usurps the power of Helius. For many Apollo appears as the most characteristically Greek god in the whole pantheon-a gloriously conceived anthropomorphic figure, perhaps epitomized best of all in the splendid depiction of the west pediment of the great temple of Zeus at Olympia. Here Apollo stood with calm intelligent strength, his head turned to one side, his arm upraised against the raging turmoil of the battle between the Centaurs and Lapiths by which he is surrounded. By stressing certain aspects of his character, Apollo may be presented as the direct antithesis of the god Dionysus; in the persons of these two deities the rational (Apollonian) and irrational (Dionysiac) forces in human psychology, philosophy, and religion are pitted dramatically, one against the other. Some go so far as to maintain that it is Apollo who represents the true and essential nature of the Greek spirit as reflected in the poetry of Homer, in opposition to the later foreign intrusion of the mysticism of Dionysus. Whatever kernel of truth this view may hold, it is important to realize that by the sixth and fifth centuries Dionysus has become an integral part of Greek civilization. He is, therefore, in the classical period as characteristically Greek as Apollo, and both deities actually reflect a basic duality inherent in the Greek conception of things. We have already detected in article 1 this same dichotomy in the union of the mystical and mathematical that was mirrored in the amalgamation of two cultures (the Nordic and the Mediterranean) in the Minoan and Mycenaean periods. Just as Apollo may be made a foil for Dionysus, so he may be used as a meaningful contrast to the figure of Christ. Each in his person and his life represents, physically and spiritually, two quite different concepts of meaning and purpose both in this world and in the next. Apollo and Christ do indeed afford a startling and revealing antithesis.