Apollo

Apollo drew his bow against the Giants at Phlegra, where they fought Zeus and the Olympians. In one account, the conflict followed Alcyoneus’s theft of Helios’s cattle and Gaia’s attempt to make him immortal. The gods had learned that a mortal was needed to defeat the Giants, so Zeus and his siblings called on Heracles to aid them.

Porphyrion, king of the Giants, attacked Hera. Eros struck him in the liver with an arrow, turning his anger towards lust. He tore away Hera’s robe, but Zeus saw the assault and felled him with a thunderbolt. Porphyrion rose again. Heracles then returned to Phlegra and wounded him mortally with an arrow. Pindar also says that Porphyrion was overcome by Apollo’s bow.

Ephialtes fought Ares and forced him to his knees. Apollo shot Ephialtes in the left eye, then called to Heracles, who drove an arrow into the right eye. Ephialtes died. Other gods also struck the Giants. Dionysus felled Eurytus with his thyrsus, Hecate singed Clytius with her torches, Hephaestus scalded Mimas with red-hot metal, and Athena crushed Pallas with a stone. Heracles had to deliver the death blow whenever a god had wounded a Giant.

Hestia and Demeter took no part in the fighting and stood aside in distress. Zeus and the other Olympians defeated the Giants with Heracles’ help. Euripides describes Heracles shooting Giants with arrows. He also presents a temple image at Delphi in which Athena fights Enceladus, Zeus burns Mimas with his thunderbolt, and Dionysus kills an unnamed Giant with his ivy staff.

Marsyas found the flute that Athena had thrown away and put it to his lips. It produced enchanting music, which delighted the satyr. He loved music and was admired for it by the inhabitants of the woods and glens. Believing that his playing could match Apollo’s, Marsyas challenged the god to a musical contest.

Apollo accepted. The Muses were appointed judges, and the terms were severe: the unsuccessful musician would be flayed alive. Marsyas played the flute, drawing beautiful sounds from it. Apollo answered on the lyre. The contest continued while the judges considered the two performances.

Apollo then played his lyre upside down and told Marsyas to do the same with the flute. Marsyas could not match this feat. Apollo was declared the winner. In another account, the Muses judged Apollo’s music the better, although the satyrs claimed that Marsyas had played best. King Midas was also present as a judge in that telling.

Apollo took the agreed punishment for himself to impose and flayed Marsyas alive. Some accounts call Marsyas a follower of Cybele and the son of Olympos. The flute itself is also described in different ways. Athena is said to have invented it, then discarded it because playing made her cheeks swell and disfigured her face. One account says that she made a double flute from stag bones, threw it away in a Phrygian wood, and cursed anyone who picked it up. Marsyas became the victim of that curse. Other accounts say that the flute played by itself because it had touched a goddess’s lips.

Asclepius killed a snake. Soon another snake appeared with an herb in its mouth. It placed the herb on the head of its dead mate, then both snakes fled. Asclepius used the same herb on Glaucus and restored him to life. He had become such a skilled physician that he could bring the dead back to life, and Hades complained to Zeus that this deprived the underworld of its dead and threatened the order of the gods.

Zeus feared that Asclepius had erased the difference between immortal gods and mortal humans. He took up a thunderbolt and struck Asclepius dead. Apollo mourned his son. In anger, he went to the Cyclopes' forge and killed the Cyclopes who made Zeus's thunderbolts. Some accounts say that he killed every Cyclops who worked there.

Apollo did not attack Zeus directly. In one account, Zeus required him to serve the mortal Admetus for a year as punishment for killing the Cyclopes. Another account says that Apollo had to leave the company of the gods and be enslaved to a mortal. In this version, the killing nearly caused a battle among the gods. Leto intervened, and a reconciliation followed.

At Apollo's request, Zeus placed Asclepius among the stars. The accounts also differ about Asclepius's birth. One names Arsinoe as his mother. Another names Coronis, whom Apollo loved, and says that Apollo rescued the unborn child from her funeral pyre and gave him to the Centaur Cheiron to raise and teach medicine.

Apollo and Hyacinthus were throwing the discus together. Apollo sent his discus high and far. Hyacinthus ran forward to retrieve it, eager to make his own throw. The discus struck him in the forehead with deadly force. He fell to the ground, pale and wounded.

Apollo lifted him and tried to stop the bleeding. He used all his skill, but the wound could not be healed. Hyacinthus died in the god’s arms. Apollo grieved for him and wished that he could give his own life in exchange. He had caused Hyacinthus’s death, though he had not intended to harm him.

Where Hyacinthus had fallen, the bloodstained grass became green again, and a flower rose from the ground. Apollo gave it the name Hyacinth and marked its petals with signs of mourning. In one account, the words were written as “Ah! Ah!” The flower returned each spring as a memorial to the dead youth.

Apollo had been deeply attached to Hyacinthus. He joined him in sport and accompanied him while he fished, hunted, and travelled in the mountains. Some accounts say that Zephyr, the West Wind, also loved Hyacinthus. Jealous because Hyacinthus preferred Apollo, Zephyr deflected the discus so that it struck the youth. Another account says that the discus simply bounced from the ground into Hyacinthus’s head. Ovid gives a further variation, stating that Flora created the hyacinth rather than Apollo.

Zeus raised his thunderbolt and hurled it at Asclepius, killing him. Asclepius had become a skilled physician and had learned to restore the dead to life. In one telling, Hades complained that Asclepius deprived the underworld of its dead and strengthened his complaint with a bribe. In another, Zeus feared that Asclepius would destroy the boundary between immortal gods and mortal humans.

Apollo mourned his son and grew furious. He did not attack Zeus. He went to the crater where the Cyclopes worked and shot them with his golden arrows. The Cyclopes had forged Zeus's thunderbolts, so Apollo killed them in revenge for Asclepius's death.

Zeus punished Apollo by requiring him to serve the mortal Admetus for a year. Another telling said that Zeus was about to kill Apollo, but Leto intervened and brought about a reconciliation. After Apollo pleaded for his son in eloquent words and with a musical voice, Zeus restored Asclepius to life. Asclepius treated the wounded Cyclopes, who returned to their anvils, although some of them came to hate the gods.

In another telling, Zeus placed Asclepius among the stars at Apollo's request. The accounts also differed over how Asclepius first gained the power to raise the dead. He received Gorgon's blood from Athena in one telling. In another, he learned the secret after seeing one snake revive another with a herb.

The judges declared Apollo the winner of the music contest. In one account, Pan had challenged him with his seven reed pipes. In another, the satyr Marsyas played a double flute before an audience of Muses, satyrs, and King Midas. Apollo played his lyre, and the Muses favoured him, while the satyrs supported Marsyas. Midas alone, or first among the judges, preferred the rougher music of Pan or Marsyas.

Apollo punished the Phrygian king for his judgement. Human ears were replaced by long, hairy ass’s ears that sagged and moved. Midas covered them with a tall cap, sometimes described as a purple nightcap. His subjects thought the unusual hat fashionable, and the style spread through Phrygia. The cap concealed the ears, but the barber who cut Midas’s hair knew what lay beneath it.

Midas ordered the barber to keep silent, threatening him with death. The secret became too difficult to bear. The barber went to an empty place beside a river, checked that nobody was nearby, dug a hole, and whispered into it, “King Midas has ass’s ears.” He covered the words with earth and left relieved.

Afterwards, a reed grew from the bank. When the wind moved it, the reed whispered the secret to those who passed. Another account says that nymphs told the grass, which told the trees, and birds carried the words further. Midas’s disgrace became public. One source says he condemned the barber to death, drank bull’s blood, and died miserably.

Apollo turned his attention from Clytie to Leucothoe, the daughter of Orchamus, king of the eastern countries. Clytie loved Apollo, but he did not return her affection. Stricken by jealousy, she told Orchamus that his daughter was involved with the sun god.

Orchamus was angered by what he regarded as Leucothoe's indiscretion. He ordered her to be buried alive. Apollo tried to disinter her and restore her life, but his efforts came too late. Grieving over her death, he sprinkled nectar over her body and the ground. A precious frankincense shrub grew from the place where Leucothoe had been buried.

Clytie gained nothing from exposing the affair. Apollo did not return to her. She went outside and sat upon the cold ground, refusing food and drink. For nine days she remained there, with her unbound hair falling over her shoulders. Her tears and the chilly dew were her only nourishment. She watched the sun rise and followed its course across the sky until it set, turning her face towards it and seeing nothing else.

At last, Clytie's limbs took root in the ground. Her body changed into a flower that continued to turn towards the sun. One account calls it a sunflower. Another calls it a heliotrope. The flower retained the nymph's longing for Apollo as it followed the sun's daily course.

On the fourth day after his birth, Apollo called for a bow and arrows. Hephaestus supplied them. Apollo then left Delos and went straight to Mount Parnassus, where Python, the serpent that had persecuted his mother Leto, was hiding. Apollo wounded the monster with his arrows. Python fled to the Oracle of Mother Earth at Delphi, but Apollo followed it into the shrine and killed it beside the sacred chasm.

Another account says that Python had emerged from the slime left by the flood. The enormous serpent lived in the caves of Mount Parnassus and terrorised the people. Apollo killed it with arrows, weapons he had previously used only against weak animals. Some accounts describe the oracle as belonging first to Gaia, or Mother Earth, with Python as its guardian. The serpent’s name was associated with the place, which was called Pytho before it was called Delphi.

After Python’s death, Apollo founded his oracle at Delphi. Its priestess became known as the Pythia. Delphi was also said to lie at the centre of the world. Zeus had released an eagle from each end of the earth, and the two flights met there. The site was therefore called the world’s omphalos, the Greek word for navel. The oracle was consulted by people from many nations, rather than belonging exclusively to one nation.

Apollo instituted the Pythian Games in memory of his victory over Python. In one account, the winners received crowns of beech leaves because the laurel had not yet become Apollo’s tree. In another, Zeus ordered Apollo to undergo purification at Tempe for killing Python, and the games were established as a penitential observance. Apollo did not obey this order in that account. He went instead to Aigialaea with Artemis, then sailed to Tarrha in Crete.

Apollo and Poseidon came to Laomedon in mortal disguise and offered to work for him. For one year, they served the king. In most accounts, Poseidon built the walls of Troy while Apollo tended Laomedon’s flocks. Other accounts say that both gods helped fortify the city. Their service was carried out at Zeus’s command, either as punishment for an attempted revolt against him or so that they could test Laomedon’s reported wickedness.

When the work was complete, Laomedon refused to pay the wages he had promised. He even threatened to bind the gods, sell them into slavery, and cut off their ears. Apollo answered by sending a pestilence over the land. Poseidon sent a man-eating sea monster to attack Troy. Laomedon learnt from an oracle that the troubles would end only if he offered his daughter Hesione to the monster.

Laomedon chained Hesione to cliffs beside the sea. Heracles then arrived and agreed to save her in return for the splendid mares kept by Laomedon. These were said to have been given to the king by Zeus as compensation for the loss of his son Ganymede. Heracles killed the sea monster and rescued Hesione, but Laomedon again failed to provide the promised payment. Another account says that Heracles had left the mares of Diomedes in Laomedon’s keeping.

Because Laomedon had cheated Apollo, Poseidon, and Heracles, Heracles later returned with warriors and conquered Troy. Hesione was taken as a prize. The accounts differ over some details of the service and the promised reward, but each preserves Laomedon’s refusal to pay after the walls had been built.

Pan challenged Apollo to a musical contest. He claimed that his seven-reed pipe played more skilfully than Apollo’s lyre. Tmolus was appointed judge. He sat on Mount Tmolus, cleared the trees from his ears, and prepared to listen.

Pan played first on his rustic pipe. King Midas happened to be present, and he enjoyed Pan’s music. Apollo then played his lyre. Tmolus judged Apollo the better musician, and the other judges agreed.

Midas objected to the judgement. He preferred the uncouth sound of Pan’s pipe and protested against Apollo’s victory. Apollo became angry and gave Midas the ears of an ass.

Midas was horrified by his altered appearance. He hid the ears beneath a cap so that his subjects would not see them. His barber could not remain ignorant of the secret. Midas bribed him with valuable gifts and ordered him never to reveal it.

The barber could no longer keep the secret to himself. He dug a hole in the ground and spoke the secret into it. Reeds grew from the ground and repeated that King Midas had ass’s ears.

Apollo travelled to the far north, beyond mighty mountains, where the pious Hyperboreans lived. During his absence, he was said to be among them, although another account placed him in Lycia. The Hyperborean land lay beyond the ordinary reach of the Greek sanctuaries, yet Apollo's connection with Delos remained active. He was summoned again to the festival by the paean, even while he was far away.

Among the Hyperboreans, Apollo received extraordinary honours. He sacrificed hecatombs of asses there, a rite associated with the form of Apollo worshipped in the far north. The Hyperboreans were linked with other communities through a shared cult, and visits were regularly exchanged between those states. Offerings also reached Delos through Apollonia in Epirus and Dodona. Some traditions connected these gifts with a route that continued north-westwards as far as Britain and included Athens.

The memory of Hyperborean visitors remained at Delos. Mycenaean graves on the island were worshipped as the graves of Hyperborean Maidens who had once come there. Delos itself was a small island without springs and served as the central market and common sanctuary of the Cyclades. Apollo's presence was repeatedly renewed there through festival song, even when he was believed to be in the distant north.

After receiving the honours of the Hyperboreans, Apollo returned to Delphi. His northern journey formed part of the wider tradition that placed him beyond the mighty mountains among a people devoted to his worship. Another tradition kept him in Lycia instead, so the place of his absence was not fixed in every account.