7. It seems, therefore, that whatever might have been the poetical attributes of Apollo in late times, in his religious character he was never an elementary deity, the essence of whose godhead is a personification of the creative powers of nature. None of the characteristic marks of such a religion are discoverable in his worship. So far from being a god of generation(1217) and production, he remains unmarried and youthful; for it is easy to see that his poetical amour with the nymph Daphne, and his sons, mentioned in poetry and prophecy, have no connexion with his worship. In his sacred rites and symbols there is no trace of the adoration of the generative powers, like those occurring in the ancient Arcadian worship of Hermes, the Argive fables of Here, or the Attic legends of Hephæstus and Athene. The worship of Apollo is even still more widely removed from the boisterous and frantic orgies so conspicuous in the Thracian rites of Dionysus. And although this latter worship flourished by the side of Helicon and Parnassus, near the Pythian temple, and both kinds of religious worship were practised in the immediate neighbourhood of each other,(1218) yet the religious feelings and rites which distinguished the services of the two gods always remained dissimilar.
In the subsequent discussion we shall accordingly take for granted the original diversity of Apollo and the sun; and though the rites of the worship of Apollo, as preserved and recorded in later times, are doubtless of greater antiquity than any written documents which either we or the Greeks possessed, it will be convenient first to state the clearer and more intelligible accounts of Homer on the subject of Apollo, his divine character and worship.
§ 1. Homer’s Conception of Apollo. § 2. Apollo as a punishing deity. § 3. Apollo as a beneficent deity. § 4. Explanation of the name Pæan. § 5. Of the name Agyieus. § 6. Of the name Apollo. § 7. Of the name Phœbus. § 8. Of the name Lyceus. § 9. Religious Attributes of Apollo.
1. Homer, as we have already seen, had, both from hearsay and personal observation, acquired a very accurate knowledge of the Cretan worship of Apollo in the Smintheum, in the citadel of Troy, in Lycia near mounts Ida and Cragus, as well as of Pytho and the Delian palm-tree. His picture of Apollo is, however, considerably changed by the circumstance of the god acting as a friend to the Trojans and an enemy to the Greeks, although both equally honour him with sacrifices and pæans. Yet he generally appears to the Greeks in a darker and more unfavourable view. “_Dread the son of Zeus_,” says the priest of Chryse to the Greeks, “_he walks dark as night; the sure and deadly arrows rattle on his shoulders_.” His punishments are sudden sickness, rapid pestilence, and death, the cause and occasion of which is generally unseen; yet sometimes he grants death as a blessing.(1219) His arrows are said to wound from afar, because they are unforeseen and unexpected. He is called the far-darting god;(1220) his divine vengeance never misses its aim. He appears in the terror of his might when from the heights of the citadel he stimulates the Trojans with a loud war-cry to the combat;(1221) and leads them on, a cloud around his shoulders, and the ægis in his hand, into the thick of the battle,(1222) like Ares himself,(1223) though far from showing the boisterous confidence of that deity. Achilles, to whom he is indeed particularly hostile, calls him the most pernicious of all the gods. Even when he appears amongst the gods, “_all tremble before him in the palace of Zeus, and rise from their seats; while Latona alone rejoices that she has produced so strong a son and so powerful an archer_.”(1224)