APOLLO. - God of Greece, one of the most popular deities of Hellenic religion. His origin is uncertain, and his name resists the efforts of philologists to arrive at a satisfactory etymology; even his original character is unknown.
For some, Apollo is the quintessential Greek god, Dorian or Ionian; for others, he is a foreign deity who would have subdued pre-Hellenic divinities. Depending on the etymologies, the importance given to individual ancient sources or to particular aspects of the god, Apollo has been considered to be originally from Asia Minor (Leleges or Lycians), or from the Aegean, or he would be a poorly documented Hittite god, Apulunas, who in turn would trace back to the Babylonians.
No other deity exhibits the multiplicity of functions found in Apollo. He is a god of agriculture, averting diseases and harmful animals from the crops and bringing them to maturity; he is the god of the woods. As a pastoral god, he grants health to flocks: legend even knows him in this aspect, making him serve as a shepherd for Admetus and having him steal the cattle from Hermes. He was also the god of hunting, of youth and of the gymnasium, god of contests and the first victor at Olympia, protector in wrestling and in war. He was the god of roads, of commerce and of markets, god of mountains, of the sea and of navigation: in this last attribute he often had sanctuaries on the seashore and was especially known as Apollo Delphinius, with widespread cult in Crete and the Peloponnese. He was the protector of colonization, founder of new cities (Apollo Archegetes), and oaths were sworn in his name. He was the god of music, master of the Muses whose choruses he led (Apollo Musagetes); his favored instrument was the lyre. He was preeminently the purifier of moral and physical evils, the one who freed men and cities from every defilement and pointed the way to expiation: in Aeschylus he alone can redeem the matricide Orestes. Physical evils were the result of the god’s wrath, but he could heal them, just as he healed moral ones; thus he was also a god of health and a physician, though in this role he was partly supplanted by Asclepius, whom a legend made his son. He was a god of light and the sun. Some consider this his original aspect, while others note that his identification with the sun does not go back beyond the 5th century B.C. and is due above all to the influence of Asia Minor, where numerous solar deities were identified with Apollo. He enjoyed great popularity as a god of divination and oracles. At times he granted mortals knowledge of the future (Cassandra, the Sibyls, etc.), but generally divination was linked to individual sanctuaries.
The best-known oracle of Apollo was that of Apollo Pythius at Delphi, which the Homeric Hymn claims the god himself founded after his victory over the serpent Python, which was devastating the land. In reality, Apollo seems to have replaced an older earth oracle. The priestess mounted the sacred tripod and gave responses under the intoxicating influence of vapors rising from a chasm in the ground. The Delphic oracle exerted great influence on private and public life and was the religious center of the Greek world, its colonies, and those who came into contact with the Greeks: the Lydian kings sent to consult it; Syracuse, Cyrene, and the Etruscan cities of Caere and Spina deposited money and treasures at Delphi; Rome sent envoys during the siege of Veii and after Cannae. According to Plutarch, Sulla wore as an amulet a golden statuette of the Delphic god. The importance of Delphi persisted until the fall of paganism: capricious oracles circulated, almost to legitimize the new Christian religion. In Asia Minor the oracles of Patara, of Apollo Clarus at Claros, of Apollo Didymaeus near Miletus, etc., were famous. At Delphi Apollo gave responses only from spring to autumn; in winter the god dwelt among the Hyperboreans. According to another legend he resided at Patara in Lycia: this legend is peculiar to Delos, the center of the cult of Apollo Delius, rival to Delphi and in some periods as powerful and famous as II. At Delos the cult unites the twin deities Apollo and Artemis and their mother Leto, and there is localized the legend of Apollo’s birth.
Some have noted contradictions in the cult and attributes of Apollo, but the fusion is ancient and already complete in the Iliad, where Apollo is, with Zeus and Athena, the most powerful god; he is the brother of Artemis, the “far-shooter” armed with a silver bow whose arrows bring disease and death, the god of music who leads the choruses of the Muses, the prophetic god. He bears the epithet Phoebus, which some connect with light, others with mantic divination.
The festivals in Apollo’s honor were not numerous. The principal ones were the Carnea, celebrated especially in Dorian lands; the Hyacinthia, also mainly Dorian; the Thargelia at Athens and in Ionian cities; and the Daphnephoria.
The most common attributes of Apollo were the bow and arrows, the lyre, and—connected with the cult of Delphi—the tripod and the omphalos. Among the animals sacred to him, the deer and the stag were particularly frequent, as well as the wolf in the Peloponnese; among trees, the laurel born from the metamorphosis of Daphne, the maiden vainly loved by Apollo, and at Delos, the palm.
At Rome Apollo entered at the end of the regal period. He was not assimilated to indigenous deities but, both there and in Etruria, retained his own name. To archaic Veii belongs the life-size Apollo, dressed in a chiton and mantle, an outstanding example of Etruscan coroplastic art, found in excavations of 1915 and now in the Villa Giulia Museum. In 433 B.C., during a pestilence, he received a temple in the Prata Flaminia, which was dedicated in 431. In 212 B.C. the ludi Apollinares were introduced, becoming permanent in 208. The cult of Apollo received great impetus from Augustus, who built a temple to him on the Palatine. At Rome Apollo remained chiefly a healing god, and under this aspect his cult spread to the provinces, where he was assimilated to indigenous deities such as Belenus and Grannus. His cult continued in the countryside even after the fall of paganism: in 529 St. Benedict destroyed an altar of Apollo at Monte Cassino.
Ancient art represented Apollo in various forms, often in contrast with other deities or heroes. The bibliography below lists the principal works on Apollo.
BIBL.:
O. Gruppe, Griechische Mythologie und Religionsgeschichte, München 1906, pp. 116-136, 1206-1210;
A. B. Cook, Zeus. A Study in Ancient Religion, Cambridge 1914-1940, I, pp. 1-112;
E. Bethe, Apollon, in Pauly-Wissowa, Real-Encycl., I, 2, Stuttgart 1894, cols. 2605-2656;
L. R. Farnell, The Cults of the Greek States, Oxford 1896-1909, I, pp. 169-239;
P. Decharme, La religion grecque, Paris 1904, pp. 205-230;
A. Delatte, Les conceptions de l’enthousiasme chez les anciens, Paris 1934, pp. 145-168;
A. Severyns, Le cycle épique dans l’école d’Aristarque, Paris 1928, pp. 105-110;
A. J. Festugière, L’idéal religieux des Grecs et l’évangile, Paris 1932, pp. 113-120;
A. B. Cook, Apollo in Aegyptus, in JHS, 53 (1933), pp. 23-49.
The first person to attribute the Epistle to the Hebrews to him was (v.); this hypothesis, spread by F. Blek (1828) and followed by G. Lünemann, A. Hilgenfeld, O. Pfleiderer, H. Alford and others, was taken up by Catholics J. Ev. Belser (1901) and I. Rohr (Der Hebräerbrief, 4th ed., Bonn 1932: A. was the “editor”) though only on vague conjectures (so-called “Alexandrianisms” of allegorical exegesis and style). The opinion of E. H. Plumptre (The writings of Apollos, in Expositor, 1 [1875], pp. 329-48, 409-35), who attributes to A. the Alexandrian book of Wisdom, was accepted by some (P. Heinisch, Das Buch der Weisheit, Münster 1912, p. XXIII).
APOLLONI, Girolamo. – Missionary of the Josephite order, b. at Carrè (Vicenza) in 1865, d. 20 Nov. 1932 at Rome. Among the best disciples of the theologian Murialdo, founder of the Pious Society of St Joseph (Josephines), he was an educator of young people at Turin, Venice, Vicenza, and in 1904 went to Bengasi under the auspices of the Italian Missionary Association to found a mission for the Moorish victims of the slave trade. The mission, situated in the oasis of Fuchiat, took in more than fifty boys and twenty girls, and built schools, workshops and gymnasia. The consuls, especially the Italian one, collaborated with A. so that, in accordance with international conventions, the Turkish government would issue them a freedom pass for slaves who had managed to escape. A. also founded a dispensary-clinic, a pawnshop and a sharecropping farm. Returning to Italy (1911), until 1921 he ran the parish of the Immaculate at the Tiburtine Gate in Rome. He was superior of the Pious Society, and then again parish priest of the same church until his death.
APOLLONIA, St. – Virgin of Alexandria, martyred in Alexandria during a local uprising against Christians shortly before the outbreak of the persecution of Decius (248-49). St Dionysius, bishop of the city and eyewitness of the events, gives an account in a letter to Fabius, bishop of Antioch, extensive extracts of which have been preserved by Eusebius of Caesarea (Hist. eccl., VI, 41). After speaking of the sufferings of other Christians, Dionysius refers to those of A., a remarkable virgin; when seized, her teeth were knocked out by repeated blows to the face. A pyre was then lit outside the city, and the pagans threatened to burn her alive unless she uttered blasphemous words. Granted a moment’s respite at her request, A. took advantage of it to hurl herself into the flames where she met her death. In the eyes of Dionysius, A. was a martyr and as such was venerated in the Alexandrian Church. When speaking of suicide, St Augustine (De civ. Dei, I, 26) also treats the case of those Christians who spontaneously embraced the death prepared for them, justifying their act. However the Church made no distinction and in her worship united such martyrs with the others. Venerated also in the West, A. was invoked by popular devotion as patroness against toothache. Later legends make of A. a Roman martyr under Julian the Apostate.
APOLLONIA – APOLLONIO IL SENATORE
A brief prayer-oath, a narrative song and a Tuscan sacred representation, of which we have news dating back to the fifteenth century, are inspired by the legend. Paolo Toschi