Apollo

The Iliad opens with Apollo. Agamemnon dishonored Chryses, priest of Apollo, by refusing to ransom his daughter. Apollo descended from Olympus “like nightfall” and shot plague arrows into the Greek camp for nine days. The Greeks died by the hundreds. The god of light, music, and healing introduced himself by killing.

Delphi

Apollo’s oracle at Delphi was the most powerful religious institution in the ancient Greek world. The Pythia, a priestess seated over a fissure in the rock, spoke in Apollo’s voice. Kings and generals came from across the Mediterranean to consult her. The oracle operated for over a thousand years, from at least the eighth century BCE to 393 CE. In 2001, geologists confirmed that ethylene gas seeps from fault lines directly beneath the temple site. The gas produces the trance state ancient sources describe. The mechanism is now understood. The accuracy is harder to explain.

The Double Nature

Apollo heals and Apollo destroys. He is the god of medicine (his son Asclepius founded the healing arts) and the god of plague. He is the god of truth (the oracle never lies, though it speaks in riddles) and the god who flayed the satyr Marsyas alive after winning a music contest. He is order, light, and reason. He is also the archer who kills from a distance, the god whose arrows carry pestilence.

The Origin Problem

Apollo has no convincing Indo-European etymology. He does not appear securely in Linear B texts (a possible reading a-pe-ro-ne is disputed). He may be Anatolian in origin, or pre-Greek, or an import from the Near East. For a god so central to Greek religion, the gap is striking. His twin Artemis has clearer Anatolian connections. Apollo arrived in the Greek pantheon from somewhere, and the traces of the journey have been lost.