Apollo is one of the Olympian deities in classical Greek and Roman religion and Greek and Roman mythology. The national divinity of the Greeks, Apollo has been recognized as a god of archery, music and dance, truth and prophecy, healing and diseases, the Sun and light, poetry, and more.
Apollo's symbols were the lyre, the tripod, the laurel tree and the navel stone.
Apollo was the god of practically everything – including but not limited to music, poetry, art, prophecy, truth, archery, plague, healing, sun and light (although the god is always associated with the sun, the original sun god was the titan Helios, but everyone forgot about him).
His attributes include the laurel wreath and lyre. He often appears in the company of the Muses. Animals sacred to Apollo include roe deer, swans, cicadas, hawks, ravens, crows, foxes, mice, and snakes.
He was also often depicted with one or both of his two main attributes: a bow and a lyre. The bow symbolized distance, death, terror, and awe, while the lyre more gently proclaimed the joy of communion with Olympus through music, poetry, and dance.
APOLLO, CORONIS, AND ASCLEPIUS
Unfortunately, Apollo's bird, the raven, saw Coronis in the arms of another lover and told the god, who in a quick and violent rage shot her with one of his arrows. As she was dying she told him that their unborn child would die with her.
Apollo is the Greek God of the sun, light, music, truth, healing, poetry, and prophesy, and one of the most well-known gods in Greek mythology. Known as the ideal of youth and athleticism, Apollo is the son of the Zeus and Leto; and his twin sister, Artemis, is the goddess of the moon and the hunt.
Apollo's powers include superhuman strength, flight, and near invulnerability (the character has been shown entering a lava flow to deactivate a volcano, and walking on the surface of the sun). His eyes are constructed to concentrate solar energy into laser-like blasts.
Apollo. White: Apollo is strongly associated with the sun, with archery, with truth-telling, and with healing.
Having fallen head over heels for the mortal man Hyacinthus, the god Apollo gives up his shrine at Delphi, his famous lyre, and his bow and arrow, to spend all his time with his new love. On one tragic day, while the couple is having a friendly competition of discus throwing, Apollo makes a throw that cuts the clouds.
Greek God Apollo and the Trojan War
It was when Paris fired an arrow at Achilles that Apollo saw his chance, using his incredible skills in archery to aim the arrow straight into Achilles's weak tendon, thus ending his life.
Python, in Greek mythology, a huge serpent that was killed by the god Apollo at Delphi either because it would not let him found his oracle, being accustomed itself to giving oracles, or because it had persecuted Apollo's mother, Leto, during her pregnancy.
In honor of his lover, Apollo makes a flower spring up from Hyacinthus' blood. Confusingly, this flower isn't actually what we today call a hyacinth. Most sources agree that it was most likely an iris or a larkspur, since the myth tells us that Apollo writes on the flower the sound of his grief (Ai, Ai).
Other myths speak of the close connection between dolphins and the Greek gods, like Apollo, who turned himself into a dolphin so that he could direct a ship of merchants to his temple on Mount Parnassus. Dolphins were also trusted companions and messengers of the gods.
The first Apollo moon landing was a spectacular national and technological achievement.
The Apollo archetype personifies the aspect of the personality that wants clear definitions, is drawn to master a skill, values order and harmony. The Apollo archetype favors thinking over feeling, distance over closeness, objective assessment over subjective intuition.
Apollo was loved by both gods and humans, women and men; and, more often than not, he loved them back as well. However, as it often happens, the most famous of his love affairs are the ones which didn't end well.
As Homer relates, Apollo was physician to the Olympian gods, whose wounds or diseases he cured by means of the root of the peony. This cure inspired the name “Paean” and the epithet “sons of Paean” that has been applied to physicians.
It was because the wolf overcame the bull that Danaus won the kingdom. Accordingly, believing that Apollo had brought the wolf on the herd, he founded a sanctuary of Apollo Lycius." See below for a silver coin from Argos depicting the wolf sent by god Apollo.
Python was the chthonic enemy of Apollo, who slew it and remade its former home his own oracle, the most famous in Greece. In some myths the dragon was called Delphyne.
The Golden Bow is the bow of Apollo, the Greek god of archery.
In Greek mythology, the raven, originally white, was the messenger of Apollo. In the legends, the raven delivered the message that Coronis, Apollo's lover, had been unfaithful. Apollo was so furious he burnt the messenger raven and that is why they are now black (Hamilton, p280).