Roman365 Directory

Apollo was the god of the sun. Each day he drove his chariot of fiery horses across the sky to give light to the world. He was also the god of healing, so sick people prayed to him.

Cicero tells that Apollo came from the land of the Hyperboreans, the dwellers-behind-the-North-wind. He departed from his temple at Delphi for three months every year to live among the Hyperboreans, from whom straw-wrapped offerings were delivered each year to the temple of Apollo on Delos.

Apollo is the god of prophecy, of musical and artistic inspiration, of archers and of healing.

In Greek mythology, Apollo and his twin sister, ARTEMIS, were the children of ZEUS and LETO and were born on the island of DELOS. Hence, Apollo was often called the Delian god, and Delos long remained a center of his worship. He was also identified closely with DELPHI, in central Greece, where he killed the serpent PYTHON and founded the most renowned center for prophecy in the ancient world, the shrine of the Delphic Oracle.

Apollo is associated principally with music, prophecy, sickness, and medicine. He is also known as Phoebus Apollo and is called the Far Shooter and the Pythian. (He has no separate Roman name.) His attributes in iconography are the cithara, or sometime the lyre, the bow, the fawn, and the tripod. He is often depicted with his sister, Artemis.