But perhaps the idea that Apollo and the Muses were staid comes more from “classic” interpretations than anything in the texts?īoth Apollo and Shiva are connected to hidden knowledge. One finds it hard to connect the presumably staid dancing of Apollo and the Muses with the presumed wild and orgiastic dancing of Shiva and his spirits. Shiva, as the crescent moon on his forehead indicates, is connected to the moon. While Apollo remains connected only with lyre music and dancing to the lyre (that is with stringed instruments related to the bow), Shive has taken over all music, including especially flute music to which Apollo remains hostile. Shiva remains a hunter while Apollo is more connected with herding. Shiva is an archer god like Apollo, and a god of buffalo, which fits with Apollo's connection with cattle. But this is not confirmed in surviving Orphic documents.Īpollo is likely to be a reflex of an earlier archer god, cognate with the Hindu Rudra (now usually known as Shiva), the Semitic Reshpu/Reshep, and the Norse god Ullr. There is also a tradition found once that the legendary Orpheus claimed the sun as chief god and called him Apollo. This is the earliest example of a religious connection between sun god and Apollo. I know of only two: one mention in a fragment of Euripides’ “Phaethon”, a play in which the speaker is actually named as Helios. It also occurs iwrongly n some modern books, none of which ever provides a single passage in any mythological text which equates the chariot driving Helios of Rhodes, son of Hyperion and Theia with Apollo son of Zeus and Leto. One finds it in Bullfinch’s “Mythology” and in the story of “The Pomegranate Seeds” in Nathaniel Hawthornes’ “Tanglewood Tales”. But one can’t always be sure, especially when ancient religious texts which connected Apollo with the sun were also common knowledge.ĭespite this, the identification of Phoebus the sun god with Phoebus Apollo had become standard in Victorian times. They seem, at least so far as I can tell, to know they are talking about Phoebus the sun-god, and not Phoebus Apollo. In classic Latin verse it was customary to refer to the sun as Phoebus in his car or chariot. They are never identified with one another. In Ovid’s “Metamorphoses' for example it is quite clear when Ovid is speaking about Phoebus the sun and when he is speaking about Phoebus Apollo. But this Sol was also sometimes called Phoebus, a Greek word meaning “Shining” which was also a traditional name for Apollo. In Roman tradition, Helios was simply translated by the Latin word “Sol” meaning “Sun”. Apollo usually ended up as the light or the sun.Įveryday, Helios rides the chariot of the sun, to give light and heat to the world. Philosophers usually claimed to know nothing about the perfect gods, and the gods of tradition were explained as either famous mortals of early days who had been imagine as gods or were explained as daimons, that is a sort of lesser divine being, or were explained allegorically: Zeus was the sky, Hera was air, Hephaistos was fire, and so forth. But remember, by this time all educated people thought that the physical sun was a ball of fire that orbited a spherical earth, not a humanoid god in a chariot who rose every day from the east, descended in the west, and then sailed in a cup back to the east, as found in traditional mythology. Even Zeus was sometimes connected with the sun. Dionysos was also sometimes connected with the sun. However in Greek religious belief (as opposed to mythological tradition) Apollo was increasingly connected or identified with the sun. Prominent children ascribed to him are Trophonius, Amphiaraus, and Asclepius.

Are we to imagine the sky without a sun for two years? Apollo is normally the son of Zeus by Leto. How could a sun god sbe banished to earth for a year to serve as a cattle-herder at Troy and again in the sevice of King Admetus. And this stays almost entirely true in mythological texts until they end. He is also god of cattle-herding and plague. “Apollo” (when we first see him in Homer and other early sources) is a god of archery, hunting, prophecy, lyre-music, and dancing.

Prominent children ascribed to him are Phaeton, King Aeetes of Colchis, and Circe. He is usually called the son of the Titans Hyperion and Theia or Euryphaesssa. He is connected with horses and chariots and sometimes with cattle. He was also worshipped as a god by the Greek, especially in Rhodes.

Helios god of the sun