Ancient Greek god. The origins of Apollo remain uncertain. In myth he is the child of Leto and Zeus. His worship may have come into Greece from Macedonia; or possibly it travelled westward from Asia Minor. Often he was termed ‘Lykeios’: if the epithet means ‘wolf-god’, he may originally have been a god of shepherds. This hypothesis would explain an active concern with music. It leaves unexplained the fact that he is constantly shown in art and literature with the kithara or lyra rather than the shepherd’s panpipes (syrinx) or the aulos, although several Greek writers did associate him with reed-blown instruments (e.g. Euripides, Alcestis, 576–7).
The Homeric evidence indicates that Apollo's nature was complex. In the early passages of Iliad, book i, as the avenging archer-god, he angrily sends shafts of pestilence upon the Greek host, while at its close (603–4) he appears as the lyre-god accompanying the Muses' song; and in the Odyssey (xv.410–11) his arrows represent the painless cause of natural death. For Hesiod (Theogony, 94–5), writing perhaps during the later 8th century, as for the unknown authors of the Homeric Hymn to Apollo (iii, 131, 182–5 are typical) in the succeeding period, his instrument is always the lyre and his musical role that of accompanist, not singer. The Homeric Hymn to Apollo also refers to Apollo's feat of seizing Delphi for his abode by destroying its guardian dragon, an adventure memorialized in musical compositions such as the Pythic Nomos (described by Strabo, Geography, ix.3.10) and a paean probably composed for the Pythian games of 138 bce. The Homeric Hymn to Hermes (iv.502) contains the first known reference to his singing; Aeschylus (frag.350) continued the tradition.
During the 5th century Apollo came to be regarded as the most vivid and brilliant figure among the 12 Olympian gods. Pythagorean thought, which credited music with a cosmic significance, had already long embodied many attributes of his worship; there is evidence that these included catharsis and ecstasy. In general, however, the god's province was taken to be all that is serene, ordered and rational. Plato's preference for ‘the instruments of Apollo’ (Republic, iii.399e1–3) comes out of a belief that precisely such qualities characterized the music of the kithara. Here the contrast is with the aulete Marsyas; far more commonly, during much of the Hellenic period, it involved Dionysusinstead.
Vase paintings of the early 5th century show Apollo with the massive kithara. During succeeding decades he was represented as playing the smaller and lighter lyra. Traditions connecting him with music were particularly strong at his cult centre, Delphi, where the Pythian games honouring him began as exclusively musical competitions. Two of the most important surviving fragments of ancient Greek music are the paeans composed for the Pythian games of 128 bce (the precise dates are debated); the later of these, composed by Limenius, preserves an extended narrative of several deeds of Apollo and a final prayer to the god (see Greece, §I, and Hymn, §I). The earliest form of the paean was apparently a hymn of supplication addressed to him as healer (as in Iliad, i.473, and the Homeric Hymn to Apollo, iii.513–19). Symbolic references to the lyre by poets and philosophers helped to establish his special place in Greek thought. Later, for the Romans, Apollo embodied the supreme values of music as a performing art and provided an ideal model of the professional musician.
A. Fleury: ‘L'hymne à Apollon retrouvé à Delphes et la musique religieuse’, Etudes religieuses, philosophiques, historiques et littéraires, lxii (1894), 318–21
T. Reinach: Les hymnes delphiques à Apollon avec notes musicales (Paris, 1912)
E.E. Britt: La lyre d'Apollon (Paris, 1931)
W.K.C. Guthrie: The Greeks and their Gods (London, 1950, 2/1954/R), 73–87, 183–204
J. Duchemin: La houlette et la lyre, i: Hermès et Apollon (Paris, 1960)
H. Hommel: ‘Das Apollonorakel in Didyma: Pflege alter Musik im spätantiken Gottesdienst’, Festschrift für Friedrich Smend zum 70. Geburtstag (Berlin, 1963), 7–18
H. Koller: ‘Apollon Musagetes’, Musik und Dichtung im alten Griechenland (Berne and Munich, 1963), 58–78
G. Wille: Musica romana (Amsterdam, 1967), 515–20, 533–6
W. Burkert: Griechische Religion der archaischen und klassischen Epoche (Stuttgart, 1977; Eng. trans., 1985)
L. Vorreiter: ‘Apollon-, Orpheus-, und Thamyris-Lyren’, Archiv für Musikorganologie, ii (1977), 113–33
For further bibliography see Greece, §I.
WARREN ANDERSON/THOMAS J. MATHIESEN