Don't Know Much About Mythology - Kenneth C. Davis [98]
Apollo (Apollo) The son of Zeus and the Titan Leto, Apollo (who is also known as Phoebus, which means “bright” or “radiant”) is worshipped as the god of light. Although not the true sun god, Apollo is later identified with the sun and is also seen as the civilizing god of music, poetry, and prophecy, as well as the protector of flocks and herds.*
Apollo’s origins in Greek mythology are mysterious, and he may have been introduced to Greece as late as during the Dark Ages. But he was well known to Homer and Hesiod, and becomes one of the greatest gods in the Greek pantheon. Associated with the healing arts and medicine, he is also the god of disease whose arrows bring plagues. Apollo’s role in prophecy was especially important, and his cult shrine at Delphi was one of the most significant in Greece. (See below, What was the Delphic Oracle?)
By the classical period in Greece, Apollo represented the Greek ideal of vigorous manhood, but he was not especially lucky in love. In one myth, he falls in love with one of his priestesses, the Sibyl at Cumae, one of the mythical women gifted with the power of prophecy. Taken by her beauty, Apollo offers to give her as many years in her life as grains of sand she can scoop in her hand. She accepts his offer, but then refuses to sleep with Apollo. Keeping his word, Apollo grants her long life, but denies her everlasting youth, so she becomes a shriveled old crone.
In another myth, Apollo falls in love with Daphne, a nymph. Unimpressed by Apollo’s come-on, she prays for help to her father, a river god, and is changed into a laurel tree. The laurel became Apollo’s sacred plant, and the crown of laurels a symbol of victory in Greece, adorning the heads of winners at the Olympic games.
Apollo also has a taste for young men. One of these is Hyacinth, a beautiful boy. While he and Apollo are practicing the discus, a gust of wind causes the discus to hit Hyacinth in the head and kill him. From the dead youth’s blood, Apollo creates the flower called a hyacinth—a white flower with splashes of red.
Ares (Mars) A son of Zeus and Hera, Ares is the god of battle, blood lust, and war—in its destructive sense, as opposed to Athena, who represents the orderly use of war to defend the community. Disliked by Zeus, and less popular among the gods, Ares was not widely worshipped by the Greeks, but was highly admired and honored by the more militaristic Romans as Mars. Although he had no wife, Ares did have a very steamy affair with Aphrodite. Among their children were Phobos (Panic) and Deimos (Fear), who accompanied Ares on the battlefield. They also provide the names of the two moons that orbit the planet Mars. (While Ares ruled the battlefield, the honored title of goddess of victory in battle went to Nike, rewarded by Zeus because she fought with the gods against the Titans. Otherwise unimportant in mythology, Nike is also the goddess of athletic victory—hence her connection to the footwear with the Olympian price tag.)
In the Odyssey, Homer tells a humorous story of the adulterous couple being “caught in the act” by the cuckolded Hephaestus, the lame blacksmith god to whom Aphrodite was married. When the sun god Helios sees the lovers in bed as he crosses the sky, he snitches on them to Hephaestus, who has fashioned a net hidden in the bed that catches Aphrodite and Ares in flagrante. Suspended in midair, Aphrodite and Ares become an Olympian spectacle when Hephaestus summons all of the other gods to see the netted lovers in this awkward, compromising position. In Homer