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CORONIS 100.00%

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See ASCLEPIUS
 
TELESPHORUS 31.62%

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In Greek mythology, a boy who was regarded as the genius of health. (See ASCLEPIUS [and esp. Journal of Hellenic Studies, iii 283-297].)
 
PODALIRIUS 30.35%
Son of Asclepius and Epione. Like his brother Machaon (q.v.), leech to the Greeks before Troy, and a brave warrior besides.
 
VIRBIUS 23.83%
An Italian god, identified with Hippolytus, who was raised to life by Asclepius, and worshipped together with Diana as presiding genius of the wood and the chase. (Cp.DIANA and HIPPOLYTUS.)
 
PHLEGYAS 18.95%

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Son of Ares and Chryse, father of Ixion and Coronis; king of the powerful robber-tribe Phlegyae in the neighbourhood of the Boeotian Orchomenus. To revenge his daughter (see ASCLEPIUS), he set fire to the temple of Apollo at Delphi, and was killed with all his people either by the arrows of the god or by the bolt of Zeus. He had also to atone for his sin in the underworld.
 
ASCLEPLUS 16.61%
The Greek god of Medicine, according to the common account a son of the healing god Apollo by Coronis, daughter of a Thessalian prince Phlegyas. Coronis was killed by Artemis for unfaithfulness, and her body was about to be burnt on the pyre, when Apollo snatched the boy out of the flames, and handed him over to the wise centaur Chiron, who instructed him in the cure of all diseases. According to the local legend of Epidaurus, Coronis, having accompanied her father on a campaign to the Peloponnesus, is secretly delivered of the child, and exposes it on a mountain near that town, where it is nourished by a herd of goats. Such was the skill of Asclepius that he brought even dead men to life; so that Zeus, either for fear of his setting men altogether free from death, or at the complaint of Hades, killed him with his thunderbolt. Apollo in revenge slew all the Cyclopes who forged the thunderbolts, as a punishment for which he had to serve Admetus for a time. In Homer and Pindar, Asclepius is still but a hero, a cunning leech, and father of two heroes fighting before Troy, Machaon and Podaleirius. But he was afterwards universally worshipped as the god of healing, in groves, beside medicinal springs, and on mountains. The seats of his worship served also as laces of cure, where patients left thank-offerings and votive tablets describing their complaint and the manner of its cure. Often the cure was effected by the dreams of the patients, who were required to sleep in the sacred building, in which there sometimes stood, as might be expected, a statue of Sleep or Dreaming. His worship extended all over Greece with its islands and colonies; his temples were especially numerous in the Peloponnesus, the most famous being that of Epidaurus, where a great festival with processions and combats was held in his honour every five years. Next in estimation stood the temple at Pergamus, a colony from Epidanrus; that of Tricca in Thessaly enjoyed a reputation of long standing, and in the islands that Cos, the birthplace of the physician Hippocrates. At Rome, the worship of the deity there called Aesculapius was introduced by order of the Sibylline books, on occasion of the plague of 293 B.C., and the god was brought from Epidaurus in the shape of a snake. For in the form of a snake, the symbol of rejuvenescence and of prophecy, he was wont to reveal himself, and snakes were accordingly kept in his temples. He had a sanctuary and a much frequented sanatorium on the island in the Tiber. With him were worshipped his wife Epione ( = soother), his two sons mentioned above, and several daughters, especially Hygieia,(q.v.); also Telesphoros ( = fulness-bringer) the deity of Recovery, who was pictured as a boy. In later times Asclepius was often confounded with the Egyptian Serapis. He is among the most favourite subjects of ancient art; at several places where he was worshipped he had statues of gold and ivory. He is commonly represented with a beard, and resembling Zeus, but with a milder aspect, sometimes with Telesphoros, in a thick veil, or little Hygieia, at his side; his usual attribute is a staff with a serpent coiled round it. The cock was sacrificed to him.
 
SALUS 13.62%

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The personification of health and prosperity among the Romans. As godess of health, she was identified with the Greek Hygieia (q.v.), the daughter of Asclepius, and represented in the same way. As the deity representing the welfare of the Roman people (Salus Publica Populi Romani) she had from the year 302 B.C. a temple on the Quirinal. Under the Empire, she was also worshipped as guardian goddess of the emperors (<illegible>Salus Augusta</illegible>). Prayers were frequently made to her by the priestly colleges and the political bodies, especially at the beginning of the year, in times of sickness, and on the birthdays of the emperors. As her counterpart among the Sabines, we have the goddess Strenia. (See STRENAe.)
 
MACHAON AND PODALIRIUS 13.44%
The sons of Asclepius and Epione, skilled in the art of healing, took part in the expedition to Troy with thirty Thessalian ships, and were there the physicians of the Greeks, besides fighting valiantly. According to post-Homeric legends Machaon was slain by Eurypylus, the son of Telephus, and his corpse was brought by Nestor to Messenia, where, at Gerenia, he had a sepulchre and a temple in which cures were effected. Podalirius, who recognised the madness of Ajax by his burning eyes, stayed with Calchas from the fall of Troy to his death, and then settled at Syrnos in Caria; he had a heroon in Apulia, close to that of Calchas.
 
APOLLONIUS 11.11%
Apollonius of Tyana in Cappadocia, the most celebrated of the Neo-Pythagoreans, lived about the middle of the 1st century A.D.; by a severely ascetic life on the supposed principles of Pythagoras, and by pretended miracles, he obtained such a hold on the multitude that he was worshipped as a god, and set up as a rival to Christ. The account of his life by the elder Philostratus (q.v.) is more romance than history, and offers little to build upon. Having received his philosophical education, and lived in the temple, of Asclepius at Egae till his twentieth year, he divided his patrimony among the poor, and roamed all over the world; he was even said to have reached India and the sources of the Nile. Twice he lived at Rome; first under Nero till the expulsion of the philosophers, and again in Domitian's reign, when he had to answer a charge of conspiring against the emperor. Smuggled out of Rome during his trial, he continued his life as a wandering preacher of morals and worker of marvels for some years longer, and is said to have died at a great age, master of a school at Ephesus. Of his alleged writings, eight-five letters have alone survived.
 
CHIRON 10.65%

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A Centaur, son of Cronus and the Ocean nymph Philyra. By the Naiad nymph Chariclo he was father of Endeis, wife of Aeacus, the mother of Peleus and Telamon, and grandmother of Achilles and Ajax. He is represented in the fable as wise and just, while the other Centaurs are wild and uncivilized. He is the master and instructor of the most celebrated heroes of Greek story, as Actaeon, Jason, Castor, Polydeuces, Achilles, and Asclepius, to whom he teaches the art of healing. Driven by the Lapithae from his former dwelling-place, a cave at the top of Pellion, he took up his abode on the promontory of Malea in Laconia. Here he was wounded accidentally with a poisoned arrow by his friend Heracles, who was pursuing the flying Centaurs (see PHOLUS). To escape from the dreadful pain of the wound, he renounced his immortality in favour of Prometheus, and was set by Zeus among the stars as the constellation Archer.
 
APELLES 10.11%
The greatest painter of antiquity, probably born at Colophon or in the Island of Cos, who lived in the latter half of the 4th century B.C. After studying at Ephesus, and receiving theoretical instruction in his art from Pamphilus at Sicyon, he worked in different parts of the Greek world, but especially in Macedonia, at the court of Philip and that of Alexander, who would let no other artist paint him. While doing ready justice to the merits of contemporaries, especially Protogenes, he could not but recognise that no one surpassed himself in grace and balanced harmony. These qualities, together with his wonderful skill in drawing and his perfect and refined mastery of colouring (however simple his means), made his works the most perfect productions of Greek painting. Among the foremost were the Alexander with lightning in his hand, painted for the temple of Artemis at Ephesus, in which the fingers appeared to stand out of the picture, and the thunderbolt to project from the panel; and the Aphrodite Anadyomene (- rising), painted for the temple of Asclepius at Cos, which Augustus brought to Rome and set up in the temple of Caesar, and which, when the lower part was damaged, no painter would attempt to restore. We owe to Lucian a description of an allegorical picture of Slander by this painter. [Pliny, H. N., 35. 79-97.]
 
SERAPIS 9.35%
The Egyptian god Osiris (q.v.), in the character of god of the lower world; his corresponding incarnation as god of the upper world was the bull Apis. His worship was first independently developed in the time of the Ptolemies in Alexandria, the most beautiful ornament of which city was the magnificent temple of Serapis, the Serapeion. By the elimination of foreign elements, the conception of the god was so widely extended as to include the Egyptian Osiris, the Greek Pluto, the Greek god of healing, Asclepius, and Zeus-Iupiter (see below). This new worship (together with the cult of Isis) rapidly spread from Egypt over the Asiatic coast, the Greek islands, and Greece itself, and found a firm footing even in Rome and Italy, in spite of repeated interference on the part of the State. Under the Empire [particularly in the time of Hadrian] it extended throughout the Roman world." Serapis was especially worshipped as a god of healing, and with his temples were connected dream-oracles that were much resorted to. He was represented, like Pluto, with an animal by his side, having the head of a dog, lion, or wolf, and a serpent coiled round its body. As Zeus-Serapis he is to be seen in the colossal bust in the Vatican (see cut), with a modius, or corn-measure, the symbol of the lower world, upon his head.
 
ARISTIDES 9.03%
Publius Elius Aristides, surnamed Theodorus, was a Greek rhetorician, born at Hadriani in Bithynia A.D 117 or 129. He was educated by the most celebrated rhetoricians of the time, Polemon of Pergamus, and Herodes Atticus of Athens, and made long journeys through Asia, Egypt, Greece and Italy. On his return he was seized with an illness that lasted thirteen years, but which be never allowed to interrupt his studies. His rhetoric, in which he took Demosthenes and Plato for his models, was immensely admired by his contemporaries; he also stood in high favour with the emperors, especially Marcus Aurelius, who at his appeal caused Smyrna to be rebuilt after, an earthquake in 178 A.D. The chief scenes of his activity were Athens and Smyrna, where he died about A.D. 190. Beside two treatises of rhetorical and technical import, we still possess fifty-five of his orations, which he took great pains to elaborate. They are characterized by depth and fulness of thought, and are written in powerful, concise, often difficult and obscure language. Some are eulogies on deities and cities (Rome, for instance, and Smyrna), others are declamations after ancient models, as the Panathenaicus after Isocrates, and the speech against Leptines after Demosthenes. Others treat of his, torical subjects taken from the times of Greek independence. A peculiar interest attaches to the six Sacred Orations, so named because they treat of hints given by Asclepius on the cure of his illness, which he received in a state of somnambulism, and imparted aloud to his friends.
 
PHYSICIANS 8.94%
 
DREAMS 8.56%

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According to Hesiod, Dreams are the children of Night, and brothers and sisters of Death and Sleep. Like these they are represented in the Odyssey as dwelling in the far West, near Oceanus, in the neighbourhood of the sunset and the kingdom of the dead. Deceptive dreams issue from a gate of ivory, true dreams through a gate of horn. The gods above, especially Hermes, have authority over these dream-gods, and send sometimes one, sometimes another, to mankind. On some occasions they create dream-figures themselves, or appear in person under different shapes, in the chamber of the sleeper. The spirits of the departed, too, so long as they are not in the kingdom of Hades, have the power of appearing to the sleeper in dreams. These, the ideas of the Homeric age, survived in the later popular belief. Later poets call dreams the sons of Sleep, and give them separate names. Morpheus, for instance, only appears in various human forms. Ikelos, called also Phobetor, or Terrifyer, assumes the shapes of all kinds of animals as well as that of man: Phantasos only those of inanimate objects. A god of dreams was subsequently worshipped, and represented in works of art, sometimes with Sleep, sometimes alone. He was honoured especially at the seats of dream-oracles and the health-resorts of Asclepius. (See ARTEMIDORUS, 2; INCURATIO; and MANTIC ART.)
 
HIPPOCRATES 7.22%
the famous Greek physician, was born in the island of Cos (an ancient seat of the worship of Asclepius), about 460 B.C. He was the son of Heracleides and of Phaeanarete, and sprang from the race of the Asclepiadae, a priestly family, who in the course of time had gathered and preserved medical traditions, which were secretly handed down from father to son. Like many of the Asclepiadae, he exercised his art whilst travelling in different parts of Greece. He is said to have been at Athens at the time of the Peloponnesian War, and to have taken advantage of the instructions of the Sophists Gorgias and Prodicus; Democritus of Abdera is also named as one of his teachers. The value he himself set upon philosophic education is proved by his remark that "a philosophic physician resembles a god." Towards the end of his life he lived chiefly in Thessaly and on the island of Thasos. He died about 377 B.C. (or later) in the Thessalian Larissa, where his tomb was to be seen as late as the 2nd century A.D. All through his long life his activity was unceasing in its efforts to increase the amount of his knowledge on all subjects, by both practical and theoretical investigations. He was the founder of the school of a scientific art of healing, and, as in the case of Homer, numerous writings of unknown authorship, proceeding from the school which followed his system, were attributed to him. Seventy-two works, great and small, in the Ionic and old Attic dialects, bear his name, and, apparently, formed a single collection, even before they came under the consideration of the critics of Alexandria. But it is clear that, as the ancients themselves were aware, only a small portion, which can no longer be precisely defined, really belongs to him. It is highly probable that his nearest relations, who were also distinguished physicians, contributed their share to the collection, and that it contains works by his sons Thessalus and Dracon, his son-in-law Polybus, and his two grandsons, the sons of Thessalus and Dracon, who bore his own name. The best known of these works are the Aphorisms, which, in antiquity and in mediaeval times, were held in high esteem, and have been freely commented on by Greeks, Romans, and Arabians; they consist of short sentences upon the nature of illnesses, their symptoms and crises, and their final issue. One of his writings which is of general interest, and is in all respects among the best, is that on the influence of the climate, the water, and the configuration of a country upon the physical and intellectual life of its inhabitants. In the second portion of this work we find the first beginnings of a comparative ethnography, which at once surprises us by the acuteness and intelligence of its observation, and attracts us by the simplicity and clearness of its style.
 
CYCLOPES 6.36%

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In Greek mythology, the round-eyed ones. According to Hesiod the Cyclopes are the gigantic sons of Uranus and Gaea, named Argos, Steropes, and Brontes. For the rest, they resemble the gods, except that they have only a single eye in their forehead. Their father threw them into Tart1rus, and they assisted Cronus to the sovereignty. Cronus, however, put them again in prison, where they remained until Zeus set them free. For this they gave him the thunder, and forged him the lightning. Apollo slew them when Zeus struck his son Asclepius by lightning. In Homer the Cyclopes, like the giants and the Phaeacians, are the kinsfolk of the gods; but in other respects they have nothing in common with the Cyclopes of Hesiod but their gigantic size and strength. They live a pastoral life in the far West, without knowledge of agriculture, law, morals, or social order. Each dwells separately with his family in caverns at the mountain tops, without troubling himself about the gods, to whom, indeed, the Cyclopes deem themselves easily superior in strength. The Phaeacians used to live in their neighbourhood, but were driven by their violent dealing to emigrate. The figure of Polyphemus, well known from his encounter with Odysseus, gives a typical notion of their rudeness and savagery. (See also GALATEA). The Homeric Cyclopes were in a later age localized in Sicily, and came to be identified with the Cyclopes of Hesiod. They were imagined as assistants of Hephaestus, and as helping him to forge lightnings for Zeus and arms for heroes in the bowels of Aetna or on the Aeolian islands. A third variety of Cyclopes were the giants with arms to their belly as well as to their shoulders, whom Proetus was supposed to have brought from Lycia to. Argos. It was they who were supposed to have built the so-called Cyclopean walls at Mycenae and Tiryns (see ARCHITECTURE). In works of art the Cyclopes are represented as giants with one eye in their forehead, though there is, generally an indication of a pair of eyes in the usual place.
 
POLYCLITUS 6.13%
 
SACRIFICES 4.66%

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among the ancients, formed the chief part of every religious act. According to the kind of sacrifice offered, they were divided into (a) bloodless offerings and (b) blood offerings. (a) The former consisted in firstfruits, viands, and cakes of various shape and make, which were some of them burned and some of them laid on the altars and sacrificial tables (See figs. 1 and 2) and removed after a time, libations of wine, milk, water with honey or milk, and frankincense, for which in early times native products (wood and the berries of cedars, junipers, and bay trees, etc.) were used. Asiatic spices, such as incense and myrrh, scarcely came into use before the seventh century in Greece or until towards the end of the Republic at Rome. (b) For blood-offerings cattle, goats, sheep, and swine were used by preference. Other animals were only employed in special cults. Thus horses were offered in certain Greek regions to Poseidon and Helios, and at Rome on the occasion of the October feast to Mars; dogs to Hecate and Robigus, asses to Priapus, cocks to Asclepius, and geese to Isis. Sheep and cattle, it appears, could be offered to any gods among the Greeks. As regards swine and goats, the regulations varied according to the different regions. Swine were sacrificed especially to Demeter and Dionysus, goats to the last named divinity and to Apollo and Aromis as well as Aphrodite, while they were excluded from the service of Athene, and it was only at Sparta that they were presented to Hera. At Epidaurus they might not be sacrificed to Asclepius, though elsewhere this was done without scruple. [Part of the spoils of the chase-such as the antlers or fell of the stag, or the head and feet of the boar or the bear--was offered to Artemis Agrotera (See fig. 3).] As regards the sex and colour of the victims, the Romans agreed in general with the Greeks in following the rule of sacrificing male creatures to gods, female to goddesses, and those of dark hue to the infernal powers. At Rome, however, there were special regulations respecting the victims appropriate to the different divinities. Thus the appropriate offering for Jupiter was a young steer of a white colour, or at least with a white spot on its forehead; for Mars, in the case of expiatory sacrifices, two bucks or a steer; the latter also for Neptune and Apollo; for Vulcan, a red calf and a boar; for Liber and Mercury, a he-goat; for Juno, Minerva, and Diana, a heifer; for Juno, as Lucina, an ewe lamb or (as also for Ceres and the Bona Dea) a sow; for Tellus, a pregnant, and for Proserpine a barren, heifer; and so on. The regulations as regards the condition of the victims were not the same everywhere in Greece. Still in general with them, as invariably with the Romans, the rule held good, that only beasts which were without blemish, and had not yet been used for labour, should be employed. Similarly, there were definite rules, which were, however, not the same everywhere, concerning the age of the victims. Thus, by Athenian law, lambs could not be offered at all before their first shearing, and sheep only when they had borne lambs. The Romans distinguished victims by their ages as lactantes, sucklings, and maiores, full grown. The sacrifice of sucklings was subject to certain limitations: young pigs had to be five days old, lambs seven, and calves thirty. Animals were reckoned maiores if they were bidentes; i.e. if their upper and lower rows of teeth were complete. There were exact requirements for all cases as regards their sex and condition, and to transgress these was an offence that demanded expiation. If the victims could not be obtained as the regulations required, the pontifical law allowed their place to be taken by a representation in wax or dough, or by a different animal in substitution for the sort required. In many cults different creatures were combined for sacrifice: e.g. a bull, a sheep, and a pig (Cp. SUOVETAURILIA), or a pig, a buck, and a ram, and the like. In State sacrifices, victims were sometimes sacrificed in great numbers; e.g. at the Athenian festival in commemoration of the victory at Marathon, 500 goats were slain. (Cp. HECATOMBE.) Human sacrifices as a means of expiation were not unknown to the earliest Greek and Roman worship, and continued in certain cases (e.g. at the feast of the Lyman Zeus and of Jupiter Latiaris) until the imperial period; however, where they continued to exist, criminals who were in any case doomed to death were selected, and in many places opportunity was further given them for escape. In general, it was considered that purity in soul and body was an indispensable requirement for a sacrifice that was to be acceptable to a divinity. Accordingly the offerer washed at least his hands and feet, and appeared in clean (for the most part, white) robes. One who had incurred blood-guiltiness could not offer sacrifice at all; he who had polluted himself by touching anything unclean, particularly a corpse, needed special purification by fumigation. Precautions were also taken to insure the withdrawal of all persons who might be otherwise unpleasing to the divinity; from many sacrifices women were excluded, from others men, from many slaves and freedmen. At Rome, in early times, all plebeians were excluded by the patricians. The victims were generally decked out with ribbons and wreaths, and sometimes the cattle had their horns gilded. If the creature voluntarily followed to the altar or even bowed its head, this was considered as a favourable sign; it was an unfavourable sign if it offered resistance or tried to escape. In that case, with the Romans, the object of the sacrifice was deemed to be frustrated. Among the Greeks those who took part in the sacrifice wore wreaths; a firebrand from the altar was dipped in water, and with the water thus consecrated they sprinkled themselves and the altar. They then strewed the head of the victim with baked barley-grains, and cast some hairs cut from its head into the sacrificial fire. After those present had been called upon to observe a devout silence, and avoid everything that might mar the solemnity of the occasion, the gods were invited, amidst the sound of flutes or hymns sung to the lyre and dancing, to accept the sacrifice propitiously. The hands of the worshippers were raised, or extended, or pointed downwards, according as the prayer was made to a god of heaven, of the sea, or of the lower world respectively. The victim was then felled to the ground with a mace or a hatchet, and its throat cut with the sacrificial knife. During this operation the animal's head was held up, if the sacrifice belonged to the upper gods, and bowed down if it belonged to those of the lower world or the dead. The blood caught from it was, in the former case, poured round the altar, in the latter, into a ditch. In the case just mentioned the sacrifice was entirely burned (and this was also the rule with animals which were not edible), and the ashes were poured into the ditch. In sacrifices to the gods of the upper world, only certain portions were burned to the gods, such as thigh-bones or chine-bones out off the victim, some of the entrails, or some pieces of flesh with a layer of fat, rolled round the whole, together with libations of wine and oil, frankincense, and sacrificial cakes. The remainder, after removing the god's portion, as it was called, for the priests engaged in the sacrifice, was either roasted at once for the sacrificial banquet and so consumed, or taken home. Festal sacrifices at the public expense were often combined with a public meal. Sacrifice was made to the gods of the upper air in the morning; to those of the lower world in the evening. Among the Romans, as among the Greeks, reverent silence prevailed during the sacrificial operations; in case a careless word should become an evil omen, and to prevent any disturbance by external surroundings, a flute-player played and the offerer of the sacrifice himself veiled his head during the rite. The prayer, formulated by the pontifices, and unintelligible to the priests themselves from its archaic language, was repeated by the votary after the priest, who read it from a written form, as any deviation from the exact words made the whole sacrifice of no avail. As a rule, the worshipper turned his face to the east, or, if the ceremony took place before the temple, to the image of the divinity, grasping the altar with his hands; and, when the prayer was ended, laid his hands on his lips, and turned himself from left to right (in many cults from right to left), or, again, walked round the altar and then seated himself. Then the victim, selected as being without blemish, was consecrated, the priest sprinkling salted grains of dried and pounded spelt (mola salsa) and pouring wine from a cup upon its head, and also in certain sacrifices cutting some of the hairs off its head, and finally making a stroke with his knife along the back of the creature, from its head to its tail. Cattle were killed with the mace, calves with the hammer, small animals with the knife, by the priest's attendants appointed for the purpose, to whom also the dissection of the victims was assigned. If the inspectors of sacrifice (see HARUSPEX) declared that the entrails (exta), cut out with the knife, were not normal, this was a sign that the offering was not pleasing to the divinity; and if it was a male animal which had been previously slaughtered, a female was now killed. If the entrails again proved unfavourable, the sacrifice was regarded as of no avail. On the other hand, in the case of prodigies, sacrifices were offered until favourable signs appeared. In other sin-offerings there was no inspection of entrails. Sin-offerings were either entirely burned or given to the priests. Otherwise the flesh was eaten by the offerers, and only the entrails, which were roasted on spits, or boiled, were offered up, together with particular portions of the meat, in the proper way, and placed in a dish upon the altar, after being sprinkled with mola salsa and wine. The slaughter of the victim took place in the morning, whilst the extawere offered at evening, the intervening time being taken up by the process of preparation.
 
APOLLO 4.65%

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Son of Zeus by Leto (Latona), who, according to the legend most widely current, bore him and his twin-sister Artemis (Diana) at the foot of Mount Cynthus in the island of Delos. Apollo appears originally as a god of light, both in its beneficent and its destructive effects; and of light in general, not of the sun only, for to the early Greeks the deity that brought daylight was Helios, with whom it was not till afterwards that Apollo was identified. While the meaning of his name Apollo is uncertain, his epithets of Phoebus and Lycius clearly mark him as the bright, the life-giving, the former also meaning the pure, holy; for, as the god of pure light, he is the enemy of darkness, with all its unclean, uncouth, unhallowed brood. Again, not only the seventh day of the month, his birthday, but the first day of each month, i.e. of each new-born moon, was sacred to him, as it was to Janus, the Roman god of light; and according to the view that prevailed in many seats of his worship, he withdrew in winter time either to sunny Lycia, or to the Hyperboreans who dwell in perpetual light in the utmost north, and returned in spring to dispel the powers of winter with his beams. When the fable relates that immediately after his birth, with the first shot from his bow he slew the dragon Python (or Delphyne), a hideous offspring of Gaea and guardian of the Delphian oracle, what seems to be denoted must be the spring-god's victory over winter, that filled the land with foul marsh and mist. As the god of light, his festivals are all in spring or summer, and many of them still plainly reveal in certain features his true and original attributes. Thus the Delphinia, held at Athens in April, commemorated the calming of the wintry sea after the equinoctial gales, and the consequent reopening of navigation. As this feast was in honour of the god of spring, so was the Thargelia, held at Athens the next month, in honour of the god of summer. That the crops might ripen, he received firstfruits of them, and at the same time propitiatory gifts to induce him to avert the parching heat, so hurtful to fruits and men. About the time of the sun's greatest altitude (July and August), when the god displays his power, now for good and now for harm, the Athenians offered him hecatombs, whence the first month of their year was named Hecatomboeon, and the Spartans held their Hyacinthia (see HYACINTHUS). In autumn, when the god was ripening the fruit of their gardens and plantations, and preparing for departure, they celebrated the Pyanepsia (q.v.), when they presented him with the firstfruits of harvest. Apollo gives the crops prosperity, and protection not only against summer heat, but against blight, mildew, and the vermin that prey upon them, such as field-mice and grasshoppers. Hence he was known by special titles in some parts of Asia. He was also a patron of flocks and pastures, and was worshipped in many districts under a variety of names referring to the breeding of cattle. In the story of Hermes (q.v.) stealing his oxen, Apollo is himself the owner of a herd, which he gives up to his brother in exchange for the lyre invented by him. Other ancient legends speak of him as tending the flocks of Laomodon and Admetus, an act afterwards represented as a penalty for a fault. As a god of shepherds he makes love to the nymphs, to the fair Daphne (q.v.), to Coronis (see ASCLEPIUS), and to Cyrene, the mother of Aristaeus, likewise a god of herds. Some forms of his worship and some versions of his story imply that Apollo, like his sister Artemis, was regarded as a protector of tender game and a slayer of rapacious beasts, especially of the wolf, the enemy of flocks, and himself a symbol of the god's power, that now sends mischief, and now averts it. Apollo promotes the health and well-being of man himself. As a god of prolific power, he was invoked at weddings; and as a nurse of tender manhood and trainer of manly youth, to him (as well as the fountain-nymphs) were consecrated the first offerings of the hair of the head. In gymnasia and palaestrae he was worshipped equally with Hermes and Heracles; for he gave power of endurance in boxing, with adroitness and fleetness of foot. As a warlike god and one helpful in fight, the Spartans paid him peculiar honours in their Carneia (q.v.), and in a measure the Athenians in their Boedromia. Another Athenian festival, the Metageitnia, glorified him as the author of neighbourly union. In many places, but above all at Athens, he was worshipped as Agyieus, the god of streets and highways, whose rude symbol, a conical post with a pointed ending, stood by streetdoors and in courtyards, to watch men's exit and entrance, to let in good and keep out evil, and was loaded by the inmates with gifts of honour, such as ribbons, wreaths of myrtle or bay, and the like. At sea, as well as on land, Apollo is a guide and guardian, and there, especially under the name Delphinius, taken from his friend and ally the dolphin, the symbol of the navigable sea. Under this character he was widely worshipped, for the most part with peculiar propitiatory rites, in seaports and on promontories, as that of Actium, and particularly at Athens, being also regarded as a leader of colonies. While he is Alexicacus (averter of ills) in the widest sense, he proves his power most especially in times of sickness; for, being god of the hot season, and himself the sender of most epidemics and the dreaded plague, sweeping man swiftly away with his unerring shafts, he can also lend the most effectual aid; so that he and his son Asclepius were revered as the chief gods of healing. As a saviour from epidemics mainly, but also from other evils, the paean (q.v.) was sung in his honour. In a higher sense also Apollo is a healer and saviour. From an early time a strong ethical tinge was given to his purely physical attributes, and the god of light became a god of mental and moral purity, and therefore of order, justice, and legality in human life. As such, he, on the one hand smites and spares not the insolent offender, Tityos for instance, the Aloidae, the overweening Niobe, and the Greeks before Troy; but, on the other hand, to the guilt-laden soul, that turns to him in penitence and supplication, he grants purification from the stain of committed crime (which was regarded as a disease clouding the mind and crushing the heart), and so he heals the spirit, and readmits the outcast into civic life and religious fellowship. Of this he had himself set the pattern, when, after slaying the Delphian dragon, he fled from the land, did seven years' menial service to Admetus in atonement for the murder, and when the time, of penance was past had himself purified in the sacred grove of baytrees by the Thessalian temple, and not till then did he return to Delphi and enter on his office as prophet of Zeus. Therefore he exacts from all a recognition of the atoning power of penance, in the teeth of the old law of vengeance for blood, which only bred new murders and new guilt. The atoning rites propagated by Apollo's worship, particularly from Delphi, contributed largely to the spread of milder maxims of law, affecting not only individuals, but whole towns and countries. Even without special prompting, the people felt from time to time the need of purification and expiation; hence certain expiatory rites had from of old been connected with his festivals. As the god of light who pierces through all darkness, Apollo is the god of divination, which, however, has in his case a purely ethical significance; for he, as prophet and minister of his father Zeus, makes known his will to men, and helps to further his government in the world. He always declares the truth; but the limited mind of man cannot always grasp the meaning of his sayings. He is the patron of every kind of prophecy, but most especially of that which he imparts through human instruments, chiefly women, while in a state of ecstasy. Great as was the number of his oracles in Greece and Asia, all were eclipsed in fame and importance by that of Delphi (q.v.). Apollo exercises an elevating and inspiring influence on the mind as god of Music, which, though not belonging to him alone any more than Atonement and Prophecy, was yet pre-eminently his province. In Homer he is represented only as a player on the lyre, while song is the province of the Muses; but in course of time he grows to be the god, as they are the goddesses, of song and poetry, and is therefore Musagetes Leader of the Muses) as well as master of the choric dance, which goes with music and song. And, as the friend of all that beautifies life, he is intimately associated with the Graces. Standing in these manifold relations to nature and man, Apollo at all times held a prominent position in the religion of the Greeks; and as early as Homer his name is coupled with those of Zeus and Athena, as if between them the three possessed the sum total of divine power. His worship was diffused equally over all the regions in which Greeks were settled; but from remote antiquity he bad been the chief god of the Dorians, who were also the first to raise him into a type of moral excellence. The two chief centres of his worship were the Island of Delos, his birthplace, where, at his magnificent temple standing by the sea, were held every five years the festive games called Delia, to which the Greek states sent solemn embassies; and Delphi, with its oracle and numerous festivals (see PYTHIA, THEOXENIA). Foremost among the seats of his worship in Asia was Patara in Lycia with a famous oracle. To the Romans Apollo became known in the reign of their last king Tarquinius Superbus, the first Roman who consulted the Delphian oracle, and who also acquired the Sibylline Books (q.v.). By the influence of these writings the worship of Apollo soon became so naturalized among them, that in B.C. 431 they built a temple to him as god of healing, from which the expiatory processions (see SUPPLICATIONES) prescribed in the Sibylline books used to set out. In the Lectisternia (q.v.), first instituted in B.C. 399, Apollo occupies the foremost place. In 212 B.C., during the agony of the Second Punic War, the Ludi Apollinares were, in obedience to an oracular response, established in honour of him. He was made one of the chief gods of Rome by Augustus, who believed himself to be under his peculiar protection, and ascribed the victory of Actium to his aid: hence he enlarged the old temple of Apollo on that promontory, and decorated it with a portion of the spoils. He also renewed the games held near it, previously every two years, afterwards every four, with gymnastic and artistic contests, and, regattas on the sea; at Rome he reared a splendid new temple to him near his own house on the Palatine, and transferred the Ludi Soeculares (q.v.) to him and Diana. The manifold symbols of Apollo correspond with the multitude of his attributes. The commonest is either the lyre or the bow, according as he was conceived as the god of song or as the far-hitting archer. The Delphian diviner, Pythian Apollo, is indicated by the Tripod, which was also the favourite offering at his altars. Among plants the bay, used for purposes of expiation, was early sacred to him (see DAPHNE). It was planted round his temples, and plaited into garlands of victory at the Pythian games. The palm-tree was also sacred to him, for it was under a palm-tree that he was born in Delos. Among animals, the wolf, the dolphin, the snow-white and musical swan, the hawk, raven, crow, and snake were under his special protection; the last four in connexion with his prophetic functions. In ancient art he was represented as a long-haired but beardless youth, of tall yet muscular build, and handsome features. Images of him were as abundant as his worship was extensive: there was scarcely an artist of antiquity who did not try his hand upon some incident in the story of Apollo. The ideal type of this god seems to have been fixed chiefly by Praxiteles and Scopas. The most famous statue preserved of him is the Apollo Belvedere in the Vatican (fig. 1), which represents him either as fighting with the Pythian dragon, or with his aegis frightening back the foes who threaten to storm his sanctuary. Other great works, as the Apollo Musagetes in the Vatican, probably from the hand of Scopas, show him as a Citharoedus in the long Ionian robe, or nude as in fig. 2. The Apollo Sauroctonus (lizard-killer), copied from a bronze statue by Praxiteles, is especially celebrated for its beauty. It represents a delicate youthful figure leaning against a tree, dart in hand, ready to stab a lizard that is crawling up the tree. It is preserved in bronze at the Villa Albani in Rome, and in marble at Paris.
 
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