Apollo, one of the principal gods of Grecian mythology, called also Phoebus, and in Homer and Hesiod generally designated as Phœbus Apollo. He was the son of Jupiter and La-tona, and twin brother of Diana. Homer and Hesiod give no details about his birth; but later writers relate that Juno had put under ban all lands which should harbor Latona, who was then pregnant. Delos was an uninhabited rock in the Aegean, just risen above the surface of the sea. There Latona, after nine days' labor, brought forth Apollo and his sister. The earlier mythology of the Greeks, as reflected chiefly in Homer, represents Apollo as an archer who inflicts vengeance with his arrows; as a god of song and stringed instruments, in which character he is said to have invented the phorminx; as a revealer of the future, a function which he exercised especially at the temple of Delphi; and as a god of flocks, in which capacity he kept the herds of King Ad-metus. In the later poets he is the same as the god Helios, or the sun, but in the earlier Phoebus Apollo and Helios are quite distinct. With the advent of the lyrical poets Apollo becomes a patron of the healing art. In this aspect he is the father of Aesculapius. He was the president and protector of the muses.

He is usually represented in the prime of youth and manly beauty, with long hair, his brows bound with the sacred bay tree, and bearing the lyre or the bow. The most celebrated places where Apollo was worshipped were Delphi and Abae in Phocis, Ismenium near Thebes, Delos, Tenedos, Didyma near Miletus, Patara in Cilicia, and Claras near Colophon. The hawk, the raven, the swan, and the grasshopper were his favorite animals. Apollo was the peculiar god of the Dorians, He had musical contests with Marsyas and Pan. According to Herodotus, the Egyptian synonyme of Phœbus Apollo is Horus. The Romans received him from the Greeks. We first hear of his worship at Pome in 430 B. C, when a temple was raised to him for the purpose of averting a plague. During the second Punic war, in 212, the ludi Apol-linares were established at Rome. Every centenary anniversary of the ludi, they celebrated in his honor the ludi saeculares. Horace wrote the Carmen SAeculare on such an occasion.