by iakul

Created on: February 27, 2009

During the time of the Greeks, people believed that Earth was the centre of the universe and that the sun moved around the Earth. This was personified in the form of Apollo the Sun god.

Apollo was the son of the ruler of the Greek gods, Zeus and Leto, the daughter of Titans, deities who had ruled Earth before the Greek gods. Hera, Zeus's wife was a jealous woman who would try time and again to harm the various lovers of her husband and their offspring. Leto was no exception. Hera forbid leto from giving birth on "terra firma', the mainland or any island , and Leto was forced to wander the earth in search of a place to give birth. Eventually, she found Delos, a newly formed island that had not grown to be a full island yet. As it was, the island Delos was a floating island, and not rooted to the sea, and thus not considered an actual island. And so it was here on Delos that Letos gave birth to Apollo and his elder twin sister, Artemis.

Apollo presided over more than just light and the sun. His domain also included truth and prophecy, archery, medicine and healing, music, poetry, and the arts.

Like his father, Apollo was also a god with numerous lovers and several offspring resulted from these unions. The most famous of Apollo's love stories, however, is one where he didn't manage to get the girl. Eros the god of love wanted revenge on Apollo for an insult. He struck Apollo with love arrows and Daphne, daughter of Peneius with arrows of hate, causing Apollo to fal in love with Daphne and Daphne to be repulsed by the sight of Apollo. Apollo chased Daphne to the River Peneius(her father) where Daphne prayed to her father for deliverance. Her father changed her into a laurel tree, thus denying her to Apollo and Apollo had to content himself with making the laurel tee sacred to himand crowned himself with the leaves of the laurel tree.

Among his offspring, the most notable among them would probably be Aristaeus, who was the result of Apollo's union with Cyrene, daughter of Hypseus, King of the Lapiths. Aristaeus became the patron god of cattle, fruit trees, hunting, husbandry and bee-keeping and also taught mortals dairy skills and to use nets and traps in hunting.

Besides female lovers, Apollo also had the most number of male lovers among all the Greek gods. Most of them, however, ended in tragedy. One such lover was Hyacinth who was killed when a jealous Zephyrus, god of the West wind, blew a discus that Apollo had thrown off-course, striking Hyacinth in the head and killing him instantly. A grieving Apollo barred Hades, the God of the underworld, from claiming the boy and instead, made a flower, the hyacinth from his spilled blood.

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