statue qui surgit des flammes de son moule, Apollo se dégage vite du soleil."[1] He becomes a god of manifold functions and attributes, and it is necessary to exercise extreme caution in explaining any one myth of his legend as originally a myth of the sun.[2] Phoibos certainly means "the brilliant" or "shining." It is, however, unnecessary to hold that such epithets as Lyceius, Lycius, Lycegenes, indicate "light," and are not connected, as the ancients, except Macrobius, believed, with the worship of the wolf.[3] The character of Apollo as originally a sun-god is asserted on the strength not only of his names, but of many of his attributes and his festivals. It is pointed out that he is the deity who superintends the measurement of time.[4] "The chief days in the year's reckoning, the new and full moons, and the seventh and twentieth days of the month, also the beginning of the solar year, are reckoned Apolline." That curious ritual of the Daphnephoria, familiar to many English people from Sir Frederick Leighton's picture, is believed to have symbolised the year. Proclus says that a staff of olive wood decorated with flowers supported a central ball of brass, beneath which was a smaller ball, and thence little globes were hung.[5] The greater ball means the
- ↑ Hommes et Dieux, p. 11.
- ↑ There is no agreement nor certainty about the etymology and original meaning of the name Apollo. See Preller, Gr. Myth., i. 189. "Comparative philologists have not yet succeeded in finding the true etymology of Apollo" (Max Müller, Selected Essays, i. 467).
- ↑ Compare Zeus Lyceius and his wolf-myths; compare also Roscher, Ausführliches Lexikon, p. 423.
- ↑ Sonnengott als Zeitordner, Roscher, op. cit., p. 423.
- ↑ Cf. Photius, Bibl., 321.
