as her destroyer (1047), he nevertheless wears, for the most part, a more benignant aspect. He is emphatically the Healer, the Prophet-leech, who purifies from all defilement (Eum. 62); the god of joy, whom it befits not to invoke with words of sorrow (Ag. 1056): the most striking point of divergence from the Homeric conception of Apollo is to be found in his relation to Zeus, with whom he appears in the most intimate association. As the god of prophecy, the guardian of the sacred oracles, he declares most emphatically that he is simply the expounder of his father's will, and consequently that he cannot lie. (Eum. 585, 588.) It is under this aspect, as the god of Truth, that a deep significance attaches to the function which he assumes in the court of Areopagus as Exegetes, or expounder of the unwritten law. "At Athens, the Exegetæ, who presided over the purification of blood-guilty persons, were elected, or at least their election was ratified, by the Delphic Oracle."[1] In this character, Apollo appears before the Areopagites, to expound the law in relation to homicide, and thus the deep-thoughted poet enforces the important principle that the judicial proceedings of human tribunals must be under the presidency of Truth.
According to Welcker, however, the Moon appears of all natural objects to have been the most universally adored. Several tribes in Africa and America are said at the present day to worship the moon without the
- ↑ Dissertations on the Eumenides. C. O. Müller.
