Apollo
Apollo (Α᾿πόλλων, the destroyer, so called because his shafts, the rays of Phebus or the sun, inflict disease or "the sun-stroke" in Oriental climates), one of the great divinities of the Greeks, according to Homer (Iliad, 1, 21, 316) the-son of Jupiter (Zeus) and Leto (Latona), and the brother of Artemis or Diana (Hesiod, Theogn. 918). He was fabled to be the god who punishes the wicked and insolent, who affords help and wards off evil, particularly from cattle, who presided over the foundation of cities, and especially as the god of music and prophecy (Smith, Dict. of Class. Mythol. s.v.). SEE ORACLE. In this last office he is indirectly alluded to in the account of the daemoniac damsel cured by Paul (Ac 16:16). SEE PYTHONESS. Josephus mentions an audience of Archelaus held by Tiberius in a splendid temple of Apollo built by him in Rome (Ant. 17, 11, 1); and he also speaks of a temple of his at Gaza, into which the nobles of the city took refuge from the massacre by Alexander Jannaeus, (Ant. 13, 13, 3).
