Apollon and the Sun, Artemis and the Moon: A Mythconception
One of the best things about Greek mythology, in my humble opinion, is the lack of canon. But obviously, this doesn't mean that we don't have any reliable ancient Greek sources to refer to, in order to verify the authenticity of a given myth. Actually, another great thing about Greek mythology is the existence of good amount of original sources which are at our disposal. In this post, I'm going to talk about the infamous mythconception of considering Apollon (Απολλων) as the god of the Sun, which is always coupled with another mythconception about identifying his twin sister Artemis (Αρτεμις) as the goddess of the Moon.
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| Helios on his chariot A relief from temple of Athena, Ilion (Troy) Pergamon Museum, Berlin ©Wikipedia |
The first thing that usually sets the scene for the Apollon-Sun misidentification is his famous epithet, Phivos/Phoibos/Phoebus (Φοῖβος), meaning 'bright, radiant, bright one.' But this doesn't imply any association with the Sun at all. Let me emphasize that the Greek word for the Sun is Helios (Ἡλιος). Yes, the Titan Helios is the personification of the Sun. If you check the Greek texts of Iliad and Odyssey, you'll see that we have Helios as the Sun, yet Apollon is still called Phivos, though he has nothing to do with the Sun; they're two entirely different gods. Even when Homer wants to describe the brightness of the Sun, he doesn't use any form of φοῖβος. Instead, he says [Hom. Il. 1. 605]:
λαμπρον φάος ἠελίοιο
bright light of the Sun
So what does Phivos signify for Apollon after all, if it has nothing to do with the Sun? One interesting explanation is that it comes from the name of his grandmother, Phivi/Phoibi/Phoebe (Φοιβη), but it's more than just a given name. How so? Well, Titaness Phivi was the third goddess who inherited the throne of the oracle of Delphi, and she then gave it to her grandson Apollon as a birthday gift. That's why Apollon is the god of oracles and prophecy. In Eumenides, a tragedy written by Aeschylus, we read the following opening by the Pythian Priestess [1]:
First, in this prayer of mine, I give the place of highest honor among the gods to the first prophet, Earth (Γαῖα); and after her to Themis (Θέμις), for she was the second to take this oracular seat of her mother, as legend tells. And in the third allotment, with Themis' consent and not by force, another Titan, child of Earth, Phoebe (Φοίβη), took her seat here. She gave it as a birthday gift to Phoebus (Φοίβης), who has his name from Phoebe.
The interesting thing here is the linguistic relationship between phivi/phivos (φοίβη/φοῖβος) and phivazo/phoibazo (φοιβάζω), which means 'prophesy.' Now compare this with a morphologically neighboring word, phovos/phobos (φόβος), meaning 'terror/awe/that which causes fear' [2]. The latter is viewed in the context of Apollon's radiance being terrorizing/awe-striking, as his manifestation to the Pythia (or any other oracle of his) was always accompanied with mania (μανία) and how mania is in turn related to prophecy (μαντικη), according to the young Plato in Phaedrus [3]:
In reality, the greatest of blessings come to us through madness, when it is sent as a gift of the gods. For prophecy is a madness, and the prophetess at Delphi and the priestesses at Dodona when they have been mad have conferred many splendid benefits upon Greece both in private and in public affairs, but few or none when they have been in their right minds; and if we should speak of the Sibyl and all the others who by prophetic inspiration have foretold many things to many persons and thereby made them fortunate afterwards. And it is worth while to adduce also the fact that those men of old who invented names thought that madness was neither shameful nor disgraceful; otherwise they would not have connected prophecy (mantike) which foretells the future and is the noblest of arts, with mania/madness (manike), or called them both by the same name, if they had deemed madness to be a disgrace or dishonour; they must have thought that there was an inspired madness which was a noble thing; for the two words, mantike and manike, are really the same, and the letter t is only a modern and tasteless insertion.
Now is a good time to correct another misconception: Apollon is not the god of reason, rationality and logic! I don't know where did this come from. Apollon is the true Prophet, the Seer (μάντις, πρόμαντις, προφήτης) and the true interpreter of the will and mind of Zeus (Διoς νόος), and as Homer writes [Il. 16. 688]:
But always the mind of Zeus is a stronger thing than a man's mind.
Unless you take the Gnostic path and consider Διoς νόος (the mind of God in general) to be the true rationality, reason or whatever modern humans boast to possess it. To quote the one and only Philip K. Dick:
The answer to Horselover Fat's question, "Is the universe irrational, and is it irrational because an irrational mind governs it?" receives this answer, via Dr Stone: "Yes it is, the universe is irrational; the mind governing it is irrational; but above them lies another God, the true God, and he is not irrational; in addition that true God has outwitted the powers of this world, ventured here to help us, and we know him as the Logos"
The wiseness actually goes to Athene (Αθηνη), since she has the epithet Polyvoulos/Polybulus (πολύβουλος), which means 'of many wise counseling, exceeding wise,' for she is the Olympian goddess of counsel, and patroness of the great tactician, Odysseus. We shouldn't also forget that Apollon is the god of pestilence and plague as well, for he is the one who terrorized and paralyzed Agamemnon's army in Trojan War, just to defend Chryses (Apollon's Trojan priest) and his enslaved daughter.
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| Selene on her chariot ©The Metropolitan Museum of Art |
Just a few days ago, I saw a post on reddit about associating Apollon with the Moon via the epithet, Noumenios (νουμήνιος). Well, first of all, Moon is not even associated with Artemis in the first place, just like how we saw that Sun is not associated with Apollon; both of these associations are most probably Roman inventions. In Greek language, Moon is literally Selene (Σελήνη).
Now there's this part of the story of Argonautica, where the Titaness Mene (Μηνη) [this name is used for Selene when she's associated with the moon phases or months] complains to the sorceress Medea (Μήδεια) that [4]:
oft times with thoughts of love have I been driven away by thy crafty spells, in order that in the darkness of night thou mightest work thy sorcery at ease.
Therefore, one can say that the goddess Hekate (Ἑκάτη) has this kind of power as well, for being the goddess of magick, so she can make the night "moonless and starlit." Hence all the stuff about her association with the waning moon follows, but not the identification with the Moon. There's another instance of Artemis-Selene misidentification that I've seen, which had used Aeschylus' Fragment 87 of his lost play, Xantriae (ΞΑΝΤΡΙΑΙ):
upon whom looketh neither the Sun's ray nor the starry eye of Leto's child (daughter).
as an evidence, interpreting the 'starry eye' feature as the Moon. Well, I'm not a linguist, nor a classicist, but at least by looking at the Greek text, one can see that this conclusion only works if you identify Helios with Apollon, and also forget about what ἀστερωπόν ὄμμα might actually be referring to (e.g. what does it have to do with the Moon?), so that Artemis becomes somehow identified with the Moon! I'm sorry, that I cannot do.
Now let's pause for a bit on the ἀστερωπόν ὄμμα. It's commonly translated as 'starry eye' or 'starry face,' but interestingly, ὄμμα can be translated as a metaphor for the sun, or light in general, according to LSJ. So? Well, let's take the 'starry eye' meaning first. If you're a stargazer, you'd know that the best time to watch the planets and deep-sky objects is when there's no Moon in the sky, unless you want to watch the Moon itself. In other words, to appreciate the light of the stars, it would be better to have no light of the Moon at all. So the 'starry eye/face' translation most probably tries to personify a deity who is associated with the starlit Moonless night, rather than the opposite, i.e. with the Moon per se. Hence the best candidate would be Hekate, if we recall the Medea-Selene dialogue from before.
However, Aeschylus specifically writes Λητῴας κόρης [Leto's daughter], and we know, at least from Hesiod, that Hekate is the daughter of Asteria (Αστερια) [yes, it means starry], who herself is the sister of Leto, by the way. So we're stuck with a dilemma. But there might be a way out!
Interestingly, in his complete play, Prometheus Bound, we see a rather similar passage to that of his lost play's fragment 87 [Aesch. PB 796-7]:
ἃς οὔθ᾽ ἥλιος προσδέρκεται
ἀκτῖσιν οὔθ᾽ ἡ νύκτερος μήνη ποτέ.
which is translated as:
neither does the Sun's beams look down upon them, nor ever the nightly moon.
Now compare it with the aforementioned fragment 87:
ἃς οὔτε πέμφιξ ἡλίου προσδέρκεται [upon whom looketh neither the Sun's ray]
οὔτ̓ ἀστερωπον ὂμμα Λητῴας κόρης [nor the starry eye of Leto's daughter]
As for the Noumenios epithet, it's connected to some newly found fragments of Heraclitos (Ἡράκλειτος), and by new, I mean compared to the time of the source article [5]. Now personally speaking, as much as I like Heraclitos' philosophy, I'd be careful if I were to use him as a reference for Greek mythology, since his fragments are firmly based on his 'unity of opposites' idea. That's why he writes that Haides (Ἀίδης) and Dionysos (Διόνυσος) are one and the same, just as the day and night are [6]. So this kind of philosophical association coming from the old man Heraclitos is not a surprise, at least not to me, and I wouldn't count it as a mythological statement per se.
Finally, I don't know much about the festivals, but apparently Noumenia* was held in the honor of household deities back then. So if that's the case, then it'd be proper to think that Apollon Agyieus** was actually involved.
Notes
* It means 'new moon,' and based on what I said before, it's clear that why Mene is used here in the root.
** It means 'of the streets,' for him being the guardian of the streets.
References
- Aeschylus. Aeschylus, with an English translation by Herbert Weir Smyth. In two volumes. 2.Eumenides. Harvard University Press. 1926 [http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0005].
- [https://mythology.stackexchange.com/a/5143].
- Plato. Phaedrus. Translated by Benjamin Jowett [http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/phaedrus.html].
- ApolloniusRhodius. Argonautica. Book 4, Lines 55-66 [https://www.theoi.com/Text/ApolloniusRhodius4.html].
- David Sider. “Heraclitus on Old and New Months: ‘P.Oxy.’ 3710.” Illinois Classical Studies 19 (1994): 11–18 [http://www.jstor.org/stable/23065416].
- Heraclitus. Fragments [fragment 15 and 57].
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