Apollo healed plagues and sent them, sometimes with the same arrows
The Greek god of light and music also carried a bow that could spread deadly disease. Apollo guarded shepherds' flocks, children growing into adults and the doorways of houses, and cities asked his oracle at Delphi before drafting laws. Even his name puzzled the ancients, who linked it to destruction, purification and simplicity.
Apollo was an Olympian, son of Zeus and Leto and twin of the huntress Artemis, and the Greeks pictured him as the ideal beardless young athlete, the most beautiful of the gods. Born on Mount Cynthus on Delos, he had his main sanctuaries at Delphi and Actium. At Delphi, as Apollo Pythios, he spoke through the oracle and oversaw ritual purification.
His roles often pulled in opposite directions. People called him the averter of evil and credited him, or his son Asclepius, with healing and with ending epidemics; yet his arrows could also bring sickness. He and Artemis were said to have invented archery. As lord of music, dance and poetry he led the Muses, invented string music and was shown with the lyre. He also protected herds and crops from pests and predators, carrying cult titles tied to locusts and even, in Rome, to midges.
Young people were a special concern. As a guardian of children he watched over their health, education and coming of age, when boys cut their long hair and dedicated it to him; the god himself kept his hair uncut as a sign of endless youth. On the civic side he encouraged new colonies, gave laws and, as Agyieus, guarded streets and entrances. His worship reached Rome in the 5th century BC, and from that period Greeks increasingly equated him with Helios, the Sun.
The origin of his name is unresolved. The Doric form Apellon is older and may connect with apella, a word for an enclosure and later the Spartan assembly, though the linguist R. S. P. Beekes rejected that link and proposed a Pre-Greek root. A Hittite form, Apaliunas, appears in the Manapa-Tarhunta letter. Plato, in the Cratylus, played with links to purification and redemption. His most common epithet, Phoebus, simply means bright.
Source: Apollo
