Apollo

Who He Is

Apollo is the god of the bow, son of Leto, whom the poem places on the side of the Trojans from the first book and does not abandon until the last. The plague that opens the action is his work, in answer to a priest's prayer, and it is he who, at the end, accuses the other gods of preferring Achilles to Hector. Between one thing and the other, he always acts close at hand and without making a sound: he lifts a fallen hero, hides another in a mist, pushes a shield, disarms a man with an open hand. His limit is Zeus's: he does not decide Hector's fate, and he leaves him when the scale goes down. Apollo says of men that they are like leaves, and he protects their wall.

Trajectory

In Book I, the priest Chryses, expelled by Agamemnon, asks Apollo to make the Danaans pay for his tears with the god's arrows. Apollo descends from Olympus with his bow, like the night, and scatters plague through the camp for nine days. When Chryseis returns to her father, Chryses asks the god to lift the plague, and he grants it.

In Book IV, Pandarus prays to Apollo before shooting at Menelaus. Later, from the height of Pergamus, the god shouts to the Trojans to resist: the flesh of the Achaeans is not of stone or iron, and Achilles is not fighting, but ruminating his wrath beside the ships.

In Book V, Apollo takes Aeneas in a dark cloud when Aphrodite lets go of her son, and Diomedes charges four times against him. Three times Apollo pushes back the bright shield. On the fourth, he tells the son of Tydeus to consider and withdraw, and not to wish to think as the gods do, for the race of immortals and of men who walk the earth is never alike. Diomedes withdraws. Apollo places Aeneas in sacred Pergamus, where Leto and Artemis heal him, and makes a likeness identical to him, around which Trojans and Achaeans fight. He asks Ares to take out of the battle this man who would fight even with Zeus.

In Book VII, Apollo and Athena agree to halt the war for a day and arrange the duel of Hector, and they alight in the form of vultures on the oak of Zeus. When Ajax knocks Hector down with a stone, Apollo sets him on his feet at once.

In Book X, on seeing Athena beside Diomedes in the Thracian camp, he grows angry, goes among the Trojans, and rouses Hypocoon, cousin of Rhesus. In Book XII, the narrator says that, after the war, Poseidon and Apollo decide to level the Achaean wall: Apollo turns against it the mouths of the rivers of Ida.

In Book XV, Zeus sends Apollo after Hector: to take the fringed aegis, shake it against the Achaeans, look after Hector, and rouse his strength until the fleeing reach the ships. Apollo descends like a falcon and finds Hector sitting, coming back to himself. He says that Zeus sent him as a protector, Phoebus of the golden sword, who has always guarded Hector and the city. When he shakes the aegis before the Danaans and lets out a great cry, they forget their strength and flee. At the head of the Trojans, he tears down the Achaean wall with ease, as a child tears down the sand castles it has built on the beach.

In Book XVI, Apollo is the god whom Patroclus does not see. Three times Patroclus climbs to the corner of the Trojan wall, and three times Apollo pushes him back. On the fourth, the god tells him that fate does not want Troy to fall by his spear, nor by Achilles's. Apollo, in the form of Asius, Hector's uncle, urges him to go against Patroclus. On Patroclus's fourth charge against the Trojans, the god, wrapped in mist, strikes him on the back with an open hand; his eyes spin, his helmet falls, his spear breaks, the shield drops to the ground, and the god loosens his cuirass. Earlier, Apollo had stanched the blood of Glaucus, wounded by Teucer.

In Book XVII, Apollo, in the form of Mentes, chief of the Cicones, urges Hector to go to the body of Patroclus, and then, in the form of Phaenops, rebukes him for fearing the man who was formerly a weakling. In Book XVIII, Thetis tells Hephaestus that Apollo killed Patroclus in the front rank and gave glory to Hector.

In Book XX, Apollo takes the form of Lycaon to goad Aeneas into facing Achilles. He approaches Hector and tells him not to throw himself forward against Achilles, and Hector, frightened, withdraws. When Hector sees Polydorus wounded and advances against Achilles, and Achilles rushes at him, Apollo snatches him away and hides him in a thick mist, and Achilles strikes the air three times.

In Book XXI, Achilles recalls that his mother told him he would perish by Apollo's arrows. In the fight among the gods, Poseidon challenges Apollo and reminds him of the year when both served Laomedon. Apollo refuses to fight for the sake of mortals, who are like leaves, and withdraws. Then he enters Ilion, because he is concerned for the wall, and incites Agenor: he puts courage in his breast, stands beside him wrapped in mist, snatches him away before Achilles can kill him, and takes his form to draw Achilles across the wheat field to the Scamander.

In Book XXII, Apollo reveals himself to Achilles, who accuses him of having deceived him and of stealing his glory: a mortal pursues an immortal. In Hector's race around the city, he gives him strength in the knees for the last time and leaves him when Zeus's scale goes down. Hector, dying, tells Achilles that Paris and Apollo will destroy him at the Scaean Gates.

In Book XXIII, he knocks Diomedes's whip out of his hand in the chariot race, and covers Hector's body with a dark cloud, so that the sun does not dry out the skin.

In Book XXIV, Apollo guards the body from all disfigurement and covers it with the golden aegis. On the twelfth morning, he accuses the gods before everyone: Hector burned thigh bones of oxen and goats for them, and they do not dare even to save him, and prefer to support Achilles, who has lost all pity and reverent shame.

Themes Embodied

Apollo embodies Death that comes from afar, from the god's bow, through plague and through the blow of an open hand. He embodies Fate and Free Will in the limits: he warns that the race of gods is not the same as that of men, protects Hector, and abandons him when the scale goes down. And he embodies Compassion and Charity in the last book, when he laments Hector, and Honor and Reputation in the reproach that whoever honored the gods with sacrifices deserves care.

Apollo says that men are like leaves, which flourish and wither, and yet he protects Aeneas, Agenor, Hector, and the wall of Troy. The contempt spoken and the care given do not coincide, and the poem does not choose between the two. The same hand that kills Patroclus from behind, unseen by him, covers Hector's body with the aegis. And the one who accuses Achilles of having lost pity, in Book XXIV, is the same god who, in Book I, began the story with a plague sent in the name of a dishonored father.

Relationships

• Hector: the man he lifts, hides, protects, and, when the scale goes down, abandons.
• Achilles: the hero he deceives in Book XXI, and whom Hector says he and Paris will destroy.
• Patroclus: the man he pushes back and disarms from behind.
• Diomedes: the mortal whom he warns in Book V.
• Athena: the goddess with whom he arranges the pause of Book VII and who thwarts him in Book XXIII.
• Zeus: the god who gives him the aegis and the task of caring for Hector.
• Agamemnon: the king who dishonored the priest whose prayer the god answers.
• Hera: the goddess who answers him, in Book XXIV, that Hector and Achilles cannot have equal honor.
• Aeneas, Agenor, and Hector: the Trojans whom he covers with mist.
• Poseidon: the uncle with whom he worked for Laomedon.