ApolloApollo The god of light, Apollo, was the son of Zeus and Leto, who bore him and his twin sister Artemis, at the foot of mount Kynthos, in the island of Delos. As the god of pure light, he was the enemy of darkness, ignorance, badness.
According to the legend, as an infant only few days old, left Delos and searched for a suitable place to erect his temple. He visited almost the whole Greece and when he arrived at the hill sides of mount Parnassus, he was delighted. But the place was belonging to goddess Gaea and was guarded by her son, the monster Python. Apollo using his arrows and a lighted torch killed Python and took possession of the place and afterwards with his sister Artemis went to Sikyon for purification. At a place, in the Hellenistic city in the Agora (Sikyon's Ancient Acropolis at those times), the so-called later "Phobos" (Fear), they were overpowered by fear and fled to Crete.
The first priests of the temple were Cretan merchants, who were sailing from Knossos to Pylos, the god changed the direction of their ship and instead came to the port of Krissa.
According to another legend, Apollo left the mount Olympus in order to cleanse himself from the murder and worked as a slave servant, at the king Admetus of Pherae.
When Apollo purified, he returned to the Delphi crowned with laurels of Tempe.
Little by little, as the god of light that pierces through darkness, Apollo became the god of divination. He was always declaring the truth, but his answers were ambiguous, only signs, as Herakleitus tell us: "the master to whom the oracle at Delphi belongs, neither reveals the truth, nor conceals it, he only gives signs".
Known in many epithets, like Phoebus, Lykeios, Agyieus, Delphinus, etc., he was celebrated more than any other god. As the god of light that gives life, promoting the health and well being of man, he was worshipped in Thargelia (May, Athens), Delphinia (Athens), Hyakynthia (Sparta), Hecatombaea, the sacrifice of one hundred oxen in Athens (the first month of the year Hecatombaeon was named by the event). His festivals, as the god of light, were all in spring and summer.
He was celebrated not only the seventh day of the month (his birthday), but also the first day of the month was sacred to him.
To summarize, Apollo was the god of light, civilization, morality, who was fighting against barbarism, anarchy and badness.
The god of purification, he was closely connected with the arts. As the god of music, he is represented playing the lyre, as well the master of the choric dance, which is music and song.
DelphiHigh above the Gulf of Corinth, in the holy Mountain of Parnassos, surrounded by a forest of pines, lay the shrine of the God Apollo, Delphi.
For many centuries the voice of Delphi, the most important sanctuary, was the absolute guiding power to the Greeks. People as well cities visited it in order to get answers and guidance for their future and destiny. The oracles were listened and obeyed and their suggestive power was such, that wars were won or lost, by a few words of Pythia.
During the 7th century BC, when the barbarian cult of Dionysos had been introduced in Greece, endangering to wipe out the values and traditions and send Hellenes in barbaric stages, it was Delphi that saved Greece by ingeniously introducing Dionysos, with the qualities of Apollo.
Delphi, a religious and cultural center, imposed for the first time in human history international law, prohibiting the execution of prisoners of war or the pollution the waters of wells and destruction of aqueducts.
Delphi influenced Greece not only religiously, but in education and literature, in art and trade and mainly on colonization. The offerings of individual and cities to the oracle of Pythian Apollo were enormous. More than five thousand works of art were at Delphi before it was destroyed.
Artemis and Apollo