Greek Pantheonweapon
Bow of Apollo
- Perfect Accuracy
- Plague Arrows
- Healing Light
- Long-range Destruction
The silver bow of the god of archery, light, and plague. Its arrows never miss their target and can bring both death through plague or healing through purification.
About Bow of Apollo
Far-shooter
Iliad 1 opens with Apollo's arrows: nine days of plague in the Achaean camp after Agamemnon refuses Chryses. The Homeric Hymn to Apollo and later lyric give him the silver bow as twin to Artemis. Hephaestus as bowyer is a decorative later note; Homer needs no forge-scene. The arrows are disease and sudden death as much as sport-archery. Delian and Pythian cult honor the archer; they do not display a unique named bow in a treasury. Hekebolos, far-shooter, is the god's work.
Origin
Forged by Hephaestus with silver taken from the moon, matching the golden bow he created for Artemis.
Sources and further reading
Source notes
These references are recorded in the catalog. Their passage wording and translation have not been checked, so quotations are not displayed here.
- Homer, Iliad 1
About this entry
By Elizabeth Stein for Mythos Atlas. About the author. Editorial notes are grounded in the site's cited sources and can be challenged through the contact page.
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