God of the sun, music, poetry, prophecy, healing, and archery. One of the few gods whose name remained unchanged from Greek to Roman. Patron of the Sibylline Books and protector of Augustus.
Apollo kept his Greek name in Rome, one of the few major gods who did. Romans took him seriously anyway. The Sibylline Books sat under his authority. Healing, plague, and civic expiation ran through his priesthoods. After Actium, Augustus built him a temple on the Palatine and folded the sun-god into the emperor's public image: order, clarity, the lyre beside the bow.
Imported, then seated
He arrived through Italian and Greek contacts well before the Empire. The lectisternium of 431 BCE already invited him to a public feast during plague. Later poets made him the patron of Horace's Carmen Saeculare. The god who speaks at Delphi became, in Rome, a god who also speaks through Latin ritual.
Not a copy of the Greek youth
The kouros ideal travels with him, as do the Muses and the Python story. What is Roman is the use: plague liturgies, the Palatine library, the identification with Sol on imperial monuments. This Apollo is a state musician, not only Leto's archer.
Primary Sources
Historical texts and references
“Indulgent god, propitious pow'r to Troy, swift to relieve, unwilling to destroy, directed by whose hand the Dardan dart pierc'd the proud Grecian's only mortal part.”
Worship & Cult
How Apollo was venerated in ancient times
Sacred Temples
•Temple of Apollo Palatinus, dedicated by Augustus
•Temple of Apollo Sosianus (Apollo Medicus) by the Theater of Marcellus
Festivals & Celebrations
Ludi Apollinares (from 212 BCE)Secular Games
Worship Practices
Apollo entered Rome through the Sibylline books and the Greek rite (ritus Graecus). The Palatine temple sat next to Augustus's house and held the Sibylline collection. Games in July were vowed in wartime. He is plague, prophecy, and Augustan order more than a rustic Italian numen.
