Roman Pantheon
Apollo
Also known as Phoebus Apollo
- sun
- music
- poetry
- prophecy
- healing
- archery
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.
About Apollo
Apollo on the Palatine
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.
Across traditions
Parallel figures
Figures who play a role like Apollo's in other traditions.
GreekApolloIllustrationRome adopted Apollo directly under his Greek name rather than renaming him
Compare Apollo and Apollo side by side
Worship and cult
Temples, festivals, and practices recorded for Apollo
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.
Sacred sites
- Temple of Apollo Palatinus, dedicated by Augustus
- Temple of Apollo Sosianus (Apollo Medicus) by the Theater of Marcellus
Festivals
- Ludi Apollinares (from 212 BCE)
- Secular Games
Family
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.
- Virgil, Aeneid, Book III (trans. Dryden)
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.
Parallels are editorial comparisons across traditions: a shared role does not, by itself, establish a shared origin.
Family relationships come from the atlas's kinship records. Ancient sources often disagree on divine genealogy.
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Genealogy
Family tree
Apollo's parents, consorts, children and rivals, as recorded in the atlas.