Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT
I think my favourite epithet is one of Apollo's: "destroyer of ants". Why or how someone came up with that one, I can't imagine!
Apollo is, to my mind, probably the most interesting of the gods in both the Iliad and the Odyssey. Today, we probably most often associate Apollo with the Sun god, but that was a much later association. The Greek god of the Sun was called "Helios", and in was only in about the 3rd century AD that Apollo "merged" with Helios. In both Homer and in the much later Aeneid, Apollo has nothing whatsoever to do with the Sun.
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I've never heard the "destroyer of ants" epithet, but I remember that his epithet meaning "destroyer of mice" (Σμινθεύς) had something to do with the healing aspect of Apollo, and mice being carriers of disease.