or "Apollo Isn't The Sun....Until He Actually Is?"
Apollo’s relationship to the sun is something people often talk about. There's no shortage of those who come into polytheistic circles believing that he is the god who oversees the sun and, similarly, there’s no shortage of people who will quickly tell them, “Apollo is NOT the god of the sun, just of light”. However, as with most things in the realm of ancient religions, it's not so simple. This post isn’t to take away from Helios and Sol and their roles in their respective cultures, just to explore the nuance of Apollo’s, who, throughout ancient history, actually had quite a lot to do with the sun. By no means is “sun god” Apollo’s original role but it is one that was given to him at varying points and it’s not invalid or wrong for people to worship him in that capacity now.
Note: For simplicity’s sake, I’m going to call Apollo by the Latin form of his name all the way through even when referring to Greek views and worship of him. This is just because it tends to be more recognizable and if I had switched back and forth all throughout the post, it would’ve been messy.
☼ All Roads Do Not, In Fact, Lead to Rome
One common mark against associating Apollo with the sun is a belief that it’s all a later Roman invention and has no basis in a more “purely” Greek religious point of view, and…. let's unpack that. For one, it’s just not true. The next section will cover more of the Greek origins for a solar Apollo but that association was regularly occurring in the Greek world when Apollo had only just barely been meaningfully introduced into Roman religion, in about the 5th century BCE. Secondly, that view somehow implies that 1) a ‘pure’ form of Greek religion even existed, which it didn’t, and 2) that changes to Greek religions derived from outside influence are invalid within the realm of Hellenism, which they aren’t. Greek religion is an entity that spanned multiple continents, had regional variations in mythology as well as in practical cult traditions/worship, and was constantly changing over time in so many ways while taking on both internal and external influences.
Within Roman religious tradition, Apollo wasn’t associated with the sun and Sol until around 500 years after it began occurring in various Greek traditions (with Helios amongst the Greeks). It's also worth noting that identifications between Sol (or Helios) and Apollo within Rome tend to be very loose, the more strict view of “Apollo IS Helios and Helios IS Apollo” is much more prominent amongst Greek writers. The closest I can actually find in Roman literature is from looking at the works of Ovid where he constantly calls both Apollo and Helios/Sol as simply “Phoebus” and gives them both as the twin brother of Diana but he stops short of explicitly equating them. There are many mentions that Roman writers in the 3rd century CE did explicitly make that equation but I personally couldn’t find any direct sources for that aside from modern scholars saying “it was common in Latin literature during this period”. There are also floor mosaics from the 2nd century CE which depict Apollo in manners which were otherwise typically used for Helios or Sol, such as the one below (from Roman Tunisia), where Apollo is shown with a solar crown, a motif that specifically refers to the physical sun in the iconography of this period.
☼ It's All (5th Century BCE) Greek to Me
One of the earliest mentions that gives Apollo the role of the literal sun in Greece is in Aeschylus’ “Bassarai”, a play written sometime during his life (525-456BCE), in which he describes the underworld as a place where Apollo cannot shine and therefore, is a sun-less place. In a play by Euripides that was first performed in about 420 BCE in Athens, Apollo is said to be another name for the sun god Helios. This play, entitled “Phaethon” is a take on the myth of…well..Phaethon, and in it, the character of Clymene (Phaethon’s mother, a brief consort of Helios) says “Helios, who men also call Apollo'' in a speech lamenting the death of her son. Also around this time period, Oenopides of Chios, an ancient Greek geometer and astronomer, gives Apollo the epithet of “Loxias” and then goes on to explain that it refers to his role in the sun’s path across the sky (it's usually an epithet related to Apollo's oracular function, Oenepides connects it to the elliptical path of the sun) and Philochorus, an Athenian historian with a strong connection to Athenian priesthoods, wrote that the men of his time consider Helios and Apollo to be one and the same. The 3rd century BCE Greek poet Callimachus takes time in his work to admonish people who consider Apollo and Helios to be separate deities and goes on to call Apollo as the one who rules over day (as the Sun). Pausanias, a Greek historian from the 2nd century CE, wrote about meeting a man from Sidon who considered Apollo and Helios to be the same and Pausanias goes on to say that this was the common view of Greeks (Sidon was originally a Pheonician city in what is now Lebanon, it had been under the Hellenistic Greek governance of Alexander the Great and was under Roman governance at the time of Pausanias). Finally, circling back to the 5th & 4th centuries BCE, there are also Athenian civic documents in which Helios and Apollo are equated in the oaths taken by those entering into public office.
These are just notable examples, if I were to list them all then this post would go on forever. This all shows that a solar Apollo was not merely an artistic or philosophical creation, it also held prominence amongst common people and in the realms of cult and civic traditions.
Just as a summary of the “who, what, where, when” of the ancient sources mentioned thus far:
525-455 BCE — Aeschylus' “Bassarai” [Greek, Athens*]
500-300 BCE — Athenian Civic Oaths [Greek, Athens]
490-420 BCE — Oenopides of Chios [Greek, Island of Chios]
420 BCE — Euripides’ “Phaethon” [Greek, Athens]
310-240 BCE — Callimachus [Greek, Alexandria]
340-261 BCE — Philochorus [Greek, Athens]
43 BCE-18 CE — Ovid [Roman]
110-180 CE — Pausanias [Greek, Lydia*]
100-200 CE — Roman Floor Mosaics [Roman*]
*Notes: Aeschylus himself wasn’t Athenian but was from elsewhere in Attica, his plays were presented in Athens which is why I listed it but I can’t find anything saying he was actually based there and he also traveled elsewhere such as to Sicily. As for Pausanias, he was born in Lydia to a Greek family but he spent his life traveling around the Roman Empire. Finally, the floor mosaics are from varying places in the Roman empire including from Tunisia and Turkey.
So, what does this all actually mean for Helios and Sol? Well, in my opinion, it doesn’t mean much of anything. The viewpoint that Helios (or Sol, for the Romans) is equivalent to Apollo is indeed very real and valid but so is the viewpoint that they’re entirely separate. They’re equally attested, equally “correct”, and neither crosses out the existence of the other. If you would like to worship Apollo as the physical sun, then go for it. It's not UPG or modern invention, it’s a very traditional take. And, if you don’t wish to view Apollo as the sun but instead view Helios (again, or Sol) as a distinct being, you’re also correct! My main goal with this post was simply to highlight the historical basis for a solar Apollo and give nuance to the commonly-repeated “bUt aPoLLo Is’Nt tHe sUn”. In my own personal practice, Apollo isn't the literal Sun either, but I don’t force that view onto others who do honor him in that context.
Sources & Further Reading:
☼ Theoi's Apollon page, this site discusses his sun symbolism under the "Encyclopedia" section.
☼ “Apollo and the Sun-God in Ovid” by Joseph E. Fontenrose. It's a very old article however, not much about Ovid's work has changed for a while. This author is critical of an Ovid Apollo-Sol equation, but he does perfectly lay out how the language is used for them both in Ovid and that it does hint at a possible equation. In that same vein, his article entitled "Apollo and Sol in the Latin Poetry of the First Century B.C." also deals with this. Both are on JSTOR.
☼ "Early Identifications of Apollo with the Physical Sun in Ancient Greece" by Dr Tomislav Bilic, a researcher and Chair of Numismatics with the Archaeological Museum of Zagreb. If you're someone who’s interested in a way more comprehensive overview of the Greek solar Apollo and scholarship on the subject then this is for you, friendo.
☼ For translations of some of the primary texts, I used Loeb and/or Perseus.
