Apollo
uh-POL-oh
Attested elsewhere in ancient sourcesGod of the bow, of plague, of prophecy and of music. The Iliad opens with him coming down from Olympus like night and shooting arrows of plague into the Greek camp for nine days.
Sparta's relationship with him is the reason this story has a gap to fill. The Carneia was his festival, and Herodotus records that it was the Carneia that kept the Spartan army at home while Leonidas went north with three hundred men.
Delphi was his, and Herodotus is at his driest on how the oracle was used: he reports what was asked, what was answered, and what happened, and lets the three disagree.
Sources
- Hom. Il. 1.43-52
- Hdt. 7.206
- Hdt. 1.46-49
References are to the standard divisions of the ancient texts, not to any one edition.
Acenes of Sparta: The Dragon Slayer
A dragon is the reason the 300 died. Leonidas used the magic of the gods to bind Kalaxes beneath Taygetus, and the price was his life and his men's. Sixty-two years later a seven-year-old of the agoge falls into the dragon's crypt and inherits the unpaid balance.
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