"If e'er I roofed thy graceful fane,"

for the custom of decorating temples with garlands was of later

date.

0 --Bent was his bow "The Apollo of Homer, it must be borne in mind,

is a different character from the deity of the same name in the

later classical pantheon. Throughout both poems, all deaths from

unforeseen or invisible causes, the ravages of pestilence, the fate

of the young child or promising adult, cut off in the germ of

infancy or flower of youth, of the old man dropping peacefully into

the grave, or of the reckless sinner suddenly checked in his career

of crime, are ascribed to the arrows of Apollo or Diana. The

oracular functions of the god rose naturally out of the above

fundamental attributes, for who could more appropriately impart to

mortals what little foreknowledge Fate permitted of her decrees than

the agent of her most awful dispensations? The close union of the

arts of prophecy and song explains his additional office of god of

music, while the arrows with which he and his sister were armed,

symbols of sudden death in every age, no less naturally procured him

that of god of archery. Of any connection between Apollo and the

Sun, whatever may have existed in the more esoteric doctrine of the

Greek sanctuaries, there is no trace in either Iliad or

Odyssey."--Mure, "History of Greek Literature," vol. i. p. 478, sq.

902

The Iliad of Homer