#anyway Apollo is a sun god y'all dont let anyone tell otherwise

[my-name-is-apollo]

(To the anons who'd asked me about Helios / Apollo being sun god)

Decided to make this a post because I've been seeing too many "Helios WAS the sun god until Apollo replaced so Apollo is the sun god now" and "Apollo was never the sun god it was always Helios! The Romans just confused the two deities" and its getting kinda tiring. Both of those statements are not right imo so here's my two cents on this.

Helios was seen as the personification of the sun. And he alone was the one who had to drive the sun chariot across the sky every day. Here are tons of evidence for that.

Apollo's domain ranged from being a light bringing deity to a deity bringing seasonal change to being called the sun itself (the last one is very rare though, but it exists) . But driving the sun chariot wasn't his duty and he never did that, at least in the greek texts. He was identified with Helios/Sol by some Roman writers, hence sometimes, you can see the name Phoebus being used for the sun (although I haven't found any that use "Phoebus" for the driver of sun chariot, Sol is used in all the cases) but majority of them did distinguish Apollo from Helios and made Helios the owner of sun chariot. I believe it was during the Renaissance that various artists started painting Apollo with the sun chariot.

Back to Apollo, take a look at these:

“The unseen land [i.e. the underworld] where Apollon [here the sun] does not walk, the sunless (analion) land that receives all men.”

- Aeschylus, Seven Against Thebes 858 ff

^ This is probably the earliest source putting Apollo in role of a solar deity, and Aeschylus lived from 525 BCE - 456 BCE. So no, Apollo being a solar deity was definitely not something Romans invented. Apollo was seen as sun god since antiquity. There's no doubt in that.

“That Apollon is the same as the sun and that one god is furnished with two names is made clear to us by the mystical words spoken in the secret initiation rites and by the popular refrain which can be heard everywhere : The sun is Apollon and Apollon is the sun.”

- Greek Lyric V Folk Songs, Fragment 860 (from Heraclitus, Homeric Allegories) (trans. Campbell) (Greek lyric B.C.)

“moreover that ‘E’ is the second vowel from the beginning, and the sun the second planet, after the moon, and that all Greeks, or nearly all, identify Apollo with the sun”

- Plutarch, On the E at Delphi (trans. Bernadotte) (Greek historian, C1st and early C2nd A.D.)

^ A greek historian said that nearly all the greeks identified Apollo with the sun (not necessarily equate him with it, though)

“Apollo is the sun, and most rightly is he named the father of Asclepius, because the sun, by adapting his course to the seasons, imparts to the air its healthfulness. I replied that I accepted his statements, but that the argument was as much Greek as Phoenician.”

- Pausanias, Description of Greece 7. 23. 8 (trans. Jones) (Greek travelogue C2nd A.D.)

^ Here, in the role of him being a sun deity, he is connected with seasonal changes too, plus once again its mentioned how worshipping Apollo as sun god was prevelant among the greeks.

“And you Helios, who strike with your bright rays the everlasting heavenly vault, send on our enemies a far-shot arrow from your bowstring, oh ie Paian [Apollon].”

- Timotheus, Fragment 800 (from Macrobius, Saturnalia) (trans. Campbell, Vol. Greek Lyric V) (C5th B.C.)

^ "Helios" is used as Apollo's epithet.

“You say that Sol the Sun and Luna the Moon are deities, and the Greeks identify the former with Apollo and the latter with Diana [Artemis].”

- Cicero, De Natura Deorum 3. 19 (trans. Rackham) (Roman rhetorician C1st B.C.)

“Both Helios (the Sun) and Selene (the Moon) are closely associated with these [Apollon and Artemis], since they are the causes of the temperature of the air. And both pestilential diseases and sudden deaths are imputed to these gods [Apollon and Artemis].”

- Strabo, Geography 14. 1. 6 (trans. Jones) (Greek geographer C1st B.C. to C1st A.D.)

So calling Apollo the sun god is not wrong. At all. It's literally in the canonical sources, guys. We should just remember Helios as well, and also the fact that (for the most part) Apollo never drove the sun chariot. (and no, there was no dramatic fading away of Helios, or Apollo replacing Helios during the Roman times - that's just something Rick Riordan invented). So there's literally no need to argue over who was the sun god and who was not?? They both were solar deities in their own ways. Ovid acknowledges both Apollo and Helios/Sol as sun gods in his work Metamorphoses. And that wasn't a big deal or as confusing some people make it to be. There were two or sometimes more than two deities for a single domain - it's such a common occurrence in ancient greek mythology and religion, so I don't understand why we should have trouble wrapping our heads around the idea of there being two sun gods. It's not that hard. If the ancients could roll with that idea, I feel like we can too.