Artemis and Apollo

***Miscellaneous Myths: Artemis and Apollo*** is the eighty-sixth episode of the Miscellaneous Myths series by Red. It is the sixth episode to do a deep dive into a god's or some gods' origin. The video discusses the starkly different origins for the famous divine twins.

## Introduction

Red begins the episode by discussing the general lack of fraternal twins in mythology, especially compared to the abundance of identical twins. She notes how all kinds of Indo-European mythologies have notable identical twins, including god-twins. However, despite sharing this similarity to other Indo-European cultures, Greek mythology has a rare case of fraternal god-twins: Artemis and Apollo.

## Summary

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Red recalls her past explorations into the evolutions of various gods and notes how some are more easily tracked than others; Aphrodite, for example, is cleanly tracked through the historical record as having non-Greek origins. Artemis and Apollo, however, have no analogous brother-sister gods in any local area. As it were, they most likely started out as fully separate gods with distinctly different origins. Red then notes that despite the observed strangeness of their situation, gods are malleable and subject to change and evolution over time, recalling Hermes' relationship to the god Pan, whom he is an offshoot of, and Persephone's nebulous parentage.

Red then discusses the prevalence of the two gods in Mycenaean Greece. She makes note of the fact that Artemis was worshiped in name at the time with many temples, meaning she was an established goddess by the Mycenaean period. Apollo's origin is more uncertain, however. The only possible evidence for his existence at the time was some of his epithets found in ledgers at Knossos, but his actual name cannot be found. However, he is firmly established by the 500s BCE, about when the Homeric Hymn to Apollo was written.

### You're playing with the big boys now

Skipping through the Greek Dark Ages, Artemis and Apollo are seen to be big players in the *Iliad*, in which they were aligned with the Trojans, along with Zeus, Aphrodite, Ares, and their mother Leto. Red notes that Aphrodite was an import god and Ares was generally disliked, so Artemis and Apollo's alliance with them may have been to portray them as scary or foreign.

By the time the *Iliad* was written, the two are full siblings and had most of their well-known traits, but some of their characterization in the epic is different from later sources. For example, Artemis gets destroyed by Hera during a fight, despite also being characterized as the goddess of the wild beasts and being a great hunter. However, Red posits that this only happened to make a point about the nature of the gods, as the *Iliad* is fond of doing, and that the scene is most likely used to make the point that Hera was the most powerful goddess. Apollo did not take part in the fight, so Red conspiracy-boards that he didn't fight to perhaps make the newer god seem more attractive and also to possible reinforce ancient Greek gender roles.

In the *Odyssey*, the two gods aren't big players, and references mostly boil down to "they killed someone with their arrows." This is often interpreted as causing random illness, as medicine is one of the their associations.

### Leto

The gods' mother Leto also has some inconsistent characterization throughout the mythos. In the *Iliad*, she is respected and revered in contrast to her children, and the *Theogony* says that Artemis and Apollo were from Zeus' previous marriage to Leto with no drama. The Homeric Hymn to Apollo, written much later, is also very vague as to where Artemis is born, saying she was born on Ortygia, whose location is uncertain, which contrasts with Apollo being born on Delos. It also does not call the gods twins. The hymn also gives the more familiar story of the circumstances of the twins' birth.

When Leto was pregnant, she couldn't find any place to give birth because every place was in fear of Hera's wrath, so she eventually convinced the island of Delos with the promise of being the site of her son's greatest temple. She wasn't able to give birth to Apollo, however, because Hera had eileithyia, the goddess of childbirth, distracted for nine days. She was eventually able to get down and birth Apollo. Apollo declared a bunch of god stuff, and Artemis was... also there.

TBA

## Credits

Red sings *The House of the Rising Sun* by The Animals.

## Characters Appearing

* Artemis
* Apollo
* Zeus
* Leto
* Hera
* Hermes
* Poseidon
* Persephone
* Athena
* Eileithyia
* Python

## Links

* Miscellaneous Myths: Artemis and Apollo