apollo.htm

Apollo

comments by Patrick C. Ryan (rev. 11/12/2000)

The acknowledged moon-goddess of Greece is Selene (S/Helé:ne:), which means simply "moon". Her earliest male counterpart will have been Silenus (S(e)ile:nós), who is a satyr and "very indecorous" (Seyffert 1995, p. 560), which is a quaint 19th Century way of expressing that, like Min, he was often ithyphallically portrayed.

We have attempted to demonstrate by illustrations that the celestial body associated with animal procreation, which would have a direct connection with turgid portrayals, is the moon.

Apollo

A connection between Apollo and Silenus is, at least literarily, present. In the myth of Hermes' theft of the cattle (these are also lunar avatars) of Apollo in the version supplied in a lost satyr-play by Sophocles (Ichneutai or The Trackers)⁽¹⁾, of all the different personages Apollo might have called on for assistance, he calls on Silenus and his satyrs. Who should be more concerned about the theft of the moon's cattle than another avatar of the moon, Silenus, the alter ego of Apollo?

The non-Greek source of Apollo's name had been quite uncertain until the attestation in a Luwian context of Appaliunas. Though Pokorny's IE etymological dictionary (1959) lists one possible IE source for Apollo (IE apelo-, "strength"). IE apelo- cannot be made to correspond with Greek Apóllo:n by any normal rules of conversion known to me; therefore, most investigators had come to the conclusion that the Greek god's name must be borrowed from another language.

In a recent article by Birgit Brandau in Archaeology Odyssey (I, 1998), entitled Can Archaeology Discover Homer's Troy?, a vassal treaty between Hittite King Muwatalli and King Alaksandu of Wilusa, identified in the article as Troy (Greek Ílios), is witnessed by three gods for Wilusa, one of which is Appaliunas. In the Iliad, another name for Paris is Alexandros, and the patron god of Troy is Apollo. The article also establishes a strong case for the language of the Trojans being Luwian, an IE language related to Hittite. Thus, the Luwian connection for Apollo seems fairly securely established.

No more than a brief look at this bronze Phoebus (Greek Phoîbos) at the right, another name for Apollo which simply means "gleaming (one)", will convince many that we are dealing with a lineal descendant
of Appaliunas, who I believe to be represented to the left above. And this archaic Phoebus Apollo even bears the Apollonian epithet, with which we have become familiar: argurótoxos, "(he) of the silver bow", which, by itself in an isolated context, would strongly suggest an identification with the lunar crescent(s).



However, major impediments stand in the way of interpreting Appaliunas as a Luwian expression meaning "father lion": 1) in the IE languages closely related to Hittite (including Luwian, Palaic), the normal term for 'father' is atta (IE atta); interestingly, however, Greek has áppa, "father" (IE appa) and páppa (IE pap[p]a, "father") as well as tatâ (IE tata) though not *átta, all meaning "father". Obviously, IE has both possibilities.

Since IE has both appa and atta, I believe we can provisionally assume that some sub-dialect of Luwian, from which the epithet might come, had *appa for "father".



I do not believe that the term employed in many IE languages for "lion" (*lewi(n)-) is a borrowing from Semitic (cf. Hebrew la:yish, "lion") principally because the IE forms show -n in most instances; and because I cannot conceive of the early IE's residing in an area totally without large felines, obviating their need to borrow a word for the concept with which they were already familiar

I do believe -liuna-s can reasonably be derived from *lewin-, whether it is IE or a borrowing from a nearby Semitic source.





Artemis



Artemis is tellingly the twin sister of Apollo; and she is certainly associated with the moon (note disk behind head) and female fertility (profusion of animal breasts).

The origin of the name, Artemis (Greek Ártemis, genitive Ártemidos), like that of Apollo (until now) is doubtful. Since we do not know from what language or dialect of Greek it comes (though, with the terminal element -id- (Brugmann 1972, II, pp. 407-10), it is almost certainly Greek), speculations on the meaning of her name can hardly be conclusive but, a possible derivation might be from IE ar-, "*white" (cf. IE 3. ar-, "nut"⁽²⁾) + tem-, "cut", in the sense of "(female) family member (-id-) of the white knife (cutter)", a possible description of the lunar crescent.





Ilithyia

The name of Ilithyia (Greek Eileíthuia; also Eleuthó:), the birth goddess, is supposed by many to be derived from ele:luthuîa, a feminine perfect participle of the defective verb érkhomai (with the suppletive eleútho:), and so meaning "(she who) has come/risen up", a rather bland epithet, philosophical rather than delineating the concrete image the ancients loved so well.

In view of the persistent association of animal fertility with the moon, I propose the possibility that Eileíthuia might be analyze as Eileí-, "*moon" + thuia, "*goddess".

Let us look at the proposed final element first: *thuia. We know that the IE form diwio-s is the basis for the Roman moon-goddess Dia:na (Pokorny 1959, I, p. 185), and specifically in the form *diwia-, which could easily have become *thuia in a Greek dialect; and we have the poetical Greek théaina, "goddess", corresponding almost exactly to Roman Dia:na. I think it is fair to say that *thuia could mean "goddess" in a Greek dialect in which the semivowel w was transformed into its vocalic counterpart: u.

We also propose consideration of Eileí- as "*moon". We have seen above that the first proposed element can take the form Eileí- or Eleu-. We have also seen above that the IE root swel- (s-mobile + 6. wel-, "warm?, *hot"), "smolder, burn", provides the basis for Selene (S/Helé:ne:), and, as we have suggested, for Silenus (S(e)ile:nós). We can see that the first syllable can appear as both (s)el- and (s)eil- in dialects which preserved initial s-; and also in those that did not: Greek heíle:, eíle:, héle:, "warmth of the sun, sunlight". For eileí-, we only need to assume that a Greek dialectal form based on IE *sweli-, "*glowing(?)", existed; and this is to be found with a different development in Greek aleei(-)nós, "hot". A related IE root *swelu- can be seen in Greek halu(-)krós, "warm", attested in the writings of Nicander, a Greek poet of Colophon in Western Asia Minor, suggesting a Western Asiatic provenance of the name Eleuthó:.

For a remarkably muddled recent expression of a view that Apollo represents a wolf-god, who is a weather-god cum agricultural divinity cum patron of youthful fraternities cum much else, some readers may want to read Daniel E. Gershonson's Apollo the Wolf-God, in an overpriced paperback edition.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Allen, Richard Hinckley. 1963. Star Names - Their Lore and Meaning. New York: Dover Publications, Inc.

Black, Jeremy and Green, Anthony. 1996. Demons and Symbols of Ancient Mesopotamia. Austin. University of Texas Press.

Bonnet, Hans. 1971. Reallexikon der ägyptischen Religionsgeschichte. Berlin/New York: Walter de Gruyter

Brugmann, Karl. 1972 (1888). A Comparative Grammar of the Indo-Germanic Languages. 5 vol. 2nd reprint. Varanasi, India: Chowkhamba Sanskrit Series Office

Budge, E. A. Wallis. 1969 [1904]. The Gods of the Egyptians - or Studies in Egyptian Mythology. 2 vol. New York: Dover Publications, Inc.

Eberhard,Wolfram. 1996. A Dictionary of Chinese Symbols — Hidden Symbols in Chinese Life and Thought. London/New York: Routledge & Kegan Paul

Gershenson, Daniel E. 1991. Apollo the Wolf-God. Journal of Indo- European Studies Monograph No. 8. McLean, Virginia: Institute for the Study of Man.

Graves, Robert. 1959. The Greek Myths. 2 vol. New York: George Braziller, Inc.

Guerber, H. A. 1895. Myths of Northern Lands. New York/Cincinnati/Chicago: American Book Company

Hallo, William W. and Simpson, William Kelly. 1971. The Ancient Near East - A History. New York etal.: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, Inc.

Jacobsen, Thorkild. 1970. Toward the Image of Tammuz and Other Essays on Mesopotamian History and Culture. Cambridge: Harvard University Press

Jacobsen, Thorkild. 1976. The Treasures of Darkness - A History of Mesopotamian Religion. New Haven and London: Yale University Press

Leach, Maria (editor). 1984. Funk & Wagnalls Standard Dictionary of Folklore, Mythology, and Legend. San Francisco etal.: Harper & Row, Publishers

Pokorny, Julius. 1959. Indogermanisches Etymologisches Wörter buch. Volume I. Bern and Munich: Francke Verlag

Seyffert, Oskar. 1995. The Dictionary of Classical Mythology, Religion, Literature, and Art. New York etal.: Random House (Gramercy Books)

1.

I received the perceptive email below from Miryam y César Librán Moreno, which raises some worthwhile questions concerning my proposed connection of Apollo to Silenus.

One could argue that Sophocles probably would not have incorporated this motif into his satyr-play unless the mythic connection had been made elsewhere (currently lost to us) but while this might be suggestive, it is certainly not conclusive.

With her permission, I have included this email to contribute to an objective appraisal of the proposal.

2.

Pokorny I (1959), p. 65: "Specht (Dekl. 114¹) setzt wegen gr. árme: - leuké: Hes. eine Farbwurzel ar- an, die er mit al- (oben S. 31) gleichsetzt."