Boutsikas , E., 2020,The Cosmos in Ancient Greek Religious Experience: Sacred Space, Memory, and Cognition,71-2.
Apollo’s strong solar and calendric attributes make him a particularly suitable deity for an investigation concerning astronomical links in religious spaces. This relationship, which continues well into the Roman period, appears in a number of texts from the fifth century BCE. Many of Apollo’s epikleses associate him with the sun: Phoebus, Lykeios, Aigletes (god of light or sun, with a temple on the Aegean island of Anafi), and Apollo Eos (of the Dawn). In literature, the identification of Apollo as Helios (Sun) is widely attested, as are a number of cults linking the two divinities, such as Apollo Helios in Rhodes and Athens and the Boeotian Daphnephoria. We will explore in this chapter how a number of Apollo’s other cults employed solar associations for timekeeping purposes and for shaping the cognitive ecology of the cults, triggering the senses within the religious experience. The sun’s fundamental importance in human existence stands as testimony to Apollo’s cosmic significance. His importance in the Greek pantheon is well known, but the god’s cosmic role is, in addition, palpable in his position as the god of music, which also carried cosmological significance through the sixth-century-BCE Pythagorean ideas of the music of the spheres. Plato, in particular, explains how Apollo directs celestial and musical harmony. Of particular relevance to this study is a third association of Apollo with the cosmos, his relationship with the land of the Hyperboreans, the people of the far north: a place associated, at least in the late sources, with eternal spring and light, where days were of extreme length and nights very short – an ideal ambiance for the god of light.
In the Homeric Hymn, Apollo, disguised as a dolphin, guides the Cretan ship first to Krissa and then to Delphi, where he founds his cult. This narrative offers an additional layer to Apollo’s cosmic significance. The sea is the primary element from which all gods sprang in the main Greek cosmogonies (Homeric, Hesiodic, and Orphic). The Delphic oracle of Apollo, as the centre of the world, matches the god’s cosmic connotations; a new world order is established by Apollo upon founding the oracle and taking over from the old primeval, chthonic, and destructive powers of the previous occupier. The cosmic significance of Delphi is confirmed in the characteristics of its two divine occupiers (Apollo and Dionysos), according to Plutarch: Dionysos’ presence in Delphi was seen as symbolic of the division of the cosmos into elements, with each god representing different expressions of the ever-changing cosmos. In Plutarch’s analysis, the elements, characteristics, and attributes of the two gods contain cosmic referents. In the example of Delphi, we revisit the idea that places of cosmic significance act as effective carriers of memory. Delphi, as the centre of the world – a notion made explicit in myth but also in the display of the omphalos (navel) – was a focal place of the ancient Greek cosmic structure.
Boutsikas , E., 2020,The Cosmos in Ancient Greek Religious Experience: Sacred Space, Memory, and Cognition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
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