A
Coin of Apollo, the Brilliant God
According
to myth Apollo was the son of Zeus and Leto, the chief
god and his titan mate, as well as, the twin brother
of Artemis, goddess of the hunt. He had the widest range
of divine attributes of the gods, combined with the
paradoxes typical to Greek deities. He was patron of
archery and bows, yet his arrows brought plague and
sickness to humans. Contrarily, he was the god of medicine,
fathering the greatest of all mythical doctors. He was
the patron of music and the arts, yet with the conceit
characteristic of the gods, he had the Satyr Marsayas
flayed alive for his insolence in challenging Apollo
to a musical competition. For all of his inconsistencies,
Apollo was one of the best loved of the Olympian gods.
