DURING THE CONTEST WITH the satyr Marsyas, Apollo won the favor of the most playful Muse, Thalia, queen of festivities. Upon her he fathered the Corybantes, or crested dancers, lithe young men who shaved their hair to a forelock and danced at great rituals.
Then, roaming the hillsides, he came across a young girl who reminded him of his sister. She was a huntress. She chased deer on foot, hunted bears and wolves. When he saw her wrestling a full-grown lion and throwing it to earth, he decided he must have her. Her name was Cyrene. The son he gave her was named Aristeus, who taught man beekeeping, olive culture, cheese-making, and many other useful arts.
His next adventure was with the nymph Dryope. He found her tending sheep on a mountainside. He hid behind a tree and watched her. To his dismay, she was joined by a gaggle of hamadryads, mischievous girls who love to tell tales. So he had to stay hidden. He waited for the hamadryads to leave, but they lingered. Gods are impatient; they hate to be kept waiting. He changed himself into a tortoise and crawled out. The nymphs were delighted to see him and turned him this way and that and tickled him with a straw. He was a splendid glossy tortoise with a beautiful black and green shell. Dryope wanted him for her own and put him in her tunic. When her friends protested, he turned himself into a snake, poked his head out of the tunic, and hissed at them. The hamadryads fled, screaming. Dryope fainted. When she came to, she was in the arms of a god. Their son was Amphissus, founder of cities and builder of temples.
But his most famous son was Asclepius. This was the manner of his birth.
Apollo fell in love with Coronis, a princess of Thessaly, and insisted on having his way, which was unwise of him because she loved an Arcadian prince named Ischys. When she was with child, Apollo went on a journey, but set a white crow to spy on her. All crows were white then and were excellent chaperons; they had sharp eyes and jeering voices.
It was to Delphi that Apollo had gone. An oracle there told him that at that very moment Coronis was entertaining young Ischys. Just then the crow flew in, wildly excited, full of scandal, telling the same tale. “Your fault! You did not watch her closely enough!” cried Apollo. And he cursed the crow with a curse so furious that her feathers were scorched—and all crows have been black ever since.
Apollo could not bring himself to kill Coronis. So he asked his sister Artemis to oblige him. She was happy to; she was never fond of his amours. She sped to Thessaly and finished Coronis with one arrow.
Apollo, very dejected, put the corpse on the funeral pyre and lighted the fire. Then he remembered that she was with child by him. Hermes was now standing by, waiting to conduct her soul to Tartarus, for that was one of his duties. Understanding the situation in a flash, he delivered the dead girl of a living child, a boy. Apollo wished to have nothing to do with the child and asked Hermes to take care of him. Hermes had been struck by the way the baby had observed the details of his own birth—watching everything with a wide stare, so interested he forgot to cry—and recognized that this was an unusual child. So he gave him into the care of Chiron, the centaur, the fabulous tutor. Chiron taught him diagnostics, surgery, herbology, and hunting.
The boy could not wait to grow up. He doctored everyone he could get his hands on, and was soon known throughout the land for his skill at curing the sick. His fame reached Apollo, who decided to test him. He appeared at Asclepius’ door in the guise of a feeble old man afflicted with every loathsome disease known to medicine—and a pauper besides. Asclepius tended him with his own hands, and was so gentle and skillful that Apollo was amazed. The god resumed his own form and embraced the lad and told him he was pleased with his progress. He sent him to see his aunt Athene, who, he said, knew certain secrets of mortality. She too approved of the young man and gave him two vials of Gorgon blood. One vial could raise the dead, the other was the deadliest poison ever known. “No, Aunt,” he said. “I need only the first vial. You keep the other.”
Some say that it was by his own skill that he restored life to the dead, and that Athene was simply trying to take some of the credit for herself. Be that as it may, he did snatch several patients from the very gates of Tartarus, and Hades was enraged. He complained to his brother Zeus that Asclepius was robbing him. Zeus stood on Olympus, hurled a thunderbolt, and killed the young physician together with the patient he was tending.
When Apollo heard about this, he went into one of his wild heedless rages, stormed to Olympus, battered in the doors of Hephaestus’ smithy, and there slew all the Cyclopes, who had forged the thunderbolt which had killed his son. When Zeus heard this, he banished Apollo to Tartarus forever. But Mother Leto came and pleaded with him, reminding him of their old love. She spoke so beautifully that Zeus relented, withdrew the edict of Apollo’s banishment, and even agreed to bring Asclepius back to life. But he suggested that Asclepius be more tactful about his cures and avoid offending the gods.
When Aphrodite heard this story, she was bitten by envy. She considered herself a favorite of Zeus, but he had never done so much for her. Her heart was bitter against Apollo, and she wanted to do him a mischief. She called her son Eros, the infant archer, whose sweetly poisoned arrows infect man and woman with a most dangerous fever. She told him what she wanted.
Eros had two kinds of arrows: one tipped with gold and tailed with white dove feathers—these were for love. The others, made of lead, with brown owl feathers, were the arrows of indifference. He took up his bow and stalked his game.
Apollo, he knew, was hunting; so he made Apollo’s path cross that of Daphne, a mountain nymph, daughter of the river god, Penaeus. Then, fluttering above them, invisible, he shot Apollo with the dart of love and Daphne with the arrow of indifference. When the golden god came running down the slope toward the nymph, he saw her start up and run away. He could not understand it. She fled; the god pursued. She was a very swift runner, but great footsteps pounded behind her, and she felt the heat of his breath on her shoulders.
She ran toward the river and cried, “Oh, Father, save me! Save me!” Her father heard. Apollo, reaching for her, found himself hugging a tree; the rough bark scratched his face. He said, “But why?—why do you hate me so?”
The wind blew through the leaves, and they whispered, “I don’t know…I don’t know…”
But then the tree took pity on the grieving god and gave him a gift—a wreath of her leaves, laurel leaves that would never wither—to crown heroes and poets and young men who win games.
And still today, when questioned by losers, laurel trees whisper, “I don’t know…I don’t know…”