Early Identifications of Apollo with the Physical Sun in Ancient Greece

Abstract

Abstract It appears that Apollo’s identification with the physical sun is predominantly understood in modern scholarship as a philosophical interpretation of a traditional religious belief. More precisely, it is often understood as an application of physical allegoresis on the tenets of traditional religion and thus attributed to a later stratum of Greek thought. A new evaluation of ancient evidence presented here reveals that the Apollo-sun identification was present in Greek ethnographic context from the earliest period and cannot be reduced to a philosophical reinterpretation of traditional myth and religion. At the same time, the authors interested in the interpretation of traditional religion in terms of natural philosophy were especially prone to use the Apollo-sun identification in their works, since it was able to provide substantial support for their hermeneutic approach.