Unchanged by any teller — how the centuries since have seen Apollo.
The gallery
Apollo Belvedere
Roman copy after Leochares, c. 120–140 AD
A marble statue of Apollo shown just after loosing an arrow, traditionally considered a Roman copy after a Greek bronze attributed to Leochares. For centuries it was hailed as the supreme ideal of classical male beauty. It stands in the Vatican Museums, Rome.
Apollo and Daphne
Gian Lorenzo Bernini, 1622–1625
A life-size marble sculpture capturing the instant Apollo overtakes the fleeing nymph Daphne as she turns into a laurel tree, bark and leaves sprouting from her fingertips. A virtuoso masterpiece of Baroque sculpture, it is displayed at the Galleria Borghese, Rome.
The Charioteer of Delphi
Unknown, c. 470 BC
A rare surviving Greek bronze of a victorious charioteer, dedicated at Apollo's sanctuary at Delphi to commemorate a chariot-race triumph. Its calm, austere features exemplify the Early Classical severe style. It is preserved in the Delphi Archaeological Museum.
On screen
Immortals
Tarsem Singh
Tarsem's hyper-stylised Olympus puts Apollo among the gods who descend to fight the Titans — the archer of light in a bronze-and-blood tableau.
Blood of Zeus
Shaunt Nigoghossian
Netflix's animated pantheon keeps Apollo among the Olympians at war — bow, prophecy and sibling rivalry in a saga that treats the gods as a dynasty under siege.
Percy Jackson and the Olympians
Disney+'s demigod series brings Riordan's Olympus to live action, with Apollo among the Twelve whose children and oracles shape every quest from Camp Half-Blood.
Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief
Chris Columbus
Columbus's demigod adventure opens the modern Camp Half-Blood pantheon that includes Apollo's children and oracles — the sun god's world as a live-action gateway into Olympus.
In music & on stage
Apollo
Igor Stravinsky
Stravinsky's Apollon musagète for Diaghilev's Ballets Russes shows the young god taught by the Muses — cool, luminous classicism after the shock of the Rite.
Apollo et Hyacinthus
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Mozart's first true opera, written at eleven: Apollo's love for Hyacinthus, the jealous Zephyrus, and the boy reborn as a flower — Latin school drama set to precocious music.
Daphne
Richard Strauss
Strauss's bucolic tragedy ends as Apollo transforms the fleeing Daphne into the laurel — the god of music mourning the voice he has just silenced.
Apollo e Dafne
George Frideric Handel
Handel's Italian cantata-opera for Hanover stages Apollo's pursuit of Daphne to the laurel's edge — the god of music singing his own failed chase.
Death in Venice
Benjamin Britten
Britten's late opera after Mann gives Apollo a luminous counter-tenor presence opposite Dionysus — the god of form and light as the voice of aesthetic discipline in Aschenbach's collapse.
In play
Hades II
Supergiant Games
Apollo joins the Olympian boon roster in Supergiant's sequel: radiant strikes and harmonious casts from the god of light as Melinoë hunts Chronos.
Percy Jackson & the Olympians
Rick Riordan
Riordan's demigods meet Apollo as archer, plague-bringer and later the mortal Lester Papadopoulos — the sun god punished to walk among the kids who grew up on his myths.
Assassin's Creed Odyssey
Ubisoft Quebec
The game's Greece is thick with Apollo's sanctuaries — Delphi's oracle foremost — the god of prophecy as the religious weather of a Classical open world.
Lore Olympus
Rachel Smythe
Smythe's Webtoon restyles Apollo as a golden, possessive pop-star Olympian — the god of music and light as a cautionary flame in Persephone's modern underworld romance.