Abstract��
The minor-Asiatic background enabled Apollo to take on multiple identities in the reconstruction process of Greek myths. Appolo’s image was initially displaced and equated with the Sun-God Helios. The Sun-God in Homer and Hesiod’ works was still Helios while Apollo was the god of hunting, medicine and music (the god of literature and art). The Histories of Herodotus excluded Helios from the main twelve gods of Olympus, and made the young god Appolo take a higher position in heaven. Tragedy playwrights before 500 BC. called Apollo the Sun-God, regarding his oracles as the moira which cannot be altered or resisted. In Hellenic age, the position of Apollo as the Sun-God was unshakable. In the literatures of Miletus school and Socrates, Apollo is turned into the god of reason. This paper tries to delineate how the initially alien god Apollo, with an initially alien background, takes place the former Sun-God Helios during the reconstruction process, to examine what sociocultural features the transformation of Apollo’s identities demonstrate during different periods in ancient Greek history, and to explore what significances the remaking of the Apollo myth implies for Greek tragedies, history and philosophy.
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2012, Vol. 32 
