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The American Astronomical Society, which is the major organization of professional astronomers in North America, has approximately 8,200 members (as of 2024). This number includes scientists from other fields such as physics, geology, and engineering, whose research interests are closely related to astronomy. The Inter...
Activities and graduate degree training. Astronomers who serve as faculty spend much of their time teaching undergraduate and graduate classes. Most universities also have outreach programs, including public telescope time and sometimes planetariums, as a public service to encourage interest in the field. Those who bec...
Amateur astronomers. While there is a relatively low number of professional astronomers, the field is popular among amateurs. Most cities have amateur astronomy clubs that meet on a regular basis and often host star parties. The Astronomical Society of the Pacific is the largest general astronomical society in the worl...
ASCII ASCII ( ), an acronym for American Standard Code for Information Interchange, is a character encoding standard for electronic communication. ASCII codes represent text in computers, telecommunications equipment, and other devices. ASCII has just 128 code points, of which only 95 are , which severely limit its sco...
The use of ASCII format for Network Interchange was described in 1969. That document was formally elevated to an Internet Standard in 2015. Originally based on the (modern) English alphabet, ASCII encodes 128 specified characters into seven-bit integers as shown by the ASCII chart in this article. Ninety-five of the en...
History. The American Standard Code for Information Interchange (ASCII) was developed under the auspices of a committee of the American Standards Association (ASA), called the X3 committee, by its X3.2 (later X3L2) subcommittee, and later by that subcommittee's X3.2.4 working group (now INCITS). The ASA later became th...
The X3 committee made other changes, including other new characters (the brace and vertical bar characters), renaming some control characters (SOM became start of header (SOH)) and moving or removing others (RU was removed). ASCII was subsequently updated as USAS X3.4-1967, then USAS X3.4-1968, ANSI X3.4-1977, and fina...
ITA2 was in turn based on Baudot code, the 5-bit telegraph code Émile Baudot invented in 1870 and patented in 1874. The committee debated the possibility of a shift function (like in ITA2), which would allow more than 64 codes to be represented by a six-bit code. In a shifted code, some character codes determine choice...
Internal organization. The code itself was patterned so that most control codes were together and all graphic codes were together, for ease of identification. The first two so-called "ASCII sticks" (32 positions) were reserved for control characters. The "space" character had to come before graphics to make sorting eas...
Many of the non-alphanumeric characters were positioned to correspond to their shifted position on typewriters; an important subtlety is that these were based on "mechanical" typewriters, not "electric" typewriters. Mechanical typewriters followed the "de facto" standard set by the Remington No. 2 (1878), the first typ...
Electric typewriters, notably the IBM Selectric (1961), used a somewhat different layout that has become "de facto" standard on computers following the IBM PC (1981), especially Model M (1984) and thus shift values for symbols on modern keyboards do not correspond as closely to the ASCII table as earlier keyboards did....
The control codes felt essential for data transmission were the start of message (SOM), end of address (EOA), end of message (EOM), end of transmission (EOT), "who are you?" (WRU), "are you?" (RU), a reserved device control (DC0), synchronous idle (SYNC), and acknowledge (ACK). These were positioned to maximize the Ham...
For example, character 0x0A represents the "line feed" function (which causes a printer to advance its paper), and character 8 represents "backspace". refers to control characters that do not include carriage return, line feed or white space as non-whitespace control characters. Except for the control characters that p...
When a Teletype 33 ASR equipped with the automatic paper tape reader received a control-S (XOFF, an abbreviation for transmit off), it caused the tape reader to stop; receiving control-Q (XON, transmit on) caused the tape reader to resume. This so-called flow control technique became adopted by several early computer o...
The early Unix tty drivers, unlike some modern implementations, allowed only one character to be set to erase the previous character in canonical input processing (where a very simple line editor is available); this could be set to BS "or" DEL, but not both, resulting in recurring situations of ambiguity where users ha...
In modern usage, an ESC sent "to" the terminal usually indicates the start of a command sequence, which can be used to address the cursor, scroll a region, set/query various terminal properties, and more. They are usually in the form of a so-called "ANSI escape code" (often starting with a "Control Sequence Introducer"...
DEC operating systems (OS/8, RT-11, RSX-11, RSTS, TOPS-10, etc.) used both characters to mark the end of a line so that the console device (originally Teletype machines) would work. By the time so-called "glass TTYs" (later called CRTs or "dumb terminals") came along, the convention was so well established that backwar...
Computers attached to the ARPANET included machines running operating systems such as TOPS-10 and TENEX using CR-LF line endings; machines running operating systems such as Multics using LF line endings; and machines running operating systems such as OS/360 that represented lines as a character count followed by the ch...
End of file/stream. The PDP-6 monitor, and its PDP-10 successor TOPS-10, used control-Z (SUB) as an end-of-file indication for input from a terminal. Some operating systems such as CP/M tracked file length only in units of disk blocks, and used control-Z to mark the end of the actual text in the file. For these reasons...
In the C programming language, and in Unix conventions, the null character is used to terminate text strings; such null-terminated strings can be known in abbreviation as ASCIZ or ASCIIZ, where here Z stands for "zero". Table of codes. Control code table. Other representations might be used by specialist equipment, for...
Code 7Fhex corresponds to the non-printable "delete" (DEL) control character and is listed in the control character table. Earlier versions of ASCII used the up arrow instead of the caret (5Ehex) and the left arrow instead of the underscore (5Fhex). ]] Usage. ASCII was first used commercially during 1963 as a seven-bit...
All computers and related equipment configurations brought into the Federal Government inventory on and after July 1, 1969, must have the capability to use the Standard Code for Information Interchange and the formats prescribed by the magnetic tape and paper tape standards when these media are used. ASCII was the most...
Other international standards bodies have ratified character encodings such as ISO 646 (1967) that are identical or nearly identical to ASCII, with extensions for characters outside the English alphabet and symbols used outside the United States, such as the symbol for the United Kingdom's pound sterling (£); e.g. with...
ISO/IEC 646, like ASCII, is a 7-bit character set. It does not make any additional codes available, so the same code points encoded different characters in different countries. Escape codes were defined to indicate which national variant applied to a piece of text, but they were rarely used, so it was often impossible ...
In Japan and Korea, still a variation of ASCII is used, in which the backslash (5C hex) is rendered as ¥ (a Yen sign, in Japan) or ₩ (a Won sign, in Korea). This means that, for example, the file path C:\Users\Smith is shown as C:¥Users¥Smith (in Japan) or C:₩Users₩Smith (in Korea). In Europe, teletext character sets, ...
For some countries, 8-bit extensions of ASCII were developed that included support for characters used in local languages; for example, ISCII for India and VISCII for Vietnam. Kaypro CP/M computers used the "upper" 128 characters for the Greek alphabet. Even for markets where it was not necessary to add many characters...
IBM defined code page 437 for the IBM PC, replacing the control characters with graphic symbols such as smiley faces, and mapping additional graphic characters to the upper 128 positions. Digital Equipment Corporation developed the Multinational Character Set (DEC-MCS) for use in the popular VT220 terminal as one of th...
ISO/IEC 4873 introduced 32 additional control codes defined in the 80–9F hexadecimal range, as part of extending the 7-bit ASCII encoding to become an 8-bit system. Unicode. Unicode and the ISO/IEC 10646 Universal Character Set (UCS) have a much wider array of characters and their various encoding forms have begun to s...
Animation Animation is a filmmaking technique whereby still images are manipulated to create moving images. In traditional animation, images are drawn or painted by hand on transparent celluloid sheets to be photographed and exhibited on film. Animation has been recognized as an artistic medium, specifically within the...
An animated cartoon, or simply a cartoon, is an animated film, usually short, that features an exaggerated visual style. This style is often inspired by comic strips, gag cartoons, and other non-animated art forms. Cartoons frequently include anthropomorphic animals, superheroes, or the adventures of human protagonists...
The illusion of animation—as in motion pictures in general—has traditionally been attributed to the persistence of vision and later to the phi phenomenon and beta movement, but the exact neurological causes are still uncertain. The illusion of motion caused by a rapid succession of images that minimally differ from eac...
In addition to short films, feature films, television series, animated GIFs, and other media dedicated to the display of moving images, animation is also prevalent in video games, motion graphics, user interfaces, and visual effects. The physical movement of image parts through simple mechanics—for instance, moving ima...
In 1833, the stroboscopic disc (better known as the phenakistiscope) introduced the principle of modern animation, which would also be applied in the zoetrope (introduced in 1866), the flip book (1868), the praxinoscope (1877) and film. Silent era. When cinematography eventually broke through in the 1890s, the wonder o...
American golden age. In 1928, "Steamboat Willie", featuring Mickey Mouse and Minnie Mouse, popularized film-with-synchronized-sound and put Walt Disney's studio at the forefront of the animation industry. Although Disney Animation's actual output relative to total global animation output has always been very small, the...
Features before CGI. In 1917, Italian-Argentine director Quirino Cristiani made the first feature-length film "El Apóstol" (now lost), which became a critical and commercial success. It was followed by Cristiani's "Sin dejar rastros" in 1918, but one day after its premiere, the film was confiscated by the government. A...
Although relatively few titles became as successful as Disney's features, other countries developed their own animation industries that produced both short and feature theatrical animations in a wide variety of styles, relatively often including stop motion and cutout animation techniques. Soviet Soyuzmultfilm animatio...
While US animated series also spawned successes internationally, many other countries produced their own child-oriented programming, relatively often preferring stop motion and puppetry over cel animation. Japanese anime TV series became very successful internationally since the 1960s, and European producers looking fo...
The so-called 3D style, more often associated with computer animation, became the dominant technique following the success of Pixar's "Toy Story" (1995), the first computer-animated feature in this style. Most of the cel animation studios switched to producing mostly computer-animated films around the 1990s, as it prov...
The clarity of animation makes it a powerful tool for instruction, while its total malleability also allows exaggeration that can be employed to convey strong emotions and to thwart reality. It has therefore been widely used for other purposes than mere entertainment. During World War II, animation was widely exploited...
Other media, merchandise and theme parks. Apart from their success in movie theaters and television series, many cartoon characters would also prove lucrative when licensed for all kinds of merchandise and for other media. Animation has traditionally been very closely related to comic books. While many comic book chara...
Disneyland opened in 1955 and features many attractions that were based on Disney's cartoon characters. Its enormous success spawned several other Disney theme parks and resorts. Disney's earnings from the theme parks have relatively often been higher than those from their movies. Awards. As with any other form of medi...
Production. The creation of non-trivial animation works (i.e., longer than a few seconds) has developed as a form of filmmaking, with certain unique aspects. Traits common to both live-action and animated feature films are labor intensity and high production costs. The most important difference is that once a film is i...
Another problem unique to animation is the requirement to maintain a film's consistency from start to finish, even as films have grown longer and teams have grown larger. Animators, like all artists, necessarily have individual styles, but must subordinate their individuality in a consistent way to whatever style is em...
Unlike live-action films, animated films were traditionally developed beyond the synopsis stage through the storyboard format; the storyboard artists would then receive credit for writing the film. The traditional approach worked for several decades because prior to the 1960s, no one except Disney was attempting to reg...
Techniques. Traditional. Traditional animation (also called cel animation or hand-drawn animation) is the process that was used for most animated films of the 20th century. The individual frames of a traditionally animated film are photographs of drawings, first drawn on paper. To create the illusion of movement, each ...
Examples of traditionally animated feature films include "Pinocchio" (United States, 1940), "Animal Farm" (United Kingdom, 1954), "Lucky and Zorba" (Italy, 1998), and "The Illusionist" (British-French, 2010). Traditionally animated films produced with the aid of computer technology include "The Lion King" (US, 1994), "...
Limited. Limited animation involves the use of less detailed or more stylized drawings and methods of movement usually a choppy or "skippy" movement animation. Limited animation uses fewer drawings per second, thereby limiting the fluidity of the animation. This is a more economic technique. Pioneered by the artists at...
Live-action blending. Live-action/animation is a technique combining hand-drawn characters into live action shots or live-action actors into animated shots. One of the earlier uses was in Koko the Clown when Koko was drawn over live-action footage. Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks created a series of "Alice Comedies" (1923–19...
Computer. Computer animation encompasses a variety of techniques, the unifying factor being that the animation is created digitally on a computer. 2D animation techniques tend to focus on image manipulation while 3D techniques usually build virtual worlds in which characters and objects move and interact. 3D animation ...
When working with game animations, skeletal 2D animations are commonly created using tools like Spine, DragonBones, Blender COA Tools, Rive, and the built-in Unity editor. The primary benefit of this approach is the ability to reuse images, which reduces the amount of graphics stored in RAM. This principle of maximizin...
Apollo Apollo is one of the Olympian deities in ancient Greek and Roman religion and Greek and Roman mythology. Apollo has been recognized as a god of archery, music and dance, truth and prophecy, healing and diseases, the Sun and light, poetry, and more. One of the most important and complex of the Greek gods, he is t...
As the god of "mousike", Apollo presides over all music, songs, dance, and poetry. He is the inventor of string-music and the frequent companion of the Muses, functioning as their chorus leader in celebrations. The lyre is a common attribute of Apollo. Protection of the young is one of the best attested facets of his p...
In Hellenistic times, especially during the 5th century BCE, as "Apollo Helios" he became identified among Greeks with Helios, the personification of the Sun. Although Latin theological works from at least 1st century BCE identified Apollo with Sol, there was no conflation between the two among the classical Latin poet...
Several instances of popular etymology are attested by ancient authors. Thus, the Greeks most often associated Apollo's name with the Greek verb (), "to destroy". Plato in "Cratylus" connects the name with (), "redemption", with ("apolousis"), "purification", and with (), "simple", in particular in reference to the The...
Greco-Roman epithets. Apollo's chief epithet was Phoebus ( ; , "Phoibos" ), literally "bright". It was very commonly used by both the Greeks and Romans for Apollo's role as the god of light. Like other Greek deities, he had a number of others applied to him, reflecting the variety of roles, duties, and aspects ascribed...
Healer and god-protector from evil. In classical times, his major function in popular religion was to keep away evil, and he was therefore called "apotropaios" (, "averting evil") and "alexikakos" ( "keeping off ill"; from v. + n. ). Apollo also had many epithets relating to his function as a healer. Some commonly-used...
Homer uses the noun Paeon to designate both a god and that god's characteristic song of apotropaic thanksgiving and triumph. Such songs were originally addressed to Apollo and afterwards to other gods: to Dionysus, to Apollo Helios, to Apollo's son Asclepius the healer. About the 4th century BCE, the paean became merel...
Dorian origin. The "Homeric Hymn to Apollo" depicts Apollo as an intruder from the north. The connection with the northern-dwelling Dorians and their initiation festival "apellai" is reinforced by the month "Apellaios" in northwest Greek calendars. The family-festival was dedicated to Apollo (Doric: ). "Apellaios" is t...
Anatolian origin. A non-Greek origin of Apollo has long been assumed in scholarship. The name of Apollo's mother Leto has Lydian origin, and she was worshipped on the coasts of Asia Minor. The inspiration oracular cult was probably introduced into Greece from Anatolia, which is the origin of Sibyl, and where some of th...
The Greeks gave to him the name "agyieus" as the protector god of public places and houses who wards off evil and his symbol was a tapered stone or column. However, while usually Greek festivals were celebrated at the full moon, all the feasts of Apollo were celebrated on the seventh day of the month, and the emphasis ...
Oracular shrines. Apollo had a famous oracle in Delphi, and other notable ones in Claros and Didyma. His oracular shrine in Abae in Phocis, where he bore the toponymic epithet "Abaeus" (, "Apollon Abaios"), was important enough to be consulted by Croesus. His oracular shrines include: Oracles were also given by sons of...
The Doric order dominated during the 6th and the 5th century BC but there was a mathematical problem regarding the position of the triglyphs, which could not be solved without changing the original forms. The order was almost abandoned for the Ionic order, but the Ionic capital also posed an insoluble problem at the co...
However, Hera had tricked Eileithyia, the goddess of childbirth, to stay on Olympus, due to which Leto was unable to give birth. The goddesses then convinced Iris to go bring Eileithyia by offering her a necklace of amber 9 yards (8.2 m) long. Iris did accordingly and persuaded Eileithyia to step onto the island. Thus,...
When Leto arrived at Thebes, fetal Apollo prophesied from his mother's womb that in the future he would punish a slanderous woman in Thebes (Niobe), so he did not want to be born there. Leto then went to Thessaly and sought the help of the river nymphs who were the daughters of the river Peneus. Though he was initially...
Hera was no longer angry, as Zeus had managed to calm her down; and she held no grudge against Asteria, since Asteria had rejected Zeus in the past. Pindar. Pindar is the earliest source who explicitly calls Apollo and Artemis as twins. Here, Asteria is also stated to be Leto's sister. Wanting to escape Zeus' advances,...
Other variations. Aside from those mentioned above, more variations on the story of Apollo's birth include: Aelian states that it took Leto twelve days and twelve nights to travel from Hyperborea to Delos. Leto changed herself into a she-wolf before giving birth. This is given as the reason why Homer describes Apollo a...
This island became sacred to Apollo and was one of the major cult centres of the god. Apollo was born on the seventh day (, "hebdomagenes") of the month Thargelion—according to Delian tradition—or of the month Bysios—according to Delphian tradition. The seventh and twentieth, the days of the new and full moon, were eve...
Hyperborea was also Leto's birthplace. It is said that Leto came to Delos from Hyperborea accompanied by a pack of wolves. Henceforth, Hyperborea became Apollo's winter home and wolves became sacred to him. His intimate connection to wolves is evident from his epithet "Lyceus", meaning "wolf-like". But Apollo was also ...
Growing up, Apollo was nursed by the nymphs Korythalia and Aletheia, the personification of truth. Phoebe, his grandmother, gave the oracular shrine of Delphi to Apollo as a birthday gift. As a four-year-old child, Apollo built a foundation and an altar on Delos using the horns of the goats that his sister Artemis hunt...
Lycian peasants. Soon after giving birth to her twins, Leto fled from Delos fearing Hera. Upon reaching Lycia, her infants had drained all of their mother's milk and cried for more to satisfy their hunger. The exhausted mother then tried drinking from a nearby lake but was stopped by some Lycian peasants. When she begg...
In the Homeric hymn to Apollo, Python was a female drakon and the nurse of the giant Typhon whom Hera had created to overthrow Zeus. She was described as a terrifying monster and a "bloody plague". Apollo, in his pursuit to establish his worship, came across Python and killed her with a single arrow shot from his bow. ...
This legend is also narrated as the origin of the cry "Hië paian". According to Athenaeus, Python attacked Leto and her twins during their visit to Delphi. Taking Artemis into her arms, Leto climbed upon a rock and cried at Apollo to shoot the monster. The cry let out by her, "ιε, παῖ" ("Shoot, boy") later got slightly...
Alcaeus narrates the following account: Zeus, who had adorned his newborn son with a golden headband, also provided him with a chariot driven by swans and instructed Apollo to visit Delphi to establish his laws among the people. But Apollo disobeyed his father and went to the land of Hyperborea. The Delphians continuou...
Since Apollo had committed a blood crime, he also had to be purified. Pausanias has recorded two of the many variations of this purification. In one of them, both Apollo and Artemis fled to Sicyon and were purified there. In the other tradition that had been prevalent among the Cretans, Apollo alone travelled to Crete ...
Some others have also said that Apollo was exiled and subjected to servitude under king Admetus as a means of punishment for the murder he had committed. It was when he was serving as a cowherd under Admetus that the theft of the cattle by Hermes happened. The servitude was said to have lasted for either one year, or o...
Tityus. Tityus was another giant who tried to rape Leto, either on his own accord when she was on her way to Delphi or at the order of Hera. Leto called upon on her children who instantly slew the giant. Apollo, still a young boy, shot him with his arrows. In some accounts, Artemis also joined him in protecting their m...
Because Admetus had treated Apollo well, the god conferred great benefits on him in return. Apollo's mere presence is said to have made the cattle give birth to twins. Apollo helped Admetus win the hand of Alcestis, the daughter of King Pelias, by taming a lion and a boar to draw Admetus' chariot. He was present during...
The love between Apollo and Admetus was a favored topic of Roman poets like Ovid and Servius. Niobe. The fate of Niobe was prophesied by Apollo while he was still in Leto's womb. Niobe was the queen of Thebes and wife of Amphion. She displayed hubris when she boasted that she was superior to Leto because she had fourte...
When Chloris married and had children, Apollo granted her son Nestor the years he had taken away from the Niobids. Hence, Nestor was able to live for 3 generations. Building the walls of Troy. Once Apollo and Poseidon served under the Trojan king Laomedon in accordance with Zeus' words. Apollodorus states that the gods...
However, the king not only refused to give the gods the wages he had promised, but also threatened to bind their feet and hands, and sell them as slaves. Angered by the unpaid labour and the insults, Apollo infected the city with a pestilence and Poseidon sent the sea monster Cetus. To deliver the city from it, Laomedo...
Receiving the aegis from Zeus, Apollo entered the battlefield as per his father's command, causing great terror to the enemy with his war cry. He pushed the Greeks back and destroyed many of the soldiers. He is described as "the rouser of armies" because he rallied the Trojan army when they were falling apart. When Zeu...
The Trojan hero Hector (who, according to some, was the god's own son by Hecuba) was favored by Apollo. When he got severely injured, Apollo healed him and encouraged him to take up his arms. During a duel with Achilles, when Hector was about to lose, Apollo hid Hector in a cloud of mist to save him. When the Greek war...
Finally, Apollo caused Achilles' death by guiding an arrow shot by Paris into Achilles' heel. In some versions, Apollo himself killed Achilles by taking the disguise of Paris. Apollo helped many Trojan warriors—including Agenor, Polydamas, and Glaucus—in the battlefield. Though he greatly favored the Trojans, Apollo wa...
Anius, Apollo's son by Rhoeo, was abandoned by his mother soon after his birth. Apollo brought him up and educated him in mantic arts. Anius later became the priest of Apollo and the king of Delos. Iamus was the son of Apollo and Evadne. When Evadne went into labour, Apollo sent the Moirai to assist his lover. After th...
Apollo saved a shepherd boy (name unknown) from death in a large deep cave, by means of vultures. To thank him, the shepherd built Apollo a temple under the name Vulturius. God of music. Immediately after his birth, Apollo demanded a lyre and invented the paean, thus becoming the god of music. As the divine singer, he ...
Among the Pythagoreans, the study of mathematics and music were connected to the worship of Apollo, their principal deity. Their belief was that music purifies the soul, just as medicine purifies the body. They also believed that music was delegated to the same mathematical laws of harmony as the mechanics of the cosmo...
Apollo's lyre. The invention of the lyre is attributed either to Hermes or to Apollo himself. Distinctions have been made that Hermes invented lyre made of tortoise shell, whereas the lyre Apollo invented was a regular lyre. Myths tell that the infant Hermes stole a number of Apollo's cows and took them to a cave in th...
Contest with Pan. Once Pan had the audacity to compare his music with that of Apollo and to challenge the god of music to a contest. The mountain-god Tmolus was chosen to umpire. Pan blew on his pipes, and with his rustic melody gave great satisfaction to himself and his faithful follower, Midas, who happened to be pre...
Marsyas taunted Apollo for "wearing his hair long, for having a fair face and smooth body, for his skill in so many arts". He also further said, The Muses and Athena sniggered at this comment. The contestants agreed to take turns displaying their skills and the rule was that the victor could "do whatever he wanted" to ...
According to another account, Marsyas played his flute out of tune at one point and accepted his defeat. Out of shame, he assigned to himself the punishment of being skinned for a wine sack. Another variation is that Apollo played his instrument upside down. Marsyas could not do this with his instrument. So the Muses w...
Contest with Cinyras. Cinyras was a ruler of Cyprus, who was a friend of Agamemnon. Cinyras promised to assist Agamemnon in the Trojan war, but did not keep his promise. Agamemnon cursed Cinyras. He invoked Apollo and asked the god to avenge the broken promise. Apollo then had a lyre-playing contest with Cinyras, and d...
During the Trojan War, Odysseus came to the Trojan camp to return Chriseis, the daughter of Apollo's priest Chryses, and brought many offerings to Apollo. Pleased with this, Apollo sent gentle breezes that helped Odysseus return safely to the Greek camp. Arion was a poet who was kidnapped by some sailors for the rich p...
Telegony war. A war broke out between the Brygoi and the Thesprotians, who had the support of Odysseus. The gods Athena and Ares came to the battlefield and took sides. Athena helped the hero Odysseus while Ares fought alongside of the Brygoi. When Odysseus lost, Athena and Ares came into a direct duel. To stop the bat...
Theban war. During the war between the sons of Oedipus, Apollo favored Amphiaraus, a seer and one of the leaders in the war. Though saddened that the seer was fated to be doomed in the war, Apollo made Amphiaraus' last hours glorious by "lighting his shield and his helm with starry gleam". When Hypseus tried to kill th...
Aloadae. The Aloadae, namely Otis and Ephialtes, were twin giants who decided to wage war upon the gods. They attempted to storm Mt. Olympus by piling up mountains, and threatened to fill the sea with mountains and inundate dry land. They even dared to seek the hand of Hera and Artemis in marriage. Angered by this, Apo...
Other stories. In the first Olympic games, Apollo defeated Ares and became the victor in wrestling. He outran Hermes in the race and won first place. Apollo divides months into summer and winter. He rides on the back of a swan to the land of the Hyperboreans during the winter months, and the absence of warmth in winter...
Molpadia and Parthenos. Molpadia and Parthenos were the sisters of Rhoeo, a former lover of Apollo. One day, they were put in charge of watching their father's ancestral wine jar but they fell asleep while performing this duty. While they were asleep, the wine jar was broken by the swine their family kept. When the sis...
Heracles. After Heracles (then named Alcides) was struck with madness and killed his family, he sought to purify himself and consulted the oracle of Apollo. Apollo, through the Pythia, commanded him to serve king Eurystheus for twelve years and complete the ten tasks the king would give him. Only then would Alcides be ...
After their reconciliation, Apollo and Heracles together founded the city of Gythion. Plato's concept of soulmates. A long time ago, there were three kinds of human beings: male, descended from the sun; female, descended from the earth; and androgynous, descended from the moon. Each human being was completely round, wi...
The rock of Leukas. Leukatas was believed to be a white-colored rock jutting out from the island of Leukas into the sea. It was present in the sanctuary of Apollo Leukates. A leap from this rock was believed to have put an end to the longings of love. Once, Aphrodite fell deeply in love with Adonis, a young man of grea...