Cook, Arthur B.: Zeus: a study in ancient religion (Band 2,1): Zeus god of the dark sky (thunder and lightning): Text and notes (Cambridge, 1925)

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Apollon and Artemis

venturing too high in the air, he left behind him the Milky Way,
hence called the Wildbahn, as a trace of his passage1.

It remains to notice a curious variant of the myth preserved by
Apollonios of Rhodes, who gives the following account of the
Argonauts' visit to the scene of Phaethon's disaster2:

Then entered they Eridanos' inmost stream,

Where once, his breast struck by the blazing bolt,

Phaethon fell, half-burnt, from Helios' car

Into the mouth of the deep mere ; and still

From the glowing wound wells up the vapour dense.

No bird can wing its way on pinions light

Across that water, but it flutters, fails,

Falls i' the heat. And maidens all around,

The Heliades, pent in black-poplars tall,

Make of their misery a pitiful plaint,

Yea, from their lids let slip bright amber-drops,

Such as are dried by sunlight on the sand.

But, when the waters of the darksome mere

Wash o'er the strand, blown by some blustering wind,

Then all that wealth is tumbled on the tide

Into Eridanos. The Celts declare

These are the tears of Apollon, Leto's son,

Borne on the eddies,—tears past numbering

He shed in bygone days, what time he came

To the sacred race of the Hyperboreans

And left, at his Father's chiding, radiant heaven,

Wroth for the son divine Koronis bare

In shining Lakereia at the mouth

Of Amyros. Such the tale these tribesmen tell.

The poet has worked into his epic a piece of local lore, which is
both interesting and important. The Keltoi, he says, regarded amber
as the tears, not of the poplars, but of Apollon. This lends some
colour to a view that I put forward years ago concerning Apollon's
name3. The oldest form of it seems to have been Apellon, and
Festus' assertion that 'the ancients used to say Apello for Apolloiy
is supported by a considerable body of epigraphical evidence from
the Doric area5. I proposed, therefore, to derive Apellon from
apellon, ' a black-poplar6/ On this showing Apollon would be a

1 A. Brunk ' Der wilde Jager im Glauben des pommerschen Volkes ' in the Zeitschrift
des Vereins fur Volkskmide 1903 xiii. 184.

2 Ap. Rhod. 4. 596 ff. Cp. Favorin. lex. p. 851, 9 ff.

3 Folk-Lore 1904 xv. 420.

4 Paul, ex Fest. p. 22, 14 Miiller, p. 20, 27 Lindsay Apellinem antiqui dicebant pro
Apollinem.

5 E. Boisacq Les dialecles doriens Paris 1891 p. 51 f., G. Meyer Griechische Grammatikz
Leipzig 1896 p. 64 f., K. Wernicke in Pauly—Wissowa Real-Enc. ii. 1.

6 Hesych. dweWov ■ atyeLpos, 6 euTi eldos devSpov.