Monday, Feb. 07, 2011
Apollo
In legend, the ancient Greek deity Apollo, the son of Zeus, master of Olympus, rode a chariot pulled by fiery horses across the sky every day to bring light to the world. Venerated in various guises and incarnations throughout classical antiquity, radiant Apollo came to represent not only the sun, but also other illuminating fields of music, logic and reason. In The Birth of Tragedy, Friedrich Nietzsche, the 19th century German philosopher, described what he termed the Apollonian tendency as a kind of ordering impulse, bringing discipline and structure to the irrational, feral impulses that underlie all human expression. That's quite a task, even for the guy who rides a flying chariot every day.