Very closely akin to a god of the Sun in Norse mythology is Balder the Good. He is the favorite of all the gods and of all men and nature. So fair and dazzling is he in form and features that rays of light seem to issue from him. Some idea of the beauty of his hair may be formed from the fact that the whitest of all plants is called Balder’s brow. Balder is described as the mildest, the wisest and the most eloquent of all the gods, yet such is his nature that the judgment he has pronounced can never be altered. He dwells in the heavenly mansion called Breidablik, meaning the broad-shining splendor, into which nothing unclean can enter. He is, in fact, the God of Light. Some one says of him,[5] “Light is the best thing we have in the world; it is white and pure; it cannot be wounded; no shock can disturb it; nothing in the world can kill it excepting its own negative, darkness (Höder). Loke (Fire) is jealous of it; the pure light of heaven and the blaze of fire are each other’s enemies. Balder does not fight, the mythology gives no exploits by him; he only shines and dazzles, conferring blessings upon all, and this he continues to do steadfast and unchangeable, until darkness steals upon him—darkness that does not itself know what harm it is doing; and when Balder is dead, cries of lamentation are heard throughout all nature.” How his death occurred will be related in the story of him in this chapter. The God of the Sun in Egypt was Ra, though Osiris is often called the God of the Sun; and probably was identified with the sun in some stage of the long development of this myth, as already mentioned. Like Balder and other sun gods, Ra has his fight with the demon of darkness in the under world, as described in an ancient Egyptian papyrus, a translation of which is given in this chapter. In Greek mythology there are two gods of the sun and two goddesses of the moon.[6] The older ones were Helios and Selene, but they became identified with the later celebrated pair, Phœbus Apollo and Artemis or Diana, as the Romans called her, the children of Zeus, the God of the Sky, and Latona. Apollo was not only a god of the sun, who brought the warm sun and the spring, but he was the healer, who warded off the dangers and diseases of summer and autumn. He had a temple at Delphi, where a priestess was wont to give forth oracles in regard to the future, supposed to be revealed by Apollo. He was a founder of cities, a promoter of colonization, a giver of good laws, and, finally, he was the patron of music and poetry. To him were sacred the wolf, the roe, the mouse, the he-goat, the ram, the dolphin, and the swan. [Illustration: Apollo with the Lyre. _Glyptothek, Munich._] An ancient hymn by Callimachus (240 B.C.) describes him as follows: