7. It seems, therefore, that whatever might have been the poetical attributes of Apollo in late times, in his religious character he was never an elementary deity, the essence of whose godhead is a personification of the creative powers of nature. None of the characteristic marks of such a religion are discoverable in his worship. So far from being a god of generation(1217) and production, he remains unmarried and youthful; for it is easy to see that his poetical amour with the nymph Daphne, and his sons, mentioned in poetry and prophecy, have no connexion with his worship. In his sacred rites and symbols there is no trace of the adoration of the generative powers, like those occurring in the ancient Arcadian worship of Hermes, the Argive fables of Here, or the Attic legends of Hephæstus and Athene. The worship of Apollo is even still more widely removed from the boisterous and frantic orgies so conspicuous in the Thracian rites of Dionysus. And although this latter worship flourished by the side of Helicon and Parnassus, near the Pythian temple, and both kinds of religious worship were practised in the immediate neighbourhood of each other,(1218) yet the religious feelings and rites which distinguished the services of the two gods always remained dissimilar. In the subsequent discussion we shall accordingly take for granted the original diversity of Apollo and the sun; and though the rites of the worship of Apollo, as preserved and recorded in later times, are doubtless of greater antiquity than any written documents which either we or the Greeks possessed, it will be convenient first to state the clearer and more intelligible accounts of Homer on the subject of Apollo, his divine character and worship. Chapter VI. § 1. Homer’s Conception of Apollo. § 2. Apollo as a punishing deity. § 3. Apollo as a beneficent deity. § 4. Explanation of the name Pæan. § 5. Of the name Agyieus. § 6. Of the name Apollo. § 7. Of the name Phœbus. § 8. Of the name Lyceus. § 9. Religious Attributes of Apollo.