>>4825>I would love to read your rambles anon!AYRT and apologies in advance if this doesn't make a ton of sense, but I'll explain more about Apollo's historical influence on art due to his plague association. One of the most interesting parts of the Peloponnesian War is the Plague of Athens. Before the plague, the war was in Athens's favor. They had Pericles (their best leader throughout that whole war despite the fact that he came from a supposedly cursed bloodline) in charge, and they were crushing Sparta at sea (you know, because Sparta's landlocked and sucked at naval combat despite their superiority on land). The Athenians realized this very obvious advantage, and they quarantined themselves within city walls to force Sparta to engage them by sea. Great strategy except for one fact: being locked in a walled-up city for that long is a recipe for disease. What resulted was a plague which, if we go by what Thucydides tells us, sounds like pure hell. Even with modern science, we still aren't 100% on what disease this plague even WAS. All we know is an ABSURD number of Athenians died from it (we're talking about 1/4 or more of their population), the symptoms were unlike anything they'd seen before (we do have a very detailed description of the symptoms thanks to Thucydides), and it probably cost Athens the whole war.
So, what does this have to do with Apollo? Well, some Athenians believed they must have done something to anger Apollo; since he's a god of plagues, it logically follows that he'd punish the city through a plague. To make matters worse, three different oracles attributed the plague to a divine punishment (side note, but Thucydides mentions how the ancient Greek word for "plague" and the word for "famine" are very similar, and there was apparently some disagreement between the Athenian people as to which one the oracle meant. In other words, they weren't even confident at the time that Apollo was pissed; that was just their best guess). In response, the Athenian people turned to religion far more heavily. Looking at it with modern germ theory in mind, we can say that there was no divine punishment involved. However, to the Athenians, unless they appeased the god causing this plague, they were going to keep dying.