The oracular functions of the god rose naturally out of the above fundamental attributes, for who could more appropriately impart to mortals what little foreknowledge Fate permitted of her decrees than the agent of her most awful dispensations?
The close union of the arts of prophecy and song explains his additional office of god of music, while the arrows with which he and his sister were armed, symbols of sudden death in every age, no less naturally procured him that of god of archery.

Of any connection between Apollo and the Sun, whatever may have existed in the more esoteric doctrine of the Greek sanctuaries, there is no trace in either Iliad or Odyssey."-- Mure, "History of Greek Literature," vol.i.p.

478, sq.
51 It has frequently been observed, that most pestilences begin with animals, and that Homer had this fact in mind.
52 -- _Convened to council._ The public assembly in the heroic times is well characterized by Grote, vol.ii.p 92.

"It is an assembly for talk.

Communication and discussion to a certain extent by the chiefs in person, of the people as listeners and sympathizers--often for eloquence, and sometimes for quarrel--but here its ostensible purposes end." 53 Old Jacob Duport, whose "Gnomologia Homerica" is full of curious and useful things, quotes several passages of the ancients, in which reference is made to these words of Homer, in maintenance of the belief that dreams had a divine origin and an import in which men were interested.
54 Rather, "bright-eyed." See the German critics quoted by Arnold.
55 The prize given to Ajax was Tecmessa, while Ulysses received Laodice, the daughter of Cycnus.
56 The Myrmidons dwelt on the southern borders of Thessaly, and took their origin from Myrmido, son of Jupiter and Eurymedusa.