Explantory Essay: Apollo and Coronis

I found my source when I started researching about the myth of Apollo and Coronis. There were very few web pages that explored this myth, so I had only a few choices, and ultimately went with the blog post by Linnea Tanner as she had the most information about the story of Apollo and Coronis. The blog included Ovid’s myth in context of Apollo and Coronis’ relationship and its connection with Apollo’s role as the god of healing. One of the major issues I found with this webpage was its lack of references and in-text citations. Another issue was the lack of detail on Apollo’s raven and its significance in the myth. I looked to address these concerns by adding more reference and in-text citations. I looked for accessible and reliable references that someone can quickly look up when they read my blog post instead of books the which the original source’s author used. Some of these references are Pindar’s Pythian Odes and Apollodorus’ Library. These texts are available for free on the internet for anyone to read, making this myth accessible to everyone and in-turn promoting Greek mythology. I did use one source that is behind a paywall, but it is a great resource for this myth. “Coronis and the Metamorphosis of Apollo: Ovidian Re-Formations of Pindar’s Third Pythian” by Rachael Philbrick offers a comparison of 2 different versions of this myth: one by Pindar and one by Ovid. This article explores the details that were left on in Ovid’s version of Apollo and Coronis, which I used to fill in the gaps in the original webpage source. The article also explores the symbolism of the raven, which was not included in the source. The myth itself is important in Greek mythology because it provides the history between Apollo, his son, and healing and medicine and can also be used to explain the origin of black coloured ravens.