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tsarinatorment · 2 years

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*Props elbows on table* Do continue the Apollo's children are Greek AND Roman meta, please!

Okay, so this took a while because the blog got shadowbanned and rl got a bit mad and just. Stuff in general. But I am still very much on this hill and yelling out about this (as two of my friends can attest to because they got trapped in a vc with me nattering on and on about this last night, oops), so let's get back to talking about this in depth.

This is the original post I made on the subject; it's very short and overview-y but several people asked for an expansion and as it's been a while I'm gonna ping the people in question: @rosesandlove44 @adequate-problematic @linds997

I'm actually upgrading this from a headcanon to a theory because the more I poke around and chat with others about it, the more it seems to fit with the narrative. So: Apollo's children are both Greek and Roman.

Now, before we can properly get into the children, we need to look at Apollo himself. If Apollo, like the rest of the gods, flits between Greek and Roman, then his kids would do the same and we'd have a split between them just like the rest - but he doesn't, and we don't.

Apollo never changes between the two. Not only that, but he's never shown to have any problems reconciling the two at all.

Starting chronologically, in Blood of Olympus, we meet the twins for the first time since the schism starts. Interestingly, however, it's Artemis who places more emphasis on the schism when they talk about it - Artemis, of course, becomes Diana for the Romans, and we know that the schism does affect her.

‘Delos is our birthplace,’ said the goddess. ‘Here, we are unaffected by the Greek–Roman schism. Believe me, Leo Valdez, if I could, I would be with my Hunters, facing our old enemy Orion. Unfortunately, if I stepped off this island, I would become incapacitated with pain. All I can do is watch helplessly while Orion slaughters my followers. Many gave their lives to protect your friends and that accursed Athena statue.’

If I, she says. While the implication is there with her use of "we" to describe them being safe from the schism on Delos, when it comes down to details she only talks about herself - specifically, that she would be incapacitated with pain. Apollo, when the same topic comes up, is nowhere near as specific:

‘To shoot my bow, I would have to step off Delos,’ Apollo cried. ‘Then I would be incapacitated, or Zeus would strike me down. Father never liked me. He hasn’t trusted me for millennia!’

Yes, he says he would be incapacitated, but his focus is immediately on Zeus and the punishment waiting for him. Admittedly, this and when he talks about Delphi do make it sound rather like there's something to do with the schism that's affecting him, but when we look at the scene more closely, there remains this curious lack of specifics or focus on that. Rather, what he says could very easily be misleading (and considering how much of an act he's putting on during this scene, what with the death threats to Leo that there's no feasible way he could ever have meant for so many reasons, what's a little more of an act?).

Apollo’s bow turned back into a ukulele. He plucked a dramatic chord. ‘When the schism began between Greek and Roman, while I struggled with confusion, Gaia took advantage! She raised my old enemy Python, the great serpent, to repossess the Delphic Oracle. That horrible creature is now coiled in the ancient caverns, blocking the magic of prophecy. I am stuck here, so I can’t even fight him.’

He says he struggled with confusion, but it never specifies what that confusion was by. In fact, as the other gods, as Artemis helpfully points out earlier in this same scene, are pained by the schism, Apollo seems rather odd to just be confused - actually, confusion would track more with him trying to work out why this is happening all of a sudden, especially as his own twin is affected, rather than it impacting him, personally.

Of course, there could be some inconsistency in the worldbuilding here. Rick has admitted several times to fudging things, and these two passages are the only ones that potentially contradict the theory, but I'm not entirely convinced on that because of the rest of the scene.

As we're facing Artemis, not Diana, and the twins are on Delos, the Greek island, it's heavily implied that we ought to be seeing Greek Apollo here. But if it's Greek Apollo, then why does he talk so familiarly with Frank, and about Octavian? We see from Mars and Bacchus with Percy that the Roman gods have no overlap with the Greeks in terms of knowledge and awareness of what their counterparts are up to, but Apollo is perfectly aware and comfortable talking about the Roman camp while in the Greek territory and setting.

‘You wrong me!’ Apollo wailed. ‘I was misled by Gaia and that horrible Roman child!’ Frank cleared his throat. ‘Uh, Lord Apollo, you mean Octavian?’ ‘Do not speak his name!’ Apollo strummed a minor chord. ‘Oh, Frank Zhang, if only you were my child. I heard your prayers, you know, all those weeks you wanted to be claimed. But alas! Mars gets all the good ones. I get … that creature as my descendant. He filled my head with compliments. He told me of the great temples he would build in my honour.’ Artemis snorted. ‘You are easily flattered, brother.’ ‘Because I have so many amazing qualities to praise! Octavian said he wanted to make the Romans strong again. I said fine! I gave him my blessing.’

Here, he refers to Frank's father being Mars (not Ares) with no issues at all. He also refers to his dealings with Octavian in the first person - there's no suggestion that he separates himself into Greek and Roman; he could have said "the Roman me" instead of "I", but even that requires him to be aware of what his counterpart was up to, which, again, is something that tends not to happen from what we're shown in the books. As it is, the implication is blatant that it is this Apollo who was dealing directly with the Romans... even though he's Greek.

That doesn't quite track with everything else, so even in BOO we can see signs that Apollo isn't affected the same as the others.

Then, of course, we have Trials of Apollo. Again, we're explicitly with the Greek Apollo, here; he usually refers to Artemis over Diana, he goes to Camp Half-Blood, where Chiron, the demigods, and later Dionysus all treat him with the familiarity that comes from being their side of things.

And yet, Apollo continues to have no problems at all with the Greek-Roman thing. We get little snippets like this, which show Apollo being casually familiar with Mars without any mental pause at all:

Below us stretched a landscape only slightly more hospitable than Mars. (I mean the planet, not the god, though I suppose neither is much of a host.)

That's definitely some good old brotherly/Olympian shade being thrown right there, without any pause at all.

“That’s a very Mars thing to say,” I noted. “Despite my many disagreements with Mars, I mean that as a compliment.”

Many disagreements - Apollo's used to talking with Mars as well as Ares, clearly.

And I just wanna backtrack a little bit to Frank and Apollo again, because as I was grabbing this passage as some more evidence, I noticed something else:

I almost didn’t recognize Frank Zhang. The first time I’d seen him, back when I was a god and he was a legion newbie, Frank had been a baby-faced, heavyset boy with dark flattop hair and an adorable fixation on archery. He’d had this idea that I might be his father. He prayed to me all the time. Honestly, he was so cute I would’ve been happy to adopt him, but alas, he was one of Mars’s. The second time I saw Frank, during his voyage on the Argo II, he’d had a growth spurt or a magical testosterone injection or something. He’d grown taller, stronger, more imposing—though still in an adorable, cuddly, grizzly-bear sort of way.

The first time, Apollo says, and then goes on to describe something that is never shown in HOO: Apollo seeing Frank pre-Son of Neptune, as a legion newbie and before he became part of the Seven. This may well have been one of the times when Apollo visited Octavian (although Frank clearly never knew about this, because their meeting on Delos is treated very much like their first meeting, and he wouldn't have held on hope of being Apollo's son right up until his claiming in SON if he'd met Apollo before that, because I can't see Apollo letting him continue to hope after meeting in person), but it's more evidence that this Apollo is the one that interacted with Octavian, visited Camp Jupiter... and yet he's definitely still the same Apollo that's got all the Greek familiarities, too.

Yes, my examples all seem to tend towards Mars, but that's because Apollo talks about Mars the most. One more little snippet:

I considered that. When my followers called, had I ever shown up and granted them three wishes? LOL, nope. Maybe one wish, if that wish was something I wanted to happen anyway. And if this ritual only allowed me to call one god, who would it be—assuming I could even choose? Perhaps my son Asclepius would be able to heal me, but he couldn’t very well fight the Roman emperors’ forces and the hordes of undead. Mars might grant us success on the battlefield, but he’d look at my wound and say something like Yeah, rough break. Die bravely!

Not only, when Apollo's considering which god would work best, does he have a solid prediction for what Mars' reaction would be to his wound, he also has faith that Mars would likely help Camp Jupiter.

Delving into Camp Jupiter proper, Apollo is openly familiar with the place. At the start of The Tyrant's Tomb, he tells Meg about visiting it:

“You know how to get to Camp Jupiter?” she asked. “Of course.” “ ’Cause you said that about Camp Half-Blood.” “We got there! Eventually.” “Frozen and half-dead.” “Look, the entrance to camp is right over there.” I waved vaguely at the Oakland Hills. “There’s a secret passage in the Caldecott Tunnel or something.” “Or something?” “Well, I haven’t actually ever driven to Camp Jupiter,” I admitted. “Usually I descend from the heavens in my glorious sun chariot. But I know the Caldecott Tunnel is the main entrance. There’s probably a sign. Perhaps a demigods only lane.”

Specifically, how he used to arrive, and the way he phrased it - usually - implies that it was more than a one-off visit, although we also know that the Roman gods tend to be even more absent than the Greek ones, considering how much of a big deal it was for first Juno and then Mars to appear in quick succession during SON. Greek god visiting a Roman camp? Why?

He mentions more familiarity with the camp a few times, but I'm picking this one out because it has not only some titbit about Jupiter but also actually directly addresses the ways mortals influence gods:

The lake’s south shore was the site of Temple Hill, with its chaotic assortment of shrines and monuments. On the summit, overshadowing everything else, was my father’s impressively ego-tastic Temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus. If possible, his Roman incarnation, Jupiter, was even more insufferable than his original Greek personality of Zeus. (And, yes, we gods have multiple personalities, because you mortals keep changing your minds about what we’re like. It’s exasperating.) In the past, I’d always hated looking at Temple Hill, because my shrine wasn’t the largest.

He says "we gods" despite clearly being the same between Greek and Roman (at this point, the implication is so blatant it wouldn't make sense for it to be anything but the case, in my opinion), but on a tiny segue into real life mythology for a moment, Apollo - like the other gods - was viewed differently even within different areas of Ancient Greece, so he would still be affected by this in general, even if it's clearly not the case during modern PJO-era.

I'm not going to go into great detail on it here, because it's an essay in its own right, but of course there is another, huge, part of TOA that directly points to Apollo being the same: the Triumvirate.

All three of them are familiar with Apollo, and Apollo is equally familiar with all of them. The Roman emperor-god Caligula wants to replace this Apollo. Nero fully expects Apollo to recognise him (and, once he dredges it out of his mortal-teacup memory, Apollo does). And then, of course, there's Commodus.

Of course, when I visited Roman camps, I usually spent all my time in the commander’s tent, lounging and eating grapes like I used to do with Commodus…. Oh, gods, why was I torturing myself with such thoughts?

I grabbed this one because it also continues the theme of Apollo's familiarity with Camp Jupiter, and Romans in general, but it does also add in the pointer that it's this Apollo, our Apollo who's definitely not pure Roman, that remembers the romance with Commodus in so much depth. This Apollo is the one that had that romance.

Why would the Romans be so much of a threat, care about Apollo so much, if he wasn't their, Roman, god? Python, meanwhile, is very much from the Greek side of things - Greek and Roman enemies, both targeting the same facet of the same god.

Apollo being both Greek and Roman, at the same time, is the best-fit explanation for this that I can see, and I could continue to draw out more quotes and discussion on this, but I still want to get into how this affects his children, so I'm going to leave this section here.

Let's move onto his children.

The major point here the distribution of Apollo's descendants between the two camps: most of Apollo's children are in Camp Half-Blood.

In fact, if it were not for the known existence of Apollo Legacies (Octavian), and Frank's desperate hope to be a child of Apollo, it would seem that Camp Jupiter doesn't have any children of Apollo at all. As it is, the implication is that there are very few.

Why? Let's start with Octavian, and the augur position.

Octavian is a legacy of Apollo. He is not a son of Apollo; there are a few generations (at least) between them, and yet he is the one in the position of camp augur, which implies that there's no-one better for the job (or that has the money to bully their way in, but I don't think that's really the case here, which I'll get to in a minute). Octavian has prophecy powers (which actually throws a lot of other implications about Apollo's kids and which domains they inherit, let alone whether legacies actually have any demigod abilities, for a bit of a spin), although we heard from Apollo himself in BOO that he blessed Octavian, which is where I suspect his prophecy powers come from (but again a talk on legacies and power inheritance is for another time). How is a many-generation legacy the best person for the job?

Apollo has a lot of kids. It's inferable that he has more kids than any other god (bear in mind that the overly-populated cabin eleven also contained unclaimeds and minor gods' kids - take them away and the number of Hermes kids is almost certainly lower than the number of Apollo kids, but that's yet another topic for another time). It seems unrealistic that a legacy is a better fit for the job than one of his own kids when there should be so many of them running around.

But not only is Octavian the best fit for the position, he's also the only fit for the position:

No. Of course. The legion had no high priest, no pontifex maximus. Their former augur, my descendant Octavian, had died in the battle against Gaia. (Which I had a hard time feeling sad about, but that’s another story.) Jason would’ve been the logical next choice to officiate, but he was our guest of honor. That meant that I, as a former god, was the ranking spiritual authority. I would be expected to lead the funeral rites.

Over half a year after Octavian's death, Camp Jupiter still has no augur. Octavian has not been replaced, despite an augur being an incredibly important role. Yes, emphasis is put on Octavian throwing money and influence around to get his own way in HOO, but the fact that his position hasn't been filled after this long suggests that Camp Jupiter has no-one else who can.

We're also looking at the healers: Pranjal is a son of Asclepius, not Apollo.

“My name’s Pranjal,” said the young man. “Head healer for the legion. I worked on you when you first got here, but we didn’t really meet then, since, well, you were unconscious. I’m a son of Asclepius. I guess that makes you my grandpa.”

He's Will's counterpart for Camp Jupiter; it just seems really bizarre that there's no child of Apollo floating around and checking in on their dad.

In fact, we're not introduced to a single child of Apollo throughout the entirety of TTT, despite him interacting with a lot of the legion, and the fact that Apollo always seeks out his own children in the books. In Camp Jupiter, he spends time with not just Pranjal, but also Lavinia, the daughter of Terpsichore, one of the nine Muses - if his own children were around, why did he not interact with them? The only logical explanation is that there aren't any children of Apollo in the camp at this point (and, potentially, no other legacies, either, therefore leaving the augur position open because there's no-one around with any prophetic potential).

The conclusion here is that all of Apollo's kids, near enough, end up at Camp Half-Blood. It neatly explains why there's so many of them there (at least during PJO, before they get annihilated during the wars), while Camp Jupiter has so few. Why Camp Half-Blood? I made a separate essay on this, but in brief: Apollo is implied to be the patron god of Camp Half-Blood. It makes sense that he'd want to bring his children into the camp he founded, rather than let them go through Lupa's rough initiation and then to a camp named for his father and under the patronage of Mars.

And as Apollo is clearly both at the same time, that means his kids are also not going to be one or the other, and could therefore fit in easily wherever they end up.

There's one other little side-effect that would come into play here, though: languages.

Greek demigods are fluent in Ancient Greek. Roman demigods are fluent in Latin. Following this logic, Apollo kids would therefore be fluent in both.

This actually explains why Chiron teaches the Greek demigods Latin; it always seemed a bit weird to me that he'd spend the time to teach them Latin when they already have an old language they're fluent in, and Latin doesn't really fit with the otherwise very Greek theming. And yet, he's explicitly stated to have taught Annabeth, and of course Percy, and it's likely that he's taught the whole camp.

“He heard them talking in Latin.” “Latin? Were they campers?”

While Apollo's a little confused that people in the woods surrounding Camp Half-Blood were speaking Latin, he still doesn't discount that they could be campers based on that. It's only a small piece of evidence, but it's still there.

And on the Roman side... I am still no expert on Octavian, but the way he knows Greeks exist early on with a certainty that most of the legion dismiss suggests that he has some degree of proof. Yes, his conversations with Apollo may have brought that to the fore, but there's also the potential that Octavian knows because his family, and perhaps he himself, can speak in Ancient Greek despite never studying it. Octavian is many things, but stupid is not one of them.

Overall, the way Apollo is unaffected by the Greek-Roman schism, has no pause identifying as both the Greek Apollo and the Roman Apollo, and the fact that all of his known children are concentrated in one camp (particularly the one that he founded and remains connected to), heavily implies that there is no division between Greek and Roman for either him or his children.

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