Introduction
As early as the end of the 6th century BC, the Greek god Apollo was honoured in Etruscan emporic[1] sanctuaries some tens of kilometres north of Rome and it seems likely that in the days of the Etruscan kings, the City was aware of a god the Etruscans associated to one of their underworld divinities, Suri. Later, in 449 BC, Livy[2] (History of Rome, III, 63, 6-11) mentions the presence, somewhere about the Prata Flaminia, of an Apollinar, an open air cult place to the god that could be much more ancient. Thereafter, and until the year 433 BC, there are no clearly explicit records concerning the presence of an official cult place to the god Apollo, but that year the construction of a temple in the Prata Flaminia was pledged to ward off a pestilence. This sanctuary dedicated in 431 by Consul Cnaeus Iulius Mento outside the sacred boundary of the city, the pomoerium, was the only temple to the god throughout the Republican era. As the circumstances of its inception make quite clear, this Apollo was the healing god invoked by the Vestal Virgins[3] in his capacity as Apollo medicus (the Physician). The powers ascribed to the God evolved however during the Republican Era right up to the Augustan Principate. As from the second Punic war, Apollo became also a victory granting god. Then, at the beginning of the Empire, he became the herald of a new age. Those latter developments in the god's image are ideally suited to bring out the link between religion and political ideology.
