Editing Apollo (section)

==== The rock of Leukas ====

Leukatas was believed to be a white-colored rock jutting out from the island of [[Lefkada|Leukas]] into the sea. It was present in the sanctuary of Apollo Leukates. A leap from this rock was believed to have put an end to the longings of love.<ref name="Strabo, Geography 10. 2. 8">[[Strabo]], ''[[Geographica|Geography]]'', [https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0198%3Abook%3D10%3Achapter%3D2%3Asection%3D8 10.2.8].</ref>

Once, Aphrodite fell deeply in love with [[Adonis]], a young man of great beauty who was later accidentally killed by a boar. Heartbroken, Aphrodite wandered looking for the rock of Leukas. When she reached the sanctuary of Apollo in Argos, she confided in him her love and sorrow. Apollo then brought her to the rock of Leukas and asked her to throw herself from the top of the rock. She did so and was freed from her love. When she sought the reason behind this, Apollo told her that Zeus, before taking another lover, would sit on this rock to free himself from his love for Hera.<ref name="ReferenceE">Ptolemy Hephaestion, ''New History Book'' 7</ref>

Another tale relates that a man named Nireus, who fell in love with the cult statue of Athena, came to the rock and jumped in order to relieve himself. After jumping, he fell into the net of a fisherman in which, when he was pulled out, he found a box filled with gold. He fought with the fisherman and took the gold, but Apollo appeared to him in the night in a dream and warned him not to appropriate gold which belonged to others.<ref name="ReferenceE"/>

It was an ancestral custom among the Leukadians to fling a criminal from this rock every year at the sacrifice performed in honor of Apollo for the sake of averting evil. However, a number of men would be stationed all around below rock to catch the criminal and take him out of the borders in order to exile him from the island.<ref>Aelian, ''On Animals'' 11. 8</ref><ref name="ReferenceE"/> This was the same rock from which, according to a legend, Sappho took her suicidal leap.<ref name="Strabo, Geography 10. 2. 8"/>

[[File:François Boucher 028.jpg|thumb|Apollo as the setting sun, by [[François Boucher]]]]