Admetus

Apollo mounting a chariot drawn by lions and boars, accompanied by Hermes and two women...

This is a flattened out decoration from this Ancient Greek, Attic black-figure Lekythos, dated to ca. 500-490 BC, and currently kept at the Yale University Art Gallery.

The depicted scene is from the legend of how Admetus got to win the hand of Alcestis. Which goes like this:

"When Apollo was sentenced to a year of servitude to a mortal, as a punishment for killing Delphyne, the monstrous serpent (dragon) from Delphi, the god was sent to serve as a herdsman at the home of Admetus, the king of Pherae in Thessaly...

Admetus was famed for his hospitality and justice and treated Apollo very well. In return, Apollo made all the cows bear twins while he served as his cowherd. But more importantly, Apollo also helped Admetus to get the girl. Alcestis...

Alcestis was the daughter of Pelias, king of Iolcus. She was so popular, that her father Pelias, bored with constant procession of suitors, set an apparently impossible task for those who wanted the hand of his daughter: they must yoke a boar and a lion to a chariot...

Of course Admetus also fancied Alcestis. So he asked Apollo for help. Apollo said "No bother!", and yoked the animals to the chariot. Admetus jumped on it, drove to Iolcus, waved at Pelias and said: I came for the girl! (while winking at Alcestis)...Happy End...(well for a while)

So how come no one but Apollo could yoke boar and lion to a chariot? I mean is it important that it was Apollo who did "the impossible thing", or could any other god have done it?"

I think that this is another example of a clever animal calendar marker allegory...Involving boar, symbol of winter and lion, symbol of summer...

We find the same animals used symbolically in the same way on these two Bactrian seals:

I talked about them my article "Bactrian summer and winter seals", where I explained how boar and lion, became calendar markers for winter and summer...

Being symbols of winter and summer, the two opposite "old seasons of the oldest calendars", boar and lion can never be "yoked together"...Except by the Sun god...After all, winter and summer are just two halves of the same solar year...