Well, Apollo certainly had a very close relationship with the Muses,
who are hardly masculine goddesses. But I think that Apollo's
relationship to woman is twofold - first, he is not neccesarily cruel,
he merely perceives a desire and acts to fulfill it in a supremely
rational, if direputable, manner. But the other aspect of that
relationship is, I think, far more important. Apollo, as the god of
reason, is supposed to present this face of glorious light and wisdom
to the world. But by treating women as he does, he shows either an
acceptance on the part of the classical race-conciousness that reason
is much less powerful than our primal instincts, or a belief that from
a masculine, rational viewpoint, women should not be considered as
anything more than an object for men to be used - in either case, an
immensely signifigant statement about the classical mind.