Cassandra- Greek FigureMortal"Prophetess of Troy"

Daughter of Priam

Cassandra was born into the vast royal house of Troy, daughter of King Priam and Queen Hecuba. Priam had fifty sons and many daughters; the palace held fifty chambers of polished stone. Among these children, Cassandra and her twin brother Helenus were set apart from infancy. The twins were left overnight in the temple of Apollo Thymbraeus during a festival, and sacred serpents came and licked their ears clean. When morning came, both children could understand the language of birds and the counsels of the gods.

The Gift and the Curse

Apollo fell in love with Cassandra and offered her the gift of prophecy in exchange for her love. She accepted the gift, then refused the god. Apollo could not revoke what he had given. Instead he added a curse: she would always speak true, and no one would ever believe her.

In Aeschylus's Agamemnon, Cassandra describes the moment herself. She consented to the god Loxias, then broke her word. Since that day, she tells the Chorus, no one has credited anything she says.

The Unheeded Prophet

When Paris was first recognized and welcomed back to Troy after years on Mount Ida, Cassandra alone protested. She had to be restrained. No one listened.

When he returned from Sparta with Helen aboard his ship, Cassandra saw what he had brought upon the city. She warned that Helen would be Troy's destruction. Her family dismissed her with pity.

Throughout the ten years of war, her prophecies went unheeded. Near the war's end, standing on the heights of Pergamos, she was the first to see her aged father Priam returning from the Greek camp with the body of Hector on a mule-drawn cart. She cried out to all of Troy to come and witness.

The Fall of Troy

When the Greeks built their wooden horse and pretended to sail away, Cassandra recognized the trick at once. She begged the Trojans not to bring it within the walls, warning that Greek warriors hid inside. The priest Laocoön raised his own alarm. The Trojans disbelieved them both and dragged the horse through gates that had withstood a decade of siege.

On the final night, when the Greeks poured from the horse and the city burned, Cassandra fled to the temple of Athena and clung to the goddess's sacred image. Ajax the Lesser, son of Oileus, tore her from the statue and violated her in the goddess's own sanctuary. Her betrothed Coroebus died trying to rescue her from the burning city. The sacrilege against Athena pursued Ajax's people for generations: the Locrians sent two maidens each year to serve at Athena's temple in Troy. They entered the city by night and served barefoot in the sanctuary.

Captive of Agamemnon

After Troy fell, the surviving women of the royal house were divided among the Greek captains. Cassandra was given to Agamemnon. In Euripides' Trojan Women, when the herald Talthybius announces her lot, Cassandra appears from the tent bearing a torch and singing a wedding hymn to herself. Her mother Hecuba, thinking her daughter mad, tries to take the torch from her hands.

But Cassandra's celebration is deliberate. She prophesies that her marriage to Agamemnon will destroy him. Her arrival at Mycenae will trigger his murder and, through that, Orestes' matricide: the final ruin of the house of Atreus.

During the voyage, Cassandra told Agamemnon what Clytemnestra and her lover Aegisthus had planned for him. He paid her no more attention than anyone else ever had.

Before the Palace Gates

When Agamemnon entered the palace at Mycenae, walking over the crimson cloths Clytemnestra had spread before him, Cassandra remained in the chariot outside. The elders of Argos tried to coax her within. She stood silent.

Then the prophecy seized her. In Aeschylus's Agamemnon, she cries out in fragments: the children of Thyestes, butchered and served as meat to their own father. A net being readied inside the palace. An axe. Her own death alongside the king's. She smells blood. She sees a woman preparing the killing bath. She addresses Apollo, accusing the god who gave her sight of leading her to slaughter. The elders half-comprehend, pity her, and cannot bring themselves to act. They do nothing.

Cassandra tears the prophetic garlands from her hair and casts down the god's insignia. She walks through the palace doors. Clytemnestra kills her alongside Agamemnon.