Lachesis- Greek GodDeity"The Allotter"

The Thread

Hesiod names the Moirai twice in the Theogony. In one passage they are daughters of Night, born without a father, sisters of Death and Sleep. In another they are daughters of Zeus and Themis, sisters of the Horai.

The three work a single thread. Clotho spins it from her spindle. Lachesis measures the length, allotting to each soul its portion. Atropos cuts. Her name means "the allotter," from the Greek lachos, a share drawn by lot. She does not choose what kind of life a person will have. She determines how much of it there is.

The Lots of Er

Lachesis's fullest scene belongs to Plato. In Republic 10, a soldier named Er dies on the battlefield and returns to life twelve days later with a report from the afterlife. He describes a place where souls gather between lives, and at the center of the cosmos a great spindle turns on the knees of Necessity. The three Moirai sit around their mother. Clotho touches the spindle's outer rim and helps it turn. Atropos turns the inner whorls. Lachesis touches each in succession, one hand and then the other.

A prophet takes his place beside Lachesis and addresses the assembled souls. He speaks her words: this is a new cycle of mortal life, and it is the souls who will choose, not the god. He scatters lots before them. Each soul picks up a lot, and the number on it determines the order in which they will choose their next life from the patterns laid out before them. The first soul, Plato says, grabbed the life of a tyrant without looking closely and did not see until too late that it included eating his own children. Others chose more carefully. Odysseus, who had drawn the last lot, searched for a long time and found the life of a private man with no ambitions. He said he would have chosen the same even with the first lot.