Who is cassandra in the odyssey

One of the consequences was the ruinous fall of Troy to the Greeks. She herself was captured, and then killed. Cassandra is mentioned briefly in the Iliad of Homer which, incidentally, is one of our oldest and most respected sources for information about the characters of Greek myth.

Indeed, in the Iliad, we learn that Cassandra was the child of King Priam of Troy, and she was considered to be Priam's most beautiful daughter. Within Cassandra's animation in Pico Roulette, she inserts the gun into her crotch. This means that she is most likely biologically female in her human form. He died during the return home, having offended both Athena and Poseidon. Consequently, Menelaus was enraged by this elopement and declared that he wanted Helen dead as a punishment for her disloyalty.

Helen defended herself and lied that it was against her will, crying that she was kidnapped and blamed Hecuba for the fall of Troy and for the conflict between the two sides. Achilles , in Greek mythology, son of the mortal Peleus, king of the Myrmidons, and the Nereid, or sea nymph, Thetis. Achilles was the bravest, handsomest, and greatest warrior of the army of Agamemnon in the Trojan War.

Hephaestus was the Greek god of fire, blacksmiths, craftsmen, and volcanoes. He lived in his own palace on Mount Olympus where he crafted tools for the other gods.

He was known as a kind and hardworking god, but also had a limp and was considered ugly by the other gods. Paris chose Aphrodite and therefore Helen. Listening to Homer: Tradition, Narrative, and Audience. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan. Severyns, A. Shapiro, H. Oxford: Oxford University Press: — Sistakou, E. Skinner, Marilyn. Feminist Theory and the Classics. Taplin, O. Homeric Soundings: The Shape of the Iliad.

Tsagalis, C. Wagner-Hasel, B. The Gift in Antiquity. Wathelet, P. Paris: Diffusion. West, M. The Making of the Iliad. The Epic Cycle. Willcock, M. Winkler, J.

New York: Routledge. Wohl, V. Zajko, V. The Cambridge Companion to Greek Mythology. Reference Works. Primary source collections. Open Access Content. Contact us. Sales contacts. Publishing contacts. Social Media Overview. Terms and Conditions. Privacy Statement. Login to my Brill account Create Brill Account. Email this content Share link with colleague or librarian You can email a link to this page to a colleague or librarian:. Your current browser may not support copying via this button. Author: Joel P.

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Mission Statement. Corporate Governance. Stay Updated. Rights and Permissions. Email Newsletter Sign-up Page. Imprints and Trademarks. Offices Worldwide. As an added twist, she is also forced to always speak the truth. In some versions that I read in my youth, Cassandra is doomed to see only terrible things, which makes her utterances and her presence unwelcome and unpopular.

Some authors have given the curse a different spin: Cassandra is not a Seer, but a woman gifted with political acumen and common sense. What she sees in the future e. She discovers and tries to reveal that Helen is not really in Troy and that preparations for a war with the Greeks are based on false claims. Ancient authors agree that Apollo desired the beautiful Cassandra and granted her the gift of prophecy in order to woo her as a lover, according to Greek mythology.

But the same ancient authors disagree about the nature of the deal. Some including the Latin author Hyginus in Fabulae say that Apollo gave Cassandra prophecy as a courtship gift. In some variants on this version of Greek myth, Cassandra experiences an additional dilemma.

As a priestess of Apollo, she has sworn eternal chastity. Now, the Greek god himself demands her virginity. Whatever Cassandra decides in this predicament is wrong, thus furthering the tragedy of her story. Apollo fulfilled his part of the agreement, but Cassandra reneged once granted the power. Unable to take the gift of prophecies away, Apollo punished Cassandra the promise breaker with the curse that her words will never be believed.

In the Middle Ages, writers portrayed Cassandra as a proto-Christian prophet. She was able to see the coming of Christ, and therefore rejected the heathen god Apollo of the Greeks. Marion Zimmer Bradley , in her novel The Firebrand , creates a different conflict of spiritual loyalties. Cassandra pledges herself as a priestess to a female goddess as well as to Apollo.

In addition. A lecherous Trojan temple priest molests Cassandra, and she refuses his advances… but then realizes that this may have been the god himself in human form. She keeps beseeching Apollo to lift the curse, although he clearly has no intention to, and accusing him of unfairness, which is equally pointless.

She gained a dignified serenity in her resignation. In the epic poem The Fall of Troy by Quintus Smyrnaeus , Cassandra takes physical action to avert the disaster manufactured by the Greeks. No one listens to her words of warning that the Trojan Horse contains Greek warriors, so Cassandra grabs an ax and a burning torch and tries unsuccessfully to destroy the wooden horse and the Greeks inside it herself in order to save her home city. The ancient authors of Greek mythology agree on her fate: when the Greeks conquer the city of Troy, she gets raped by Ajax the Lesser of the Greeks, even though she has sought refuge in the temple of Athena, which is sacrosanct.

According to some accounts of myth, Athena later takes out her wrath against the rapist for the atrocity in the temple of Athena and its sacrilege. The victorious Greeks divide the spoils, and Cassandra gets allocated as concubine to the Greek King Agamemnon of Mycenae. One happy note is that ancient writers say Cassandra was deemed worthy of the Elysian Fields due to her piety.

She survives the murder plot against Agamemnon, escapes the fall of Troy along with eluding her own death, and starts a new life under an assumed identity, usually in a humble role in a peaceful idyll. In Cassandra, Princess of Troy by Hillary Bailey , she finds and marries a good man and lives out her life as a wife on a quiet farm home in Thessaly. Free from Agememnon and Greek captivity, Cassandra subverts her tragedy and travels to Asia with plans to form an ideal women-ruled kingdom.

Some have used the myth of Cassandra as an example of a chaste virgin because she fought to keep her herself pure. Others have held her up as an example of an evil seductress, because Cassandra used the power of her sexuality to lure Apollo. She has been portrayed as a bad woman, because she spoke up against the decisions of powerful males instead of keeping quiet as a woman should.

But she was also held up as the victim of a woman-oppressing patriarchal culture. Medieval Christians saw her variously as a proto-Christian, a true prophetess who foretold the coming of Jesus Christ, and as a martyr who suffered a terrible plight because she refused to obey the pagan God.

Depending on whether or not she struck a deal selling her favors to Apollo, she is seen variously as a prostitute, as a contract breaker, or as as a victim of attempted sexual coercion. According to the Myth, Cassandra was astonishingly beautiful and blessed with the gift of foreseeing the future. Her curse was that no one believed her, a fact that weighed heavily on the destruction of Troy during the Trojan War.

There are several different versions explaining the gift and curse of Cassandra; the most popular one is that God Apollo fell in love with her and granted her with the gift of prophecy.

When Cassandra denied the God and his advances, he placed a curse on her, so that no one would believe her words or her predictions. He gave her a gift that would bring frustration and despair to her. In the tragedy Agamemnon, Cassandra appears to suggest the God to become hic consort but then breaks her promise, causing his wrath.

Thus, Apollo left her the gift of prophecy but cursed her so that no one could or would believe her. According to the second version, Cassandra went to the Temple of Apollo in Troy and his little Temple Snakes licked her ears, allowing her to listen to the future.

This theme is not unknown in Greek Mythology, as the snakes of Apollo have appeared in different myths and versions, allowing people to foresee the future and understand the language of animals.