Cassandra

This article is about the Greek mythological prophet. For other uses, see Cassandra (disambiguation).

In Greek mythology, Cassandra (Greek Κασσάνδρα, also Κασάνδρα, Κεσάνδρα, Κατάνδρα, also known as Alexandra) was the daughter of King Priam and Queen Hecuba of Troy. Her beauty caused Apollo to grant her the gift of prophecy. In an alternative version, she spent a night at Apollo's temple, at which time the temple snakes licked her ears clean so that she was able to hear the future (this is a recurring theme in Greek mythology, though sometimes it brings an ability to understand the language of animals rather than an ability to know the future). However, when she did not return his love, Apollo placed a curse on her so that no one would ever believe her predictions. She is a figure both of the epic tradition and of tragedy, where her combination of deep understanding and powerlessness exemplify the ironic condition of mankind.

History

Apollo's cursed gift became a source of endless pain and frustration. In some versions of the myth, this is symbolized by the god spitting into her mouth; in other Greek versions, this act was sufficient to remove the gift so recently given by Apollo, but Cassandra's case varies. From Aeschylus' Agamemnon, it appears that she has made a promise to Apollo to become his consort, but broke it, thus incurring his wrath: though she has retained the power of foresight, no one will believe her predictions.

While Cassandra foresaw the destruction of Troy (she warned the Trojans about the Trojan Horse, the death of Agamemnon, and her own demise), she was unable to do anything to forestall these tragedies since no one believed her. Coroebus and Othronus came to the aid of Troy out of love for Cassandra. Cassandra was also the first to see the body of her brother Hector being brought back to the city.

At the fall of Troy, she sought shelter in the temple of Athena, where she was violently abducted and raped by Ajax the Lesser. Cassandra was then taken as a concubine by King Agamemnon of Mycenae. Unbeknownst to Agamemnon, while he was away at war, his wife, Clytemnestra, had begun an affair with Aegisthus. Clytemnestra and Aegisthus then murdered both Agamemnon and Cassandra. Some sources mention that Cassandra and Agamemnon had twin boys, Teledamus and Pelops, both of whom were killed by Aegisthus.

In Aeschylus' Agamemnon

Ajax taking Cassandra, tondo of a red-figure kylix by the Kodros Painter, ca. 440-430 BC, Louvre

In Aeschylus' Agamemnon, the king, treading the scarlet cloth laid down for him, walks offstage to his sure death at line 972. After the chorus's ode of foreboding, time is suspended in Cassandra's "mad scene", which does nothing to advance the action in any way. She has been onstage, silent and ignored. Her madness that is unleashed now is not the physical torment of other characters in Greek tragedy, such as in Euripides' Heracles or Sophocles' Ajax, but she speaks, disconnectedly and transcendent, in the grip of her psychic possession by Apollo, witnessing events past and future. "She evokes the same awe, horror and pity as do schizophrenics", an observer has noted, "who often combine deep, true insight with utter helplessness, and who retreat into madness." Eduard Fraenkel remarked on the powerful contrasts between declaimed and sung dialogue in this scene. The frightened and respectful chorus are unable to comprehend her. She goes to her inevitable offstage murder by Clytemnestra with full knowledge of what is to befall her.

Greek and Latin sources

• Homer. Iliad XXIV, 697-706; Odyssey XI, 405-434;
• Aeschylus. Agamemnon
• Euripides. Trojan Women; Electra
• Apollodorus. Bibliotheke III, xii, 5; Epitome V, 17-22; VI, 23
• Virgil. Aeneid II, 246ff
• Lycophron. Alexandra

Modern adaptations

A modern psychological perspective on Cassandra is presented by Eric Shanower in Age of Bronze: Sacrifice. In this version, Cassandra, as a child, is assaulted by a priest of Apollo.

A similar situation occurred in Lindsay Clarke's novel The Return from Troy (presented as a reawakened memory), where a priest of Apollo forced himself upon Cassandra and was stopped only when she spat in his mouth. When the priest used his benevolent reputation to convince Priam that he was innocent of her wild claims, Cassandra subsequently went insane.

The myth of Cassandra is also retold by German author Christa Wolf in Kassandra. She retells the story from the point of view of Cassandra at the moment of her death and uses the myth as an allegory for both the unheard voice of the woman writer and the oppression and strict censorship in East Germany.

The author Marion Zimmer Bradley wrote a fantasy novel called The Firebrand, which presents a story from Cassandra's point of view. Marcus Sedgwick's novel The Foreshadowing features a protagonist named Alexandra who has the gift of foresight, though she sees mainly others' pain and death.

In David Gemmell's Troy trilogy, Cassandra is credited with opening the mind of exiled Egyptian prince Gershom (Moses) to his own gift of prophecy. Cassandra got her gift after suffering from 'brain-fever' as a young child, and dies in the volcanic eruption of Thera.

In the section Cassandra of Suggestions for Thought to Searchers after Religious Truth, Florence Nightingale protests the over-feminization of women into near helplessness, such as what Nightingale saw in her mother's and older sister's lethargic lifestyle despite their education. The work also reflects her fear of her ideas being ineffective, as were Cassandra's.

In Hector Berlioz’s opera Les Troyens (1863), based on Virgil's The Aeneid, Cassandra commits suicide with other Trojan women as Troy falls, rather than being raped by Ajax. She dies with the word “Italy” on her lips, presaging (in prophetess mode) her cousin Aeneas’s eventual founding of Rome.

In Woody Allen's film "Cassandra's Dream" the ancient prophetess plays an indirect role - her name given to a a boat by the protagonists, two modern English young brothers, who thereby doom themselves to terrible destruction on board.

Modern usage

In more modern literature, Cassandra has often served as a model for tragedy and romance, and has given rise to the archetypal character of someone whose prophetic insight is obscured by insanity, turning their revelations into riddles or disjointed statements that are not fully comprehended until after the fact. Some mythologies of the Arthurian Legends have Merlin living backwards, therefore telling of the future, that nobody believes.

See also

• Apollo
• Apollo archetype
• Cassandra (metaphor)
• Jonah
• Novikov self-consistency principle
• The Boy Who Cried Wolf
• Tiresias

Further reading

• Clarke, Lindsay. The Return from Troy. HarperCollins (2005). ISBN 0-00-715027-X.
• Marion Zimmer Bradley. The Firebrand. ISBN 0-451-45924-5
• Patacsil, Par. Cassandra. In The Likhaan Book of Plays 1997-2003. Villanueva and Nadera, eds. University of the Philippines Press (2006). ISBN 971-542-507-0
• Schapira, Laurie L. The Cassandra Complex: Living with Disbelief: A Modern Perspective on Hysteria. Toronto: Inner City Books (1988). ISBN 0-919123-35-X. (This work is mentioned in the Cassandra (Metaphor) page in the Wiki.)

Primary sources

• Virgil, Aeneid II.246-247, 341-346, 403-408
• Theoi Project: Cassandra, classical sources in English translation