page_title: Cassandra
section_title: Gift of prophecy
hierarchical_section_title: Cassandra / Mythology / Gift of prophecy
caption_attribution_description: Ajax in Troy drags Cassandra from Palladium before eyes of Priam.
context_page_description: Cassandra or Kassandra, was a priestess of Apollo in Greek mythology cursed to utter true prophecies, but never to be believed. In modern usage her name is employed as a rhetorical device to indicate someone whose accurate prophecies are not believed.
  Cassandra was reputed to be a daughter of King Priam and Queen Hecuba of Troy. Her older brother was Hector, hero of the Greco-Trojan war. The older and most common versions state that she was admired by the god Apollo, who sought to win her with the gift to see the future. According to Aeschylus, she promised him her favors, but after receiving the gift, she went back on her word and refused the god. The enraged Apollo could not revoke a divine power, so he added to it the curse that though she would see the future, nobody would believe her prophecies. In other sources, such as Hyginus and Pseudo-Apollodorus, Cassandra broke no promise; the powers were given to her as an enticement. When these failed to make her love him, Apollo cursed Cassandra to always be disbelieved, in spite of the truth of her words.
  Some later versions have her falling asleep in a temple, where the snakes licked her ears so that she could hear the future.
context_section_description: Cassandra was given the gift of prophecy, but was also cursed by the god Apollo so that her true prophecies would not be believed. Many versions of the myth relate that she incurred the god's wrath by refusing him sex, after promising herself to him in exchange for the power of prophecy. In Aeschylus' Agamemnon, she bemoans her relationship with Apollo:
  Apollo, Apollo!
  
  God of all ways, but only Death's to me,
  
  Once and again, O thou, Destroyer named,
  
  Thou hast destroyed me, thou, my love of old!
  And she acknowledges her fault
  I consented [marriage] to Loxias [Apollo] but broke my word. ... Ever since that fault I could persuade no one of anything.
  Latin author Hyginus in Fabulae says:
  Cassandra, daughter of the king and queen, in the temple of Apollo, exhausted from practising, is said to have fallen asleep; whom, when Apollo wished to embrace her, she did not afford the opportunity of her body. On account of which thing, when she prophesied true things, she was not believed.
  In some versions of the myth, Apollo curses her by spitting into her mouth.
  Cassandra had served as a priestess of Apollo and taken a sacred vow of chastity to remain a virgin for life.
  Her cursed gift from Apollo became an endless pain and frustration to her. She was seen as a liar and a madwoman by her family and by the Trojan people. In some versions, she was often locked up in a pyramidal building on the citadel on the orders of her father, King Priam.  She was accompanied there by the wardress, who cared for her under orders to inform the King of all of his daughter's "prophetic utterances".
  According to legend, Cassandra had instructed her twin brother Helenus in the art of prophecy. Like her, Helenus was always correct whenever he had made his predictions, but he was believed.
  Cassandra made many predictions, all disbelieved except one, when she foresaw who Paris was and proclaimed that he was her abandoned brother. Cassandra foresaw that Paris’ abduction of Helen for his wife would bring about the Trojan War and warned Paris not to go to Sparta. Helenus echoed her prophecy, but his warnings were ignored. Cassandra saw Helen coming into Troy when Paris returned home from Sparta. Though the people rejoiced, Cassandra furiously snatched away Helen's golden veil and tore at her hair, for she foresaw that Helen's arrival would bring the city's destruction in the Trojan War.
caption: Ajax the Lesser in Troy drags Cassandra from Palladium before eyes of Priam, Roman mural from the Casa del Menandro, Pompeii
exif: {}