page_title: Cassandra
section_title: Agamemnon by Aeschylus
hierarchical_section_title: Cassandra / Agamemnon by Aeschylus
caption_attribution_description: English: Ajax the Lesser raping Cassandra. Tondo of an Attic red-figure cup, ca. 440-430 BC. Français&#160;: Ajax le Petit arrachant de force Cassandre du Palladium auprès duquel elle s'était réfugiée. Intérieur d'une coupe attique à figures rouges, v. 440-430 av. J.-C.
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: The play Agamemnon from Aeschylus's trilogy Oresteia depicts the king treading the scarlet cloth laid down for him, and walking offstage to his death. After the chorus's ode of foreboding, time is suspended in Cassandra's "mad scene". 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.
  According to author Seth Schein, two further familiar descriptions of her madness are that of Heracles in The Women of Trachis or Io in Prometheus Bound. She speaks, disconnectedly and transcendent, in the grip of her psychic possession by Apollo, witnessing past and future events. Schein says, "She evokes the same awe, horror and pity as do schizophrenics". Cassandra is one of those "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.
caption: Ajax taking Cassandra, tondo of a red-figure kylix by the Kodros Painter [el], c. 440–430 BC, Louvre
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