Cassandra
When I was younger I took a great liking to mythology-Greek Mythology to be exact.
For this assignment i choose to focus the tragic heroine Cassandra because when discussing the Trojan war,her character is usually overlooked.The website i found most interesting was a site dedicated to the role of women in the art of ancient Greek.The article on Cassandra was very detailed with answers to the readers questions.The author also talks about the psychology behind the tale.
Cassandra was the daughter of the king and queen of troy,Priam and Hecuba. She was a priestess of Apollo who according to the website took a great liking to her and blessed her with the gift of foresight. The gift quickly turned to a curse when Cassandra having refused Apollo's advances made it so when she prophesied no one would believe her. Cassandra foresaw the tragedies that would one day plaque Troy but was thought to be insane when she tried to warn everyone of what was to come.According the the website Cassandra foresaw some of the following
-The men in the Trojan horse
-Her death
-Her long-lost brother Paris
When Troy was finally sieged she fled to Athena's temple where a Greek soldier Ajax the lesser raped her invoking the goddess wrath. Later she was seen as a great prize and was given to Agamemnon as a slave.She birthed him twins before she,Agamemnon and the twins were killed by Agamemnon's wife Clytemnestra and her lover after arriving to his kingdom. Cassandra life was one of woe and torment.Although many state that it was her beauty that may have condemned her, The website states
" Prophets are often spurned and rejected. And so they live in frustration and misery. This seems the moral of Cassandra's story."
It seems Cassandras story was a example illustrating the tragedies that can befall a prophet.
