Cassandra

The Trojan prophetess. Cassandra (Κασσάνδρα) was the daughter of Priam and Hecuba. Cassandra was also the sister of Hector, Paris and Helenus, who also had the gift of prophecy. Cassandra was sometimes called Alexandra (Ἀλεξάνδρα), the feminine name of Alexander (Paris' other name).

Apollo had given her the gift of prophecy, hoping to win her love. When Cassandra rejected his love, Apollo turned the gift into a curse. All her prophecy and foretelling will be accurate and true, but no one would believe her.

Cassandra foretold that Paris, her second oldest brother, would cause Troy's destruction after a ten-year war with the Greeks. No one believed her until the war came.

During the final days of the war, the Greeks tried to capture Troy through the stratagem of the Wooden Horse. Her people did not believe her when she told them that there were armed Greek warriors hidden within the Horse's belly. The Trojans thought that they had won the war, and started a celebration on that fateful night. Troy was taken by surprise, and by morning, the once mighty city had fallen.

During the killing and looting, Cassandra sought sanctuary in Athena's temple. She clung to Athena's altar, praying for salvation. The Lesser Ajax, the Locrian son of Oileus, pulled her away from the altar and raped her.

Odysseus, fearing that Athena and the other gods would destroy them on the journey home, advised the other Greek leaders to stone the Lesser Ajax for the sacrilege he had committed before Athena's altar. Ajax saved himself; he threw himself to Athena's defiled altar, pleading for mercy. The Greeks foolishly did not punish Ajax, so many of them incurred Athena's enmity and wrath.

At Athena's insistence, Poseidon sent a violent storm to destroy much of the Greek fleet. Though Ajax managed to swim to safety and clung to a rock, he defiantly boasted that not even the gods could kill him. Poseidon hurled a bolt of lightning that split the rock in two. The impetuous Ajax fell back into the sea and drowned.

Cassandra was given to Agamemnon to serve as his slave and concubine. Agamemnon was one of the few leaders to safely travel home by sea, because he had the common sense of sacrificing to all of the gods for a Greek victory at Troy.

However, Agamemnon would not survive a single night at home. Cassandra had a vision that Agamemnon would be murdered by his wife Clytemnestra and her lover Aegisthus. She also foresaw her own death at Clytemnestra's hand.

Cassandra told the Greek elders at Mycenae of her prophecy and her own fate. The elders tried to persuade her to flee for her life, but the seeress that no one believed saw no escape for herself. She resignedly entered the palace. Not long after the doors closed behind her, Clytemnestra struck down Cassandra with an axe.

(Only the geographer Pausanias mentioned that Cassandra bore twins, Teledamus and Pelops, to Agamemnon; these infants were also slaughtered by Aegisthus. The twins were buried in a single grave.)