ABSTRACT
Cassandra, the fairest and wisest of Priam's daughters, and one of the rare female prophets of whom an extensive, if tantalizingly scattered, account is saved in myth, is said to have had her ears purified by Apollo to understand the sounds of nature and leam about future omens. Her name in Greek, KacjadvSpa, means "she who entangles men," and it is literally this capacity that caused her tragic fate, a myth upon which generations of storytellers, writers, artists, and, recently, filmmakers have expounded. On the occasion of an unfortunate nightly sojourn in Apollo's temple, Cassandra rejected the zealous god's advances, whereupon the enraged Apollo not so much invalidated his gift as annulled its purpose: henceforth Cassandra was destined to have the ability and desire to foretell but her prophesies, although true, were disbelieved. As various Greek myths reiterate, Cassandra's plaintive and violent cries, foretelling political and private calamities ranging from the fall of Troy to the killing of Agamemnon, were ignored by her compatriots and their enemies alike, by her own family and other women. She came to be regarded as deranged; or, else, she might have indeed sunk into madness faced with this continual disbelief (aptly, contemporary psychology has designated a comparable neurotic state "The Cassandra Effect").1
