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The tragedy of Cassandra, the princess who predicted the fall of Troy - Iseult Gillespie
The tragedy of Cassandra, the princess who predicted the fall of Troy - Iseult Gillespie
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0:07
Troy’s princess, Cassandra, wasn’t cruel to her soon-to-be sister-in-law,
0:11
the legendary beauty Helen, out of spite.
0:15
It was because she was suffering under the weight of a tortuously twisted curse,
0:20
which haunted her with appalling visions linked to Helen’s arrival.
0:25
Helen was already married to the Spartan king Menelaus, after all.
0:29
And when Cassandra’s brother, Prince Paris, prepared to sail to Sparta,
0:34
she foresaw his calamitous attachment to Helen and begged him to stay.
0:39
But he’d merely dismissed her,
0:41
fallen for Helen, and returned to Troy with her in tow.
0:46
Beset by violent premonitions,
0:48
Cassandra then warned that Menelaus’ vengeful crusade
0:52
would lead to the brutal fall of their family and the city of Troy.
0:57
But once again, people ignored her.
1:00
In fact, they always did.
1:02
And this was the crux of her curse.
1:05
As a young woman she had been pursued by the god Apollo.
1:09
He offered her the gift of prophecy.
1:11
But when she withdrew from his advances, he twisted his gift into a maddening hex:
1:18
from that day on, Cassandra would be able to precisely see and describe the future—
1:24
but her prophecies would never be believed.
1:27
Despite this, Cassandra resolved to always speak the truth,
1:32
even as her family fell deeper into denial.
1:36
Her dire warnings became increasingly repellent to her father,
1:40
Trojan King Priam.
1:41
And when the war began, as she’d predicted,
1:44
he declared that her meddling was bad for morale
1:48
and confined her to a high tower.
1:50
From this unobstructed lookout, Cassandra watched everything unfold.
1:55
Over 10 agonizing years,
1:57
she witnessed her own grisly visions of senseless destruction come to pass
2:02
on the battlefield below.
2:04
When dawn broke one day to reveal a huge wooden horse
2:08
in place of the Greek encampment,
2:10
the Trojans believed that the victory had finally been secured.
2:14
Their enemies appeared to have fled,
2:16
leaving this inscrutable token of peace behind.
2:20
But as others streamed into the streets to celebrate,
2:24
Cassandra realized the insidious truth.
2:27
Brandishing a battle-axe and a flaming torch,
2:29
she descended from the tower and ran at the wooden horse,
2:33
alerting everyone that it was a trick.
2:35
Instead of heeding Cassandra’s warnings, they wrestled her to the ground
2:39
and scoffed that she was getting more paranoid with age,
2:43
then proceeded to tug the behemoth gift horse inside the city’s walls.
2:48
As Troy fell into an oblivious slumber that night,
2:52
Greek soldiers descended from the wooden horse's belly.
2:55
All had gone according to plan, and they scattered among the city streets,
3:00
intoxicated with their victory, to unleash a torrent of pent up, violent chaos.
3:06
Cassandra had seen her city burn and heard her people’s screams many times,
3:12
but that didn't make the reality any easier to bear.
3:15
Her nightmare had come to pass.
3:17
As dawn neared, the commander of the Greek army, Agamemnon himself,
3:22
arrived to claim Cassandra as his prize.
3:25
He dragged her back to his ship,
3:27
boasting relentlessly of his victory as they set sail.
3:31
But Cassandra told him plainly that he'd be punished.
3:34
Earlier in the years of battle,
3:36
Agamemnon had sacrificed his daughter to the war effort,
3:39
hoping the gods would favor the Greeks in return.
3:43
Now Cassandra saw that his wife, Clytemnestra, awaited his return,
3:48
poised for revenge.
3:50
But just as certainly as she saw that Agamemnon
3:53
was sailing towards his own murder,
3:55
Cassandra saw that she would also be killed in the fallout.
3:59
As always, she confronted the grim fate.
4:03
In her lonely pact with the truth, no matter how ugly,
4:06
Cassandra had always stood apart.
4:09
After all, was it not her but everyone else
4:13
who had fallen victim to the curse, living in deceit’s shadow,
4:17
oblivious to reality until the bitter end?
