Atropos
AT-ruh-pos
Attested elsewhere in ancient sourcesThe inflexible. The third Fate, whose name means she who cannot be turned, and who cuts.
Hesiod names her with her sisters as daughters of Night, and elsewhere as daughters of Zeus and Themis. He does not resolve the contradiction and neither does anyone after him.
In Plato she sings of what will be and makes what has been spun irreversible. In this account she is the silent one, which is the only way to play her.
Sources
- Hes. Theog. 904-906
- Hes. Theog. 217-219
- Plat. Rep. 617c
References are to the standard divisions of the ancient texts, not to any one edition.
Discussed in the papers
Acenes of Sparta: The Dragon Slayer
A dragon is the reason the 300 died. Leonidas used the magic of the gods to bind Kalaxes beneath Taygetus, and the price was his life and his men's. Sixty-two years later a seven-year-old of the agoge falls into the dragon's crypt and inherits the unpaid balance.
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