Clotho
KLOH-thoh
Attested elsewhere in ancient sourcesThe spinner. First of the three Moirai in Hesiod's list, who gives mortals their portion of good and ill at birth.
Plato puts her at the spindle of Necessity singing of what has been, with her sisters at what is and what will be, and has her turn the outer whorl with her right hand.
In this account it is Clotho who says that the boy has been shown possibilities and not commands, and that his choice remains his own. The words survive only here. The division of labour behind them is Hesiod's.
Sources
- Hes. Theog. 904-906
- Hes. Theog. 218
- 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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