Lachesis
LAK-uh-sis
Attested elsewhere in ancient sourcesThe apportioner. The second Fate, who measures the thread and assigns the lot.
In Plato's myth of Er it is Lachesis who casts the lots before the souls and tells them that they are choosing their own daemon, that the responsibility lies with the chooser and not with the god.
She is the one who names the powers as they arrive at the trial, and that function, the measurer who states what a thing is, follows the same division Hesiod gives.
Sources
- Hes. Theog. 904-906
- Plat. Rep. 617d-e
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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