CASSANDRA IN THE ILIAD

Homer’s Iliad serves as the bedrock for many ancient texts about the mythical gods and heroes. The story is a retelling of a key part of the Trojan War, covering Achilles’ refusal to fight all the way through the funeral of the Trojan prince Hector. Homer creates blueprints for many of the characters that follow them throughout time and civilization; our view of Achilles today is as a vengeful warrior. However, some characters are portrayed very differently than they appear in later texts. One such character is Priam’s daughter Cassandra.

            In this text, Cassandra appears twice, and one of those times she is merely mentioned. In book 13, we see her fiancée Othryoneus being killed by the Greek Idomeneus. Here she is described as “Priam’s loveliest daughter,”[1] making her a prized bride-to-be for the poor Othryoneus. We learn that he did not offer Priam money or goods for Cassandra’s hand, but instead offered his work in the field of battle.[2] If Priam was willing to marry off his most beautiful daughter for more soldiers, it clearly indicates that he did not believe the war would go very smoothly for him.

            The second mention of Cassandra comes in book 24 when Priam returns from his meeting with Achilles to retrieve the body of Hector. No one sees the two of them coming until Cassandra, here described as “golden as the goddess Aphrodite,”[3] sees them approaching and calls out to the whole city announcing their arrival. This is the closest we get to seeing her “prophetic” powers in action; she is the first to see an event happening, although the event is in the present. Another huge difference lies between this “prophecy” and all of her others: people actually believe her.

Cassandra’s curse from Apollo says that her prophecies will be true but believed by no one. In this version of the character, no mention is made of her prophetic powers. Why Homer leaves this out is unclear; however, we can assume that this depiction of Cassandra was either done knowingly by Homer or the authors after him modeled their idea of a “seeing” Cassandra after the literally “seeing” Cassandra in the Iliad. As P. G. Mason notes in his essay “Kassandra,” Homer also leaves a hint of the “pathos and charm”[4] we see in later versions of the character with his description of her call to the city.[5]

            Her beauty is also a point of note in the Iliad, as it is mentioned both times that her name makes an appearance. Homer even goes as far as saying that she is comparable to Aphrodite. The only other woman in the Iliad described as such is Helen, the woman whose beauty is responsible for the entire war. This makes her something of an anti-Helen, as later myths show her life taking a radically different path as hers. Cassandra, a former beautiful princess with the ability to see the future, is cursed by Apollo, loses her fiancée in battle, is raped by Ajax the Lesser, given to Agamemnon as a spoil of war and loses her life to Clytemnestra. Meanwhile, Helen goes on to live out her days in Sparta until she ends up married to Achilles in the afterlife. Although we merely get a glimpse of this life in the Iliad, it sets the tone for what we can expect from the rest of Cassandra’s story throughout history.

[1] Homer, Iliad, line 424

[2] Homer, Iliad, line 424-426

[3] Homer, Iliad, line 820

[4] Mason, “Kassandra,” page 81

[5] Homer, Iliad, line 826-830