RE-AIR: No Crime Have I Committed, Save to Speak the Truth, Cursed Cassandra

Published Oct 2, 2024, 3:00 AM

The final narrative episode of the Euripides series has been postponed... For now, welcome to Spooky Season. This episode originally aired in 2021.

CW/TW: far too many Greek myths involve assault. Given it's fiction, and typically involves gods and/or monsters, I'm not as deferential as I would be were I referencing the real thing.

Sources: Theoi.com: Aeschylus' Agamemnon, translated by Herbert Weir Smyth and found on Theoi; Early Greek Myths by Timothy Gantz. Episode title is an edited quote from Scream 2.

Attributions and licensing information for music used in the podcast can be found here: mythsbaby.com/sources-attributions.

Hello, this is let's talk about mince Baby, and I am your host live who is not here with what she promised. All right, I do feel like I owe you all, and actually just I would like to provide you all with an explanation. I had every intention of having this final episode of your Rippandies ready to go. I have all of this research I've been looking at. There is so much to say, and I've been experiencing this new thing where and I'm just gonna straight up say at all because i feel like this shit does not get talked about enough. But I my hormones are changing in a way where now there are like three or four days where out of the blue or rather in line, I guess with my fucking cycle and I just can't or haven't figured it out yet, but where my brain will just not it will not right, it will not like I can do all the bits and pieces, and then it just I really struggle with it. And in the past two days that's just been happening to me, and at then at like three pm, my brain just doesn't it will no longer like do the thing at all, and then I spiral into anxiety. And so today I said to myself. No, you're not gonna spiral into anxiety, even though you put off the episode thinking you could do it the next day, and then it turns out the hormones just spanned two days. I'm not gonna feel bad, but I am going to explain. So that's what happened. The shitty part is that I can't just push it till next week because I have some travel I have to do that. I is going to have me away from my microphone and then oh my god, and then I'm trying to move Anyways, there's a lot going on right now, and I know that I am also still a bit fragile in the mental health department. So here instead is a spooky season episode from a couple of years back that I feel just fits appropriately with the theme. Not quite Euripides, but the general vibes. This is spooky season, after all, so at least we can work with that. And I will be back with the final narrative episode in the Euripides series, and I'm going to be so annoyed just from like a visual standpoint that like the episode cover like won't be with the other ones, Like this is gonna drive me nuts. But I am preserving myself. So yes, I will be back with that final episode because I really have so much I just HiT's wild. I'm gonna stop trying to explain it because that's gonna only make me spiral further. Thank you all so much because I know you all will understand. And I will be back still on Friday with an episode with Ugh, my friend Cossi and oh that one is Euripides and it is spooky season. This is episode one hundred and forty two. No crime have I committed, save to speak the truth. The Cursed Cassandra. Cassandra is one of the most well known characters from Greek myth. In today's world, people don't always know who she is or what she was famous for. Besides the most notable point, she was a prophetess who was cursed not to be believed. The word Cassandra goes on in time to imply prophetic visions of some kind. It evolves and grows far beyond this one woman from Troy. But it turns out the idea of her being explicitly cursed by Apollo or a survivor of Apollo isn't all that widespread across the sourcing and in fact, Cassandra herself is somewhat minor, actually very minor, in basically everything that survives except Eschylus's Agamemnon. The others wrote plays that featured her. Both Euripides and Sophocles had plays entitled Alexandros, plays about Paris's return to Troy after growing up as a shepherd who didn't understand his heritage. There, Cassandra would have featured fairly heavily, but neither play survives. If she's in the Iliad at all, it's as a minor reference, and even that, I can't think of she as you'll remember in Euripides's Trojan Women. But in that story her role is about foreseeing Agamemnon's impending death and emphasizing the way her prophetic powers have influenced and affected her. And then, of course, like so much of the story revolving around Troy, she doesn't really appear in any of the traditional stories by the mythographers or Pisiod, the Homeric hymns, the usual places where we gather these stories. She's just not there. I tell you all of this not to lessen her importance, but to add to the intrigue that is Cassandra. Many of you have asked me to cover her in the past, and I've been hesitant for exactly this reason, because there really is so little. But fortunately these days I have some really hardcore sourcing that helps me solve this problem for the most part. So that you all get a spooky season episode devoted to Cassandra, in which I get the privilege of quoting Scream two as an episode title, we all win. The most powerful source we have for Cassandra, the place where she really shines, where her story is told viscerally and beautifully, is Eschylus's play The Agamemnon. I've covered it briefly back at the end of the Trojan War episodes the Cursed Family, that is that family of Mycenie. So I won't go through the whole play for you, but I will quote from it throughout kind of heavily, because Cassandra's lines are incredible. Cassandra, Cassandra Cassandra Let's art. At the beginning, Cassandra was a princess of Troy, a daughter of Priam and Hecuba, and sister too, among many others. Paris and Hector, those famed and fateful princes of Troy. Cassandra's story, at least at the beginning, revolves around Paris. When he was born, there was a prophecy or sometimes it's a dream by his own mother Hecuba, that the child would cause the fall of Troy. Because of this, Paris was one of those many characters of myth who was exposed a baby, left on a mountain side to die. But as with all the others, he doesn't die. He's raised by a shepherd and given the name Alexandros. There are many variations on what exactly happens when Paris finally returns to Troy without the knowledge that he is actually one of their princes. What's important, though, is that everyone appears to have forgotten the prophecy or the dream that he would cause their downfall, and instead it's Cassandra who has to point this out, who has to call out this strange man for what he means for the Trojan people. He will cause Troy to burn, she insists, But her warnings are ignored. You see I say they're ignored. Her warnings are not necessarily not believed, And even when they're not believed, it's not necessarily because of a curse by Apollo. In fact, it isn't until Aeschylus's Agamemnon that we have a surviving source for this famous curse. Woe, woe, woe, Oh Apollo, Oh Apollo, Apollo, Apollo, God of the ways, my destroyer, for you have destroyed me and utterly this second time, that, along with so many others, you will hear in this episode, is a quote of Cassandra's lines in Eschylus's Agamemnon. Because it's Eschylus who either ads or maybe drawing from a source we don't have, emphasizes Cassandra's past relationship with Apollo, that he gifted her with prophecy but cursed her never to be believed. This gets picked up and referenced later, becoming the most well known thing about Cassandra. The cursed Trojan prophetess. Pseudo Apollodorus states it as fact, though that work comes from quite a bit later than Eschylus's Agamemnon. I say this only because in the notes of the pseudo Apollodorus there's also a cryptic reference to another version of Cassandra's story of gaining prophecy. Apparently she and one of her brothers might have had their ears licked by snakes, which gave them gifts of prophecy. Fuck if I don't love all the weird shit the Greeks did with snakes in their mythology. Still weirder, though, is a reference in Robert Graves that I can't find better sourcing on that suggests that Apollo spat directly into Cassandra's mouth to curse her with prophecy not to be believed, which is fucking revolting. Still, it's the general idea of Apollo's wrath, typically in the form of an assault, that Cassandra is known for, along with the resulting curse. But was she assaulted by Apollo or did he attempt it at least did he curse her not to be believed? Or was she just a priestess of the God, a prophetess in her own right who happened to foretell the types of prophecies that people aren't likely to believe or more likely don't want to believe. I mean, her most famous prophecies are the fall of Troy and the death of Agamemnon. These are types of things that would be immediately disbelieved out of sheer denial. But the idea of this woman who knows all, sees all, but can never be believed is just too interesting, too tragic and fascinating at the same time. And that's not to say Cassandra wasn't a survivor of assault, because fuck boy was she. She just may not have had to fend off Apollo specifically, but the woman didn't get off easy. Then none of the Trojan women did. Apollo, Apollo, God of the way is my destroyer? Ah? What way is this that you have brought me to? What a house? The second thing Cassandra is most famous for, beyond the prophecies themselves, is her travel with Agamemnon after the war. When the Greeks have raised Troy to the ground and abducted all of their women, killed all of the men. They split the women off between them, each man getting possession of their own human person. They sail off to each of their own homes. Agamemnon takes Cassandra. Agamemnon, after all the bullshit he did, after the horrific mass with Brasaeus and Chrysaeus, after everything awful about that creepy creep of a man, he takes Cassandra, and he brings her home to Mycenie. He brings her to his home in myceni where he thinks his wife Clytemnestra will be there to give them both a warm welcome. No. No, rather to a god hating house, a house that knows many, a horrible butchery of kin, a slaughter house of men, and of floor swimming with blood. Here is the evidence in which I put my trust. Behold these babies, bewailing their own butchery and their roasted flesh eaten by their father. Agamemnon's surely violent abduction of cassandra comes after another, arguably more horrific encounter with the Greeks. The Trojan War was nearing its end, or at least it seemed that way for the Trojans. One morning, after the death of Patrocles, and then Hector and then Achilles, the Greeks seem to have just up and left. But as we all well know, even though it appeared as though they had left Troy alone sailed off into the Mediterranean sunset, they left behind one notable thing, a very large wooden horse. There were only two Trojans who saw this large wooden horse left behind by the apparently fleeing Greeks and knew that something was very very wrong. It was a seer named Layakawan and our girl Cassandra both announced that this was not something the Trojans should bring within their walls. Cassandras had very clearly that there were armed men inside it. As always, no one believed her. But once again I asked, did they not believe her because of some curse by Apollo or because she was a Trojan princess who no one ever considered to be a prophetess in her own right. She was, after all, just a woman making claims about something that involved men. Still, that doesn't account for Layaquan not being believed, and he certainly wasn't either, even when he and his two sons were attacked and killed by serpents that came from the sea. Even then, the Trojans didn't think to themselves, hey, maybe this horse isn't a great idea. Already I prophesied to my countrymen all their disasters. Cassandra foresaw the fall of Troy. She knew the Greeks were hiding their best men inside that large wooden horse, and she couldn't do anything about it. She could, though, find solace in Athena's temple. That's what she did. She hid out in Athena's temple when the Greeks poured from that wooden horse brought deep within Troy's walls. But even Athena's temple wasn't safe. Cassandra was found there by Ajax, the Lesser called that because he wasn't as good or heroic as the other Ajax of the Trojan War. This one was the real bad one. And he found cassan and hiding in Athena's temple, and he assaulted her even while she clung on to the statue of the goddess. And it was fucking horrifying. In a notable divergence from Avid's version of Medusa and Athena's reaction to a similar event in that story, Athena punishes the living fuck out of the Greeks. Their seer, Calcus, knows that Cassandra was assaulted in there in Athena's temple, and he makes very clear to the other Greeks that if they do not kill Ajax for what he's done, then Athena will surely punish them. On their way home from Troy, Ajax though, hides from the other Greeks at some other temple where they fear retribution for killing him there, so they just don't. They don't kill Ajax the Lesser, even though they fully and completely acknowledge that what he did was unnecessarily violent and horrible. And so because they know what they've done, and Athena knows too, she has Zeus send a storm that sinks many many Greek ships as they attempt to sail away from Troy, leaving that city in smoldering ruins serves them right still, even with this righteous punishment. With Athena on her side, Cassandra is bound for Myceni with Agamemnon, who is taking her home as his prize, his property, his concubine. As the translations like to say ill, she says captive, his hostage, and the phrasing should make clear how horrific it is that Agamemnon has done this. Fortunately for Karma and fate, Agamemnon's got a lot coming for him when he arrives home in Myceni, and once again Cassandra knows from the moment they set foot in Agamemnon's homeland as they come towards the palace in decadence, with Agamemnon clearly showing off his prize, his human prize, even as he greets his wife for the first time in ten years. Cassandra sees not only what's going to happen to Agamemnon, but to her too, And boy does she have a couple of incredible speeches to convey what she sees. What's coming for him, Agamemnon, this man who traveled to her home, destroyed her city, This man who killed all the men she'd ever known and imprisoned all the women. She sees what's coming for him? Ah ah, oh, oh, the agony. Once more, The dreadful throes of true prophecy whirl and distract me with their ill boding onset. Do you see them there sitting before the house, young creatures like phantoms of dreams. Children. They seem slaughtered by their own kindred, their hands full of the meat of their own flesh. They're clear to my sight, holding their vitals and their inward parts, piteous burden which their father tasted. For this cause. I tell you that a strengthless lion wallowing in his bed plots vengeance. A watchman waiting Aha me for my master coming home, Yes, my master, for I must bear the yoke of slavery, the commander of the fleet and the overthrower of ilium. Little knows what deeds shall be brought to evil accomplishment by the hateful hound, whose tongue licks his hand, who stretched forth her ears in gladness like treacherous At such boldness has she a woman to slay a man? What odious monster shall I fitly call her? An amphabina or a skilla tenanting the rocks, a pest to mariners, a raging devil's mother breathing relentless war against her husband. And how the all daring woman raised a shout of triumph as when the battle turns, the while she feigned to joy at his safe return. And yet it is all one whether or not I am believed, What does it matter? What is to come will come. And soon you yourself present here, shall with great pity pronounce me all too true. A prophetess, Cassandra speaks all of this to the chorus the elders assembled to welcome their king home after his long long war in the east. She calls to Apollo, as you heard me quote earlier. She recalls all that's happened, all the horrors that she and all the Trojans have experienced. She recalls the curse on the house of Atreus, those children killed and eaten by their own parent. She lays out just how horrifying and cursed this house is. She cries out in anguish, and she begins to foretell what is going to happen to their king, what she sees within her mind, the bloody mess that Agamemnon's wife clydemnest and her lover Ageesthus are about to bring on Agamemnon. After a quick exchange with the chorus, Cassandra's speech continues, I say you shall look upon Agamemnon dead. Oh, oh, what fire it comes upon me? Whoa whoe? Li kean apollo, ah me ah me, This two footed lioness who mates with a wolf in the absence of the noble lion will slay me, miserable as I am, brewing as it were a drug. She vows that with her wrath she will mix requital for me too, while she wets her sword against her husband to take murderous a vengeance for bringing me here. Why then, do I bear these mockeries of myself, this wand these pro vedic chaplets on my neck, you, at least I will destroy before I die myself to destruction with you and fallen there. Thus do I repay you, and rich with doom some other in my place. Look, Apollo himself is stripping me of my prophetic garb, he that saw me mocked to bitter scorn, even in this bravery by friends turned foes with one accord in vain. But like some vagrant mountebank called beggar, wretch, starveling, I bore it all. And now the prophet, having undone me, his prophetess, has brought me to this lethal pass instead of my father's alter, A block awaits me, where I am to be butchered in a hot and bloody sacrifice. Yet we shall not die unavenged by the gods, for there shall come in turn another our avenger, a scion of the to slay his mother, an exact requital for his sire, an exile, a wanderer, a stranger from this land. He shall return to put the coping stone upon these unspeakable iniquities of his house. For the gods have sworn a mighty oath that his slain father's outstretched corpse shall bring him home. Why then, thus raise my voice in pitiful lament, since first I saw the city of Ilium, fair what it has fared, while her captors, by the God's sentence, are coming to such an end, I will go in and meet my fate. I will dare to die. This door I greet as the gates of death, and I pray that dealt immortal stroke without a struggle, my life blood ebbing away in easy death, I may close these eyes. In Eschylus's Agamemnon, Cassandra is killed by Clytemnestra and ageesthis alongside Agamemnon. At the moment of that last long speech, one of Cassandra's last few lines in the play, Agamemnon has already gone inside to his death, and she's speaking with the chorus alone. She only speaks to the chorus throughout, really, which is suggestive of just how little she's considered to be a real human person by the others. In Myceni, she's there as property war spoils, just like the gold and silver that they'd taken from the palace, but she knows what's to come. Cassandra knows that Agamemnon may already be dead, and if he wasn't, he's surely about to be. She knows all of this, but she also knows that her life wouldn't have been much better than death if she had continued to live there in Myceni with Agamemnon and his wife. What did it matter then, if she would die there before having to experience the worst of the horror that would surely come. She is coherent by the and strong and stable, and she knows what she's saying. She knows what's happening. It's a stark contrast with her role at the beginning of the play, which she's speaking in riddles. She's crying out. They think she's mad, that she can't communicate with them at all, but that doesn't matter, because again, she's property. She's there to be used for something, and it isn't her speaking voice. But the further things progress, the more she speaks with the chorus and sees what's coming for her, the clearer she becomes, the more eloquent and descriptive. Cassandra's speeches in this play are incredible and powerful, and Cassandra is an unbelievable badass whose story has well very little story, if any at all, in terms of the Trojan War. She existed to foretell disaster and not be believed. In the Agamemnon, it almost seems like she's there for the same thing. But then the more she speaks, the more clear it becomes that she's there to serve a very real, dramatic purpose, not only to foretell what's going to happen off stage, but to emphasize the horror of it and the brilliance and fascination of her as a character. And then it's over. She's killed by Clytemnestra and Ageestis, and what will follow in the rest of Eschylus's trilogy has in essence already been foretold by Cassandra. The family is cursed, and only more horror and tragedy will befall them. Orestes and Electra will kill their mother Clytemnestra for killing their father Agamemnon. Orestes will be haunted by the furies and the curse on the house of Atreus that once was the curse of the Pelipaedie, that was the curse of the Tantalids. Will drag on and on and on. Fortunately for Cassandra, she doesn't have to be there to see it, and she's content with that. She's accepting of her fate. What I'm about to read are Cassandra's very last lines in the play, before she enters the palace to face her death. Nay, I will go to bewail also within the palace, my own and Agamemnon's fate. Enough of life. Alas, my friends, not with vain terror, do I shrink as a bird that fears a bush. After I am dead, Bear witness for me of this, when for me a woman, another woman shall be slain, and for an ill wedded man, another man shall fall. I claim this favor from you, now that my hour is come. Yet once more I would like to speak, but not a dirge. I pray to the sun, in presence of his latest light, that my enemies may at the same time pay to my avengers a bloody penalty for slaughtering a slave, an easy prey. Alas for human fortune, when prosperous, a mere shadow can overturn it. If misfortune strikes, the dash of a wet sponge blots out the drawing. And this last I deem far more pitiable than that