The fates

Alejandro

Active Member
Wasn't it the Fates who told Chronus that he would have a sun that would dethrone him just as he did his father...? Or was it Rhea...it was Gaia who helped Rhea hide Zeus until he wsa old enough to overthrow his father?
some accounts say it's Gaia, not so sure though
Rhea did not necessarily know that Zeus would grow up to overthrow Kronos, the occurrence of which event was actually a curse which Kronos' own father Ouranos had placed upon him while he was drifting away from the Earth [Gaia] dying. The birth of the three Erinnyes [Furies] was a partial fulfillment of this curse. The blood of Ouranos, which Kronos had spilled, fell onto the Earth and impregnated it. Among other entities, the Erinnyes thus emerged from Gaia's womb, personifying the memory of Ouranos' blood, Kronos' very crime against his own father. This is supposed to explain why the Erinnyes were particularly vengeful towards children who committed crimes against their parents, especially parricide. Ouranos' curse on Kronos was the first ever that a parent had uttered against his own child, and the Erinnyes naturally supported Kronos’ son Zeus against the Titan leader in the war that followed. The three Erinnyes were also agents of the three Moirai [Fates], the latter of whom assigned to the former their proper functions.
You'd think there's be a story somewhere of a god that tried to go against fate and what happened. Does anyone know of one? Or of a human who tried to go against fate
According to the playwright Aiskhylos, Apollon [Apollo] once managed to get the Moirai drunk (exactly how Apollon performed such a tricky feat, Aiskhylos does not say) and thus broker a deal for his friend King Admetos of Pherai in which, on the day that he was [pre]destined to die, if his wife or either of his parents agreed to take his place, his life would be spared. This is the back-story of the episode in which Herakles ends up in a tussle with old Thanatos (Death himself) and wrests Admetos' faithful wife Alkestis from Death's grasp, since she had agreed to die in the place of Admetos, both of whose parents had refused to do so.


In an earlier episode of Herakles' life, the story of his birth, as it happens, the Moirai feature in an even more involved capacity. On the night in which Herakles was conceived, Zeus made a deal with Hera that the first descendant of Perseus to be born exactly nine months from then would grow up to become ruler of all Argolis, the domain of his ancestor Perseus. Zeus had his unborn son Herakles in mind for this, but Hera had other plans. Two months later, Eurystheus, a cousin of Herakles’ mother Alkmene, was conceived. And seven months after that, when Herakles’ birth was due, Hera induced her daughter the birth-goddess Eileithyia to accelerate the birth of Eurystheus and delay that of Herakles.

According to Antoninus Liberalis’ Metamorphoses, Eileithyia was working in cahoots with her half-sisters the Moirai in this endeavour, which they were doing as a favour to Hera. (Did they somehow come to owe her one?) One of Alkmene’s midwives was a slave named Galanthis, or Galinthias, with whom Alkmene had been friends from the time that they were both kids. During Alkmene’s protracted labour, Galanthis wandered out of Alkmene’s birth chamber to ponder upon it and somehow saw the four goddesses seated at the entrance cross-legged with their arms and fingers crossed. Realising that this was the cause of her mistress’s distress, Galanthis went back into the chamber and then shortly after burst out again exclaiming congratulations that Alkmene had safely delivered her offspring. Confused about this, the goddesses got up to investigate, thus abandoning their magic poses and allowing Alkmene’s twin sons to be born. The elder one was Herakles, son of Zeus, and the younger Iphikles, son of Alkmene’s husband Amphitryon. Being born a few nights too late, Herakles did not inherit Perseus’ domain but was passed over by his kinsman Eurystheus, who grew up to become his bitterest enemy. As for Galanthis, for her trick upon the goddesses, Eileithyia and the Moirai transformed her into a polecat or weasel (which is what her name means in Greek), thus dooming her to a joyless life in obscure holes and corners. But Hekate took pity on her and made her her attendant. When he had grown up Herakles erected an image of her by his house and offered her sacrifices. After Herakles’ death, when the Thebans worshipped him, it was customary at his festival first to offer sacrifices to Galanthis. For the goddesses' part in this caper, so Pausanias reports, the Thebans assigned Eileithyia and the Moirai the designation Pharmakides, "Sorceresses" or "Witches." (That should be interestingly ironic since Galanthis' patroness Hekate was actually the chief divinity presiding over witches and witchcraft.)
 

Alejandro

Active Member
I sometimes like to remix the mythology in my head, I've always seen the Fates as the daughters of Chronos (Lord of Time) and a son of Chaos. Which puts the fates in a very different, far older and more powerful, lineage than the young Olympians. So I definately believe that the Fates are dangerous to the gods, in fact there's evidence. The Fates dictated who would win the Giantmachy. They said that unless a mortal intervened on the Olympians behalf, Gaia and her Giants would win Olympus. Sometimes the prophecy is sourced as coming from Hera, however that doesn't make sense to me. The prophecy continued, if the mortal sided with Gaia, then all would be lost. That mortal was Herakles, and he chose to help the Gods. ... Also, I can't remember off the top of my head for certain, it was either during the Titanmachy or the Giantmachy, whichever one, the Fate sisters are recorded as helping the Olympians win by killing some of their enemies in battle.
Several ancient mythographers would have agreed with your brand of remixing to an extent, since they make the Fates daughters of Nyx, either with no father or by Erebos or by Kronos, and the Kronos who is mentioned here is likelier the Khronos [Chronus, "Lord of Time"] whom you've cited rather than the Titan Kronos. Plato believed that they were the daughters of a primeval goddess named Ananke, the personification of necessity (and herself a representation of fate's inevitability), while Quintus Smyrnaeus says that their father was Khaos [Chaos]. Lycophron and Athenaeus make them Oceanids, being daughters of Okeanos and Gaia. (By the way, according to the Orphics, Khaos was the son of Khronos, not the other way around.)


The Fates are not the ones who determined who won the gods' battle against the Gigantes. All we are told about the necessity for a mortal to side with the gods in order for them to destroy the Gigantes is that, as Apollodorus says, there was "an oracle among the gods" that the Gigantes were immortal unless slain by the joint effort of god and mortal. We don't know where this oracle came from. The Fates themselves might have feared it, and from the looks of the situation they too were in danger of destruction during the War of the Gigantes, especially when Typhon, the lastborn and largest of all of these enemies of theirs, arose and attacked the town of the gods. It was during the Gigantomachy that the Fates together killed two of the Gigantes, Agrios and Thoas, whom they clubbed to death with their bronze maces. They were clearly just as involved in defending the home of the gods as any of the other deities who lived there. During Zeus' battle against Typhon, the god drove the dragon-like Gigantos to Mt Nysa in Syria, where Typhon desperately called the Fates to a meeting seeking their advice. They somehow convinced him that in order to become stronger he should eat the food of mortals. Believing them, the dragon took their word for it and was gravely weakened after doing so.

As for Hera's part in all of this, you're probably thinking about the part of the Homeric Hymn to Apollon Pythios in which Zeus gave birth to Athena, seemingly without any assistance from Hera or any other woman, and in a jealous rage over this, Hera used a form of Earth-magic to conceive and give birth to the largest and most terrible of the Gigantes, namely Typhaon [Typhon or Typhoeus], whom she wished to dethrone Zeus, but whom Zeus killed and thus concluded the war. Typhaon is usually said, however, to be a son of Gaia and Tartaros.

The addition to the prophecy about the Gigantes' immortality had nothing to do with anyone siding with Gaia, rather it was that Gaia discovered that there was a certain plant growing upon her body, the Earth, which could be used as a drug to prevent even a mortal from destroying the Gigantes and she determined to find it and administer it to them. However, Zeus also discovered this and endeavoured to find the plant before his grandmother Gaia did, so he forbade his cousins Helios (the Sun), Eos (the Dawn) and Selene (the Moon) from travelling and hence shining on Gaias surface. In this way he managed to find the plant and confiscate it before Gaia could find it herself.
 
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kingkronos

New Member
The fates did not have control over the gods. Zeus was named Moiragetes. The leader of the fates. He was actually the god of fate. And it has been noted that Zeus decided the fates of kings, because he liked that. And Zeus gave the sisters the task of writing the fates of the mortals. So in a way, he decided the fate of anyone.
 
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