Atropos

Atropos is one of the three Moirai, or Fates, the goddesses who assign each mortal his share of good and evil. With her sisters Clotho and Lachesis she presides over the destiny of every human being. Her name means “she who cannot be turned”, and in Plato and later writers she is the Fate whose work cannot be undone.

Parents and sisters

The sources do not agree on the parentage of the Fates. In Hesiod’s Theogony they are the children of Night, along with the Keres, and are named Clotho, Lachesis and Atropos; they give mortals at birth both good and evil, and pursue the transgressions of men and gods, never ceasing from their anger until the wrongdoer has paid the penalty (Theogony 217–222). Later in the same poem Zeus takes Themis as his second wife, and she bears him the Seasons and the Moirai, the same three names, to whom Zeus gave the greatest honour (Theogony 901–906). Apollodorus follows this second version: by Themis, Zeus had the Seasons and the Fates, Clotho, Lachesis and Atropos (Library 1.3.1). In Plato’s Republic they are the daughters of Necessity (Ananke) (Republic 617b–c).

The Shield of Heracles, a poem ascribed to Hesiod, describes the Fates among the figures on the hero’s shield: Clotho and Lachesis stand over the fighters, and Atropos, a goddess of no great stature and less tall than they, is nevertheless the eldest and the most powerful of the three (Shield 258–260).

Role

The three Fates are usually pictured as spinners, and each has her part in the thread. In Plato’s myth of Er, Lachesis sings of the past, Clotho of the present and Atropos of the future. The souls choose their lives under Lachesis, then pass to Clotho, who ratifies their choice, and finally to Atropos, who makes what has been spun irreversible (Republic 617c, 620d–e). In the Laws Plato calls Atropos the “saviour-third”, because she makes the destinies spun by her sisters unchangeable (Laws 960c). Later writers add that she is the one who sets the end: in Lucian’s Downward Journey the man who has just died is “handed over” to Hermes by Atropos, and another says that when Atropos gave a nod he gladly followed (Cataplus 4, 15). In Lucian’s Zeus Cross-examined, Atropos would not allow anyone to turn the spindle backwards and undo the work of Clotho (11). Her sister Clotho is the Fate who spins the thread and Lachesis the one who allots it.

The Fates and Zeus

Several ancient texts treat even the gods as subject to the Fates. At Delphi, Pausanias saw images of two Fates in the temple, with Zeus Moiragetes (“Guide of Fate”) and Apollo Moiragetes standing in place of the third (Description of Greece 10.24.4). He describes a marble relief of the Fates and Zeus Moiragetes at the sanctuary of the Mistress (Despoina) near Acacesium in Arcadia (8.37.1) and an altar at Olympia “to the Bringer of Fate”, a title of Zeus, who knows all that the Fates give to men and all that is not destined for them (5.15.5). At Athens, an inscription at the shrine of Aphrodite in the Gardens declared that the Heavenly Aphrodite was the eldest of the Fates (Pausanias 1.19.2).

The Fates at births and deaths

The Fates appear in myth when a child’s life is fixed. When Meleager was seven days old, the Fates came and declared that he would die when the brand burning on the hearth was burnt out (Apollodorus, Library 1.8.2). The sources do not say which of the three spoke.

Atropos Sources

Hesiod, Theogony 217–222, 901–906, and Shield of Heracles 258–260; Plato, Republic 617b–c, 620d–e, and Laws 960c; Apollodorus, Library 1.3.1, 1.8.2; Lucian, The Downward Journey 4, 15, and Zeus Cross-examined 11; Pausanias 1.19.2, 5.15.5, 8.37.1, 10.24.4.

See Also: Lachesis, Clotho, The Fates, Zeus, Themis, Night, Meleager