Dueling Prophecies
Sources Quoted
Hecuba has a Dream
Queen Hecuba, already a mother to a growing bevy of princes and princesses, was pregnant with another child. She confided in Herophile that she'd dreamed of giving birth to a winged firebrand.[Cassandra’s] divinely inspired heart immediately cried out with dreadful groanings and she indicated with purport of words such as this: “O all . . .far-seeing son of Cronus, you will fulfill the fated suffering when Hecuba (told) the Dardanidae, (the vision) she once saw, when she was carrying this man in her womb: she thought that she gave birth to a fire-bearing ... Hundred-hander, who with harsh (force?) dashed all Ilion onto the plain."
HELEN (to Menelaus):
Alexander, that dream of the firebrand’s agony.
I see the winged firebrand [Paris].
This dream, I admit, is the fiction of a poet's brain, yet it is not contrary to our experience with real dreams. It may well be that the following story of the dream which greatly disturbed Priam's peace of mind is fiction too: When mother Hecuba was great with child, she dreamed that she brought forth a flaming torch.
When Hecabe was about to have her second child, she had a vision in her sleep that she had given birth to a fiery torch and that it was spreading through and burning the whole city.
Once, while she [Hecuba] was pregnant, she envisioned in her sleep that she was giving birth to a burning torch from which a great number of serpents emerged.
[Priam speaks to Achilles on the occasion of recovering the corpse of Hektor]: When Hecuba was pregnant, she had told him how she had dreamt of a torch in whose flames Mount Ida and then, as the fire continued, the shrines of the gods and finally the whole state had been consumed, excepting only the homes of Antenor and Anchises. The interpreters had said that this dream portended the fall of Troy.
Paris, was the son of king Priam of Troy, born of queen Hecuba; when the queen was still pregnant with him in her womb, she saw in her sleep a flame coming out of her which encircled the entire city of Troy and burnt it down.
Hecuba dreams that she gives birth to a flaming torch that burns down both Troy and the forests of Mount Ida.
Then it was the start of the calamity for the Trojans when Hecuba conceived from the king Priam. At the beginning she was haunted by air-wandering dreams. She saw in her dreams she would give birth to a fiery beast who would set fire to the Trojan cities and to Troy itself.
The Interpretation of Herophile
From her dream, Herophile told Hecuba that the child she carried would cause the destruction of Ilion.Alarmed at this, with sighing cares possessed, the king and father, Priam, to the gods did make a sacrifice of bleating lambs. He, seeking peace and answer to the dream, implored Apollo's aid to understand what great events the vision did foretell, Apollo's oracle, with voice divine, then gave this explanation of the dream: 'Thy next-born son forbear to rear, for he will be the death of Pergamos and Troy.’
When Priam learned of the dream from Hecabe, he summoned his son Aesacus, for he was a dream-interpreter who had been taught by his maternal grandfather, Merops. He said that their son would prove to be the destruction of his homeland and urged that the infant be exposed.
[Paris writes to Helen]:
Terrified, she [Hecuba] awoke and told the fearsome vision from deep night to old Priam who quickly told the dream to his prophets. One of these sang that Ilion would be burned by the flame of Paris. That was my heart's torch and I tell you, it has come to be.
[Helen writes to Paris]:
I quail at the words those holy men put to this strange vision; I am told they saw this as a sign that Ilion would burn with flames brought to it from Pelasgus."
Discovering this, Priam was disturbed by the dream and went to the oracle, and he received the response that when his child Paris was thirty he would destroy Troy and bring his kingdom to an end. Hearing this, Priam renamed him Alexandros and sent him to the countryside to be brought up, a place called Amandros and renamed Parion.
When she [Hecuba] consulted the temple what such kind of vision it were, the answer to her was that if someone were to be born from her, Troy would perish through him— and which came to pass."
Prophets, who tried to explain the dream, have said. You're holding in your belly, Hecuba, a child that will bring disaster to Troy. That's precisely what the prophets had said.
Priam has three sons: Ector, Troyle, and Alisaunder. ... And when she [Hecuba] wakened of her dreaming, she sent after masters old and young, and bade them say what should befall and had them say, and nothing lies, what her dream should signify. 'Madame,' they said, 'without lies, in thy body is that shall bring Troy to nought; for him many man to death birth brought.' For they saw the queen was woe and she said to them, 'it shall not be so.'
Alt Take: Cassandra's Prophecy
* This version requires Cassandra to be much older than Paris.
CHORUS (to Andromache):
‘Oh but if only his mother had broken the sorry creature’s [Paris] skull at once before he settled there on Ida’s side – when the marvelous laurel implored, when shrill Cassandra wild-eyed clamored ‘Kill the spreading pollution of Troy, our land!’ And frenzied everywhere to needle, wheedle, warn prominent men with: ‘Destroy the newborn!’
Prophecy of Aesacus
The king instead favored the prophetic advice of Aesacus, whose visions confirmed that a child of Priam's, born on a specific date, would cause the destruction of Troy. While Hecuba's pregnancy could produce such a destroyer, Priam had also impregnated Hecuba's sister Cilla, and so he nervously watched both women as the appointed day approached. Priam reasoned that the child of his affair would be the more likely to cause his downfall by revealing the king's moral failings and alienating his allies. On the fated day, Priam heard that Cilla had given birth to a boy named Munippus, and ordered both of them to be killed. Only after the sentence was carried out did he hear that Hecuba had also given birth. A new prophecy from Herophile confirmed that it was newborn Paris who was destined to cause Ilion's destruction in his 30th year.Where the groundling heifer [Cilla] of secret bridal lies in one tomb with her whelp [Munippus]
And would that my father [Priam] had not spurned the nightly terrors of the oracle of Aesacus and that for the sake of my fatherland [Troy] he had made away with the two in one doom, ashing their bodies with Lemnian [Hephaestus] fire.
Priam killed the wife and son of Thymoites in response to an oracle given by his son Aesacus by Arisbe.
By Arisbe, Priam had a son who was a seer. This son declared that a boy would be born who would overthrow Troy. The wife of Thymoetes and Hecuba, who was Priam’s lawful wife, both gave birth at the same time. When Hecuba, the daughter of Ciseus and wife of King Priam, was pregnant with Paris, she saw herself bring forth a torch by which the city was burned. When she repeated this to Priam, he understood that the boy who was born would be the cause of the burning city.
Hecuba had a sister Cilla married to Thymoetes, brother of Priam. Priam secretly lay with Cilla and she bore a child to him named Munippus on the same day Hecuba’s son Paris was born. When told by an oracle to destroy “her who had just given birth and her child”, Priam believed that the oracle applied to Cilla and Munippus rather than Hecuba and Priam. He slew Cilla and Munippus.
The child is killed with his mother after Aesacus has advised slaying the offspring born that day. According to the scholiast, the child Munippus is now the legitimate son of Thymoetes and not Priam.
Confirmation of the Prophecy
A new prophecy from Herophile stated that in his 30th year, the boy would cause the destruction of Troy.When Hekabe gave birth to Paris, Priam, the child’s father, went to Phoibos’ oracle, and asked about the son who had been born to him. This response was given to him, 'A son Paris, unlucky Paris, has been born to you; when he reaches his 30th year he will destroy the empire of the Phrygians.' On hearing this Priam immediately renamed him Alexander and sent him to an estate named Amandra, to be nursed by a farmer until he had passed the 30 years referred to by the oracle.
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