Fates

“ A night of veritable horror lay in front of them; they were appalled with the prospect of it. The rain seemed to mock at the completeness of their misery.
However, the Fates were kind, for the General, happening to pass, took pity on them and allowed them to be billeted in the outhouses of a farm near by. The sense of relief which this move gave to the Subaltern was too huge to describe. Contentment took possession of him utterly. The tension of his nerves and muscles relaxed: he thought that the worries and hardships of that day, at least, were over. ”

“ How the Fates had placed such a head on such a body is a question not easily answered. It is very certain that he would have driven to despair those who undertake to discover by external signs the passions and imaginations of the soul. ”

“ It does not, indeed, correspond with our usual idea of Fate, but it is more easily distinguished as a class; for our old acquaintances the Fates are an inseparable three. The Italian Fata is independent of her sisters. They are enchantresses; but they differ from other enchantresses in being immortal. ”

“ The Fates, they know, are inexorable so far as concerns the changing of any of their purposes once set; for, as their proverb runs, ὅτι γράφουν ᾑ Μοίραις, δὲν ξεγράφουν, ‘what the Fates write, that they make not unwritten [277] .’ They are not, it would appear, subordinate, as Charon is sometimes deemed to be, even to the supreme God; I can find no song or story that would so present them. They are absolute and irresponsible in the fashioning of human destiny. But the Greek peasants are not the first who have at the same time believed both in predestination and in the efficacy of prayer. ”

“ But in definite forms of incantation, composed for recitation along with propitiatory offerings, the great Fates and the lesser Fate of the individual suppliant are coupled in a way which shows the difference in importance between them. The former are called ‘the Fates over all Fates’ (ἡ Μοίραις τῶν Μοιρῶν) , as in the plain prose formulary quoted above ”

“ No, Cleotos, it cannot be. Cruel as my lot may be here, I have only myself to answer for it, and it is easier to hide myself from notice in this whirl of sin and passion than if at home again. And whatever may henceforth happen to me, the Fates are surely most to blame. How can one avoid his destiny?'
'The Fates do not carve out our destiny,' he said. 'They simply carry into relentless effect the judgments which our own passions and weaknesses pronounced upon ourselves. O Leta! ”

“ To save my father's honours and my own:
Yet come it will, the day decreed by Fates—
How my heart trembles whilst my tongue relates—
That day when thou, imperial Troy, must bend,
Must see thy warriors fall, thy glories end. ”

“ Can the Fates have been playing a pleasant practical joke with me all this time, like those fairies who decree that the young prince shall pass his childhood and youth in the guise of a wild boar, only to be transformed into an Adonis at last by the hand of the woman who is disinterested enough to love him despite his formidable tusks and ungainly figure? ”

“ At her bidding a fire was kindled. Holding the fatal billet in her ruthless hand, she moaned, "Ye Fates, I both avenge and commit a crime. With death must death be repaid. He deserves to die, and yet the thought of his death appalls me. Oh, that thou hadst been burnt, unnatural son, when an infant, in that first fire!" So saying, with trembling hands, she threw the fatal brand into the midst of the fire. And the brand, as it was caught by the flames, seemed to utter a dying groan. ”

“ Often, too, the incomplete design might well move them to a cruel mirth, but that they see beyond the seeming tangle of events to the perfecting of their pattern at the last. So, perhaps, they are content of their task, though we mortals, with short-sighted eyes, seeing dimly, look on the happenings of our lives as the blessed or the baneful work of chance. Thus, now, the Fates had brought here, beneath the flickering of the Northern Lights, all the actors in the drama of the years agone, when the happiness of a home had been shattered by a villain's ruthless passion. ”

“ To friends, to foes; which skill men call civility.”
The Fates also numbered three. These severe goddesses could reveal the future to men and gods and no one could escape their decrees. Even Jupiter must obey the Fates, daughters of stern necessity. The decrees of the gods and the Fates were generally revealed to men by priestesses called sibyls. These wise women lived in caves. Their prophecies, or oracles, as they were called, were believed in and greatly respected [Pg 86] by the Greeks and Romans, who often went to the sibyls for advice and assistance. ”

“ Reversing the chronological order, let us proceed to compare the functions of these beings. The Fates, whether the Greek Moirae or the Roman Parcae, were three in number, and were variously conceived as goddesses of birth or of death; the elements of the primitive idea are, at least, comprised in the conception that they allotted man his fate ”

“ Only once, a girl of Naxos, so I was told, up in a mountain village, who was excessively ugly, managed to learn from a magician where the Fates lived, and that if she could get them to eat salt they would go blind and change her fate. ”

“ Go not too high or too low, for the sake of heavens and earth; else men and Gods will suffer. The Fates alone know whether evil is to come of this. Yet if your heart fails you, as I hope, abide here and I will make the journey, as I am wont to do.”
But Phaethon held to his choice and bade his father farewell. He took his place in the chariot, gathered up the reins, and the horses sprang away, eager for the road. ”

“ These preparations made, their visit is awaited in solemn silence; for none must speak when the Fates draw near. Most often they are neither seen nor heard; but sometimes, it is said, a wakeful mother has seen their forms as they bent over her child and wrote their decrees on its brow—for which reason moles and other marks on the forehead or the nose are in some places called γραψίματα τῶν Μοιρῶν [286] , ‘writings of the Fates’; sometimes she has heard the low sound of their voices as they consulted together over the future of the child ”

“ Unrealisable it may indeed be in the jumbled context of this world, where the Fates, like an absent-minded printer, seldom allow a single line to stand perfect and unmarred. ”

“ We will now consider another branch of mythology—the fickle goddesses, the Fates (Μοῖρα) , whose workings in modern Greece are looked upon with as much superstition as of old. On the island of Sikinos I attended an interesting ceremony called the μοίρισμα of a child, which happens a year after its birth. All the friends and relatives are gathered together to a feast. ”

“ In so far as there is any conflict between right and wrong in the Aeneid, the wrong appears to be the ‘victrix causa’ ‘which pleases the gods.’ The religious idea of the Fates is invested with none of the ethical mystery with which the analogous idea in Greek poetry is invested. They act in a hard, plain, arbitrary way, irrespective of right and wrong, regardless of personal happiness or suffering. The actors in the poem who move our sympathies are those who perish in blind resistance to, or blind compliance with, their decrees—Dido, Pallas, Turnus, and Lausus. ”

“ Individual wicked deities do not appear at this stage, but the way is prepared for them by the picture of cosmic struggle in which powers friendly and unfriendly to men are opposed to one another. A similar conception is found in the figures of the Fates, who are the embodiment of the course of events in the world—the immovable, remorseless, absolute fortune of men, good and bad—a picture of life as it has presented itself, doubtless, to men in all periods of history. Out of this came the abstract conception of Fate, the impersonal power that controls all things. ”

“ If he starts off with the top hat and umbrella the afternoon turns out fearfully hot, and the perspiration takes all the soap out of his mustache and converts the beautifully arranged curl over his forehead into a limp wisp resembling a lump of seaweed. The Fates are never favorable to the poor wretch. If he does by any chance reach the door in proper condition, she has gone out with her cousin and won't be back till late.
How a young lover made ridiculous by the gawkiness of modern costume must envy the picturesque gallants of seventy years ago! ”

“ Yet instant to fore-shadowed need
The eternal balance swings;
That wingèd men the Fates may breed
So soon as Fate hath wings.
These shall possess
Our littleness,
And in the imperial task (as worthy) lay
Up our lives’ all to piece one giant day. ”

“ No other than he who invented this Fable, could explain how many useful lessons it affords. In the first place, it teaches that those whom you yourself have brought up, may often be found the most hostile to you: then again, it shows that crimes are punished not through the wrath of the Gods, but at the time appointed by the Fates: lastly, it warns the good to use nothing in common with the wicked. ”

“ The modern Greeks also believe in the Fates or Moiræ, either as three dread sisters or as a hierarchy of twelve who delegate the care of a specified number of men to a smaller committee. At Arachova three fates appear within three days of an infant’s birth, two known as the bearers of good and of ill fortune, who fight the matter out and agree upon a destiny, and the third called the Spinner, who will weave the strands into the web of life. ”

“ Siebenkäs pressed his hand, and only said, "The Fates, and Furies, too, glide with linked hands over life, as well as the Graces and Sirens." ”

“ Fata Morgana, a mirage occasionally observed in the Strait of Messina, in which, from refraction in the atmosphere, images of objects, such as men, houses, trees, etc., are seen from the coast under or over the surface of the water.
Fatalism, the doctrine that all which takes place in life and history is subject to fate, that is is to say, takes place by inevitable necessity, that things being as they are, events cannot fall out otherwise than they do.
Fates, The, in the Greek mythology the three goddesses who presided over the destinies of individuals—Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropos (q. v.) ”

“ This time-trinity is just touched on in both Hebrew and Christian ritual. Its essence is preserved in the myth of the three Fates, called in the Odin-Legends Urda, Verdendi, and Skelda; or Was, Is-Becoming, and Shall-Be. The student who takes an equal interest in the History of the Past, the development of the Present, and the destinies of the Future, keeps his mind balanced. If any one of them be neglected, the fates become furies who avenge; or Vampires who suck away the student's life-blood and make of him an evil fate to other men. ”

“ Though I cannot tell why it was exactly that those stage managers, the Fates, put me down for this shabby part of a whaling voyage, when others were set down for magnificent parts in high tragedies, and short and easy parts in genteel comedies, and jolly parts in farces—though I cannot tell why this was exactly; yet, now that I recall all the circumstances, I think I can see a little into the springs and motives which being cunningly presented to me under various disguises, induced me to set about performing the part I did, besides cajoling me into the delusion that it was a choice resulting from my own unbiased freewill and discriminating judgment. ”

“ Etymologists connect the word Fate with fay; the expression fate is radically good fay, and it is merely a matter of choice whether Fate or the Fates be regarded as Three or as One: moreover the aspect of Fate, whether grim or beautiful, differs invariably to the same extent as that of the two fairy mothers which Kingsley introduces into The Water Babies, the delicious Lady Doasyouwouldbedoneby and the forbidding Mrs. ”

“ There are various conjectures concerning the name Hecăte, which is supposed to come from a Greek word signifying an hundred, either because an hundred victims at a time used to be offered to her, or else because by her edicts the ghosts of those who die without burial, wander an hundred years upon the banks of the Styx. Mythologists say that Hecăte is the order and force of the Fates, who obtained from the divine power that influence which they have over human bodies ”

“ And by eternall doome of Fates decree,
Haue wonne the Empire of the Heauens bright; ”

“ Thus, Fata Scribunda were the goddesses who wrote down a man’s destiny at his birth. In this connexion, however, Fata may be singular, the masculine and feminine Fatus, Fata, being the usual forms in popular and ceremonial language. ”

“ How this true soul that loves so dearly,
Yet hugs, at every cost,
The faith which she
Counts Heaven itself, is horror-struck sincerely
To think of giving up her dearest man for lost.
Mephistopheles. Thou supersensual, sensual wooer, A girl by the nose is leading thee.
Faust. Abortion vile of fire and sewer!
Mephistopheles. In physiognomy, too, her skill is masterly.
When I am near she feels she knows not how,
My little mask some secret meaning shows;
She thinks, I'm certainly a genius, now,
Perhaps the very devil—who knows?
To-night then?—
Faust. ”

“ In this astounding story of unparalleled interest, we see the sinister figure of FATE stalk deviously but relentlessly through the mystifying mazes of love, devotion, intrigue, cunning, cruelty and crime, until a conscienceless fiend, in human shape, lies prostrate in death, overwhelmed by the ruthless forces of his own creating. ”

“ After supper, Fate lay down to sleep, and he [Pg 235] lay down too. About midnight a terrible noise arose, and out of the noise a voice was heard: ‘Fate! Fate! so many souls have been born to-day; assign them what you will.’ Then Fate arose, and opened a chest with money in it, and began to throw nothing but ducats behind him, saying: ‘As to me to-day, so to them for life!’ When on the morrow day dawned, that large palace was no more, but instead of it a moderate-sized house ”