Cassandra was one of nineteen children born to Queen Hecuba and King Priam, the king and queen of Troy. She is most famous to us as a doomed seer, a woman whose gifts of psychic knowing could not forestall her own undoing.
As to how she got her gifts of prophecy, early stories tell us that when she was a babe, left unattended by her parents in the temple of the Thymbraen Apollo, she was discovered by her parents, having her ears licked by snakes, thus granting her the gift of clairvoyance. Some stories hold that her twin brother Helenus was there too, also receiving the gifts of knowing, but whereas Helenus’s prophecies were later smiled upon by Apollo who considered him a faithful oracle, Cassandra proximity to Apollo was not a blessing, but a curse.
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