Atropos
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- For other uses, see Atropos (disambiguation).
In Greek mythology, Atropos (pronounced /ˈætrəˌpɒs/) (from Greek Άτροπος, "without turn") was one of the three Moirae, goddesses of fate and destiny. Her Roman equivalent was Morta.
Atropos was the oldest of the Three Fates, and was known as the "inflexible" or "inevitable". It was Atropos who chose the mechanism of death and ended the life of each mortal by cutting their thread with her "abhorred shears". She worked along with her two sisters, Clotho, who spun the thread, and Lachesis, who measured the length.
[edit] Origin
Her origin, along with the other two fates, is uncertain, although some called them the daughters of the night. It is clear, however, that at a certain period they ceased to be only concerned with death and also became those powers who decided what may happen to individuals. Although Zeus was the chief Greek god and their father, he was still subject to the decisions of the Fates, and thus the executor of destiny, rather than its source. According to Hesiod's Theogony, Atropos and her sisters (Clotho and Lachesis) were the daughters of Nyx (Night), though later in the same work (ll. 901-906) they are said to have been born of Zeus and Themis. Atropos also received acclaim in Henry David Thoreau's, Walden, as being compared to the railroad of the 19th century.
[edit] In popular culture
Atropos is referenced in an Emily Dickinson poem (#11 in "The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson" ed. Thomas H. Johnson, Little Brown and Co. 1960 Twelfth Printing.). It is also the name of a fictitious sloop of war captained by Horatio Hornblower, in the Hornblower Saga by author C. S. Forester.
Atropos-XR is the name of a female robot counterpart to the character Robo in the video game Chrono Trigger by Square-Enix.
Atropos, along with Clotho and Lachesis, is the name of one of the "Doctors" (playing a similar role to the Moirae) in the Stephen King novel, Insomnia.
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