Prophecy and Plot: The Making of the Hero and the Villain

Abstract

Prophecy is one manifestation of the ancient and universal human impulse to communicate with the Unknown. It is a category of divination defined as “[t]he action or practice of divining; the foretelling of future events or discovery of what is hidden or obscure by supernatural or magical means; soothsaying, augury, prophecy” (OED).¹ Behind it is the idea that the gods see time stretched out like a tapestry with all its smallest, incidental details, patterns, acts, and events in full view. Apollo knows, for example, just how many leaves the earth unfolds in spring. Similar, but more problematic, is the notion of supernatural authorship of the progress of time, with the corollary that the future is designed to unfold in a predetermined way, including the fall of each sparrow. The Greek Morai, the Roman Parcae, and the Norse Norns are said to be determiners of the future—for individuals and Nations. Hesiod says of the Morai, for example, that they “at their birth / bestow upon mortals their portion of good and evil, / and these control the transgressions of both men and divinities” (Theogony 218–20). In this respect, they are like God (Yahweh or Allah), who (as discussed) determines the destinies of both blessed and damned and the date of final judgment and resurrection. Thus, the god himself or his prophet can convey knowledge of this already written future to people: “I will give you a son, but you are destined to die at his hand.”

You [Apollo] know the appointed end

of each thing and the ways they are brought to pass;

and the number of the spring leaves earth blossoms with….

Pindar, Ninth Pythian Ode 44–46