A Ukrainian Reworking: Lesya Ukrainka's Cassandra

Who was the mythical Cassandra and why have pop stars started singing about her? Mary and Charlotte turn sleuth and track the elusive Trojan princess through the pages of ancient texts - from Homer’s Iliad to Virgil’s Aeneid. 

Today, Cassandra is most famous as a prophetess who could predict the future, but was cursed to never be believed. As a result, Troy burned and Agamemnon and Cassandra herself were murdered. Generally, that disbelieving was done by men. No wonder people talk of Greta Thunberg as a modern day Cassandra, or that Taylor Swift and Florence Welch have positioned her as a pin-up girl for misunderstood (female) celebrities. 

But, with the greatest respect to Taylor and Florence, Mary and Charlotte think Cassandra is rather more interesting than that. From her warnings about the Trojan Horse right through to her very nasty end at the gates of Mycenae, Cassandra’s story tells us about the limitations of human communication and language more generally. That, not just because she said ‘I told you so’, is why she stays with us, meaning different things at different times. 

@instaclassicpod for Insta, TikTok and YouTube

@insta_classics for X

email: instantclassicspod@gmail.com

Mary and Charlotte recommend some further reading

We focus on Cassandra’s role in Aeschylus’ play Agamemnon in the moments leading up to her death (easily available in translation in eg Penguin Classics or Oxford World’s Classics series).

Euripides’ Trojan Women (likewise easily available in translation) takes the women who appear at the end of the Iliad – Hecuba, Helen, Andromache and Cassandra – and asks: “What happened to these women after Troy fell?”

Lesya Ukrainka’s 1908 dramatic poem Cassandra, translated by Nina Murray (Harvard Library of Ukrainian Literature, 2024), a classic of Ukrainian literature now available in English, brilliantly puts Cassandra at the centre of her own story. A philosophically rich and very moving text.

Emily Hauser, Mythica (Doubleday, 2025; Penelope’s Bones in the USA) explores the figure of Cassandra from “real” early Greek women prophets to Ukrainka’s version.

The rape of Cassandra at the end of the Trojan War was a “favourite” subject for Greek artists. Try: https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/G_1824-0501-35

Or https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/G_1873-0820-366 Or (from the walls of Pompeii) https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/b4/Ajax_drags_Cassandra_from_Palladium.jpg/960px-Ajax_drags_Cassandra_from_Palladium.jpg

Instant Classics handmade by Vespucci

Producer: Jonty Claypole 

Executive Producer: Natalia Rodriguez Ford

Video Editor: Jak Ford

Theme music: Casey Gibson

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices