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The Philosophers in turn give the Fates different functions than those assigned to them by the Poets and the Mythologists. Other mythologists submit the Fates to the orders of Pluto but the more general opinion is that the Fates served under the orders of Destiny, to whom even the gods and Jupiter were subject. According to Hesiod, they are the absolute mistresses of all the good and all the bad that happens in the world. That is not all, the Poets paint for us according to the variety of their imaginations, this ministry of the Fates sometimes they exhort them to spin happy days for those whom Destiny wishes to favor sometimes they assure us that they themselves prescribe the time that we must remain on the earth, sometimes the Poets teach us that they willfully make use of men’s own hands, to take the life of those whose destinies are fulfilled. Lexicographers will tell you that Clothos comes from the Greek verb κλώθειν, to spin, Lachesis from λαγχάνειν, casting fates and Atropos from ἄτρεπτος, unchangeable, or even, who changes all, who overturns all: this name is well suited to the fate, who frequently inverts the order of things as when she removes people who by their youth or by their virtue, seemed worthy of a long life. Įach one’s name specifies her different function as the entire destiny of men that was said to be subject to the power of the Fates, referred to the time of birth, or that of life, or that of death Clotho, the youngest of the three sisters, presided over the moment in which we come into the world, and held a distaff Lachésis spun all the events of our lives and Atropos cut the thread with scissors: all assisted births, in order to render themselves mistresses of the destiny of the child who was about to be born. The Greeks called them μοῖραι, in other words the goddesses who distribute, because they mete out the events of our lives the Latins might have called them Parcae from the word parcus, as if they were too thrifty in the dispensation of the lives of human beings, which always seem too short in any case, this etymology is more natural than that of Varro, and superior to the ridiculous antiphrasis of our grammarians, quod nemini parcant. Some consider them daughters of the Night and Erebus, others of Necessity and of Destiny, and yet others of Jupiter and Themis. Everyone knows that they were three sisters, Clotho, Lachesis and Atropos, but Mythologists do not agree on their origin. Mistresses of the fate of men, they controlled their destinies. Originally published as "Parques," Encyclopédie ou Dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers, 12:80–81 (Paris, 1765).įates, infernal goddesses whose function was to spin the thread of our days.
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Ann Arbor: Michigan Publishing, University of Michigan Library, 2014. "Fates." The Encyclopedia of Diderot & d'Alembert Collaborative Translation Project. of "Parques," Encyclopédie ou Dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers, vol.
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