User:Lcruberl/sandbox

Alecto, also spelled Alekto or Allecto, (Ancient Greek: Ἀληκτώ, English translation: "the implacable or unceasing anger") is one of the Erinyes, or Furies, in Greek mythology. She is the Fury directly responsible for starting the war between the Trojans and the Latins in the Aeneid.

Etymology
The name Alecto comes from the Greek word alektos (αληκτος) meaning “unceasing,"

Description
Family

According to Hesiod's Theogony, Alecto was the born from Uranus’s blood dripping after Cronus castrated him. She is the sister of Tisiphone, the embodiment of murder, and Megaera, the embodiment of jealousy. Alecto's job as a Fury is castigating the moral crimes (such as anger) of humans, especially if they are against others.

Other sources offer different parentage for Alecto and the other Furies. Vergil and Ovid refer to the furies as the children of Nyx, goddess of Night, while the Orphic Hymns refer to them as the children of Hades and Persephone

Appearance

Alecto is described to look like her sisters, the Furies. They are most often described as having snakes for hair and possessing wings. In book VII of the Aeneid after she reveals herself to Turnus in a dream, she is described as wielding a whip in one hand, implied to be used to punish people in the underworld, and a torch in the other.

Abilities

Alecto is the Fury primarily tasked with punishing crimes of ambition and lust done by and against mortals. She is also seen to take orders from deities such as Juno and punish mortals that did not commit those kinds of crimes, such as Aeneas. In the Aeneid, she is shown to be able to use snakes to be able to control and influence mortals to her will as well as be able to enter the dreams of mortals, and influence their decision making.

Alecto in Mythology
In Book VII of the Aeneid, Alecto is commanded by Juno to start a war in the Italian penisula to prevent the Latians and the remnants of the Trojans from having peaceful relations. The king of the Latins, Latinus, after consulting an oracle, decides to give his daughter in marriage to Aeneas, rather than Turnus, leader of a nearby tribe, as originally intended. This angers his wife, Amata, as well as Turnus, but not to the point of desiring war with the Trojans. Alecto influences the minds of Amata and Turnus to start conflict within the kingdom. She appears to Amata and is able to influence her mind with a snake to take her daughter and flee the woods, while encouraging Latinus to attack the Trojans. She then enters the dream of Turnus, appearing first as Calybe, a priestess of Juno, and then as her true form of a Fury when Turnus refuses to listen to her attempts at guidance towards war with the Trojans. She strikes him with her whip and torch, causing him to wake and desire war with the Trojans. Alecto proceeds to cause the Trojans to anger Latinus by hunting his prized deer, causing war to break out between the Trojans and the Latins. Her goals met, Juno tells Alecto that she will handle the war herself.

In Canto IX of Dante's Inferno, Alecto and her sisters are mentioned trying to summon Medusa to prevent Dante from progressing through Hell by turning him into stone.

In Pop Culture
In the film and book Percy Jackson & the Olympians: the Lightning Thief, Alecto appears as a substitute teacher at Percy’s school. She is the first character to accuse Percy of stealing Zeus’ lightning bolt and spurring Chiron and Grover, a satyr protector, to send Percy to Camp Half-Blood. She also appears in the Last Olympian in a flashback as the lawyer who brings Nico and Bianca di Angelo to the Lotus Casino as well as the lawyer who brings them out 70 years later.

Alecto appears in the musical piece Music for a While by Purcell. She is also in Miklós Zrínyi's Siege of Sziget, in various works of Dostoyevsky, and in Handel's Rinaldo HWV 7 in the Aria "Sibillar gli angui d'Aletto"