FATE. (Gr. Moira, Moirai, µoipa, µoipac.) In Homer, fate or necessity is conceived as an abstract power, Moira or Aisa (Gr. Aio a). Both words indicate "apportionment." Moira is some times apparently identified with Zeus, sometimes differentiated from him, and is regarded as assigning to everyone his share of good and evil, although he may increase the latter by his own folly. This is a nascent philosophical conception ; a mythological tone is found in a few passages in which it is said that some one shall "suffer such things as Moira (or Aisa, or the Klothes, i.e., the spinners) span upon the thread at his birth" (Iliad, xxiv., 210, xx., I27; Odyssey, vii. 197). With this the usual account agrees; the Moirai are spinners, generally conceived (but not repre sented in classical art) as very old women, three in number and often named Klotho (spinner), Lachesis (she of the lot) and Atropos (inflexible). It is highly probable that they were in origin spirits of birth, not of fate, although the two notions are closely combined, destiny being decided at birth, for instance, in modern Greek and Slavonic folk-beliefs. In this capacity they appear, e.g., in the legend of Meleager. Several authors fancifully assign different functions to the three Moirai as e.g., dealing respectively with past, present and future.
In Rome, fatum meant the "spoken" decree, presumably of the gods, occasionally in the plural; under Greek influence, the Fata became identified with the Moirai. From this again came a singular fatus or fata (e.g., Fata Scribunda, the birth-fairy "who writes," sc., the child's destiny, Tertullian, De Anima 37) , whence Mod. Ital. fata, Fr. fee. Another identification was with the Par cae (originally Paricae, from parere, to bring forth) ; this, although probably due in large part to a false etymology, Parca being derived from pars (Gr. ,uo . pa), was not far wrong, for the Parcae really were spirits of birth, and may quite possibly there fore have been spirits of destiny also.
See especially Weizsacker-Drexler in Roscher's Lexikon, s.v. Moira; Wissowa, Rel. u. Kultus (end ed., p. 264) • (H. J. R.)