40 Fun Facts About Hecate

In which Shakespeare tragedy does Hecate scold three witches for dealing with the hero behind her back?

Macbeth brings Hecate on to rebuke the witches and plan how to lull the hero into false confidence. Many scholars believe her scenes were added after Shakespeare first wrote the play.

The 100th of which objects ever discovered was named Hekate, a pun on hekaton, the Greek for hundred?

Asteroids had reached number 100 when J. C. Watson found this one in 1868. Its name honours the Greek goddess of witchcraft and marks its place in the count.

Hecate became the underworld companion of which goddess after helping in the search that followed her abduction?

Persephone was carried off by Hades, and Hecate helped her mother Demeter search by torchlight. Afterwards Hecate escorted her on the yearly journey to and from the realm of the dead.

Which animal did Queen Hecuba of Troy become, in one telling, before Hecate took her in as a companion?

A dog is what Hecuba became after the fall of Troy, and the poet Lycophron made her one of Hecate's familiars. The tale helped explain why the goddess was so often pictured with one at her side.

In Rick Riordan's Wrath of the Triple Goddess, which young hero must house-sit for Hecate before Halloween?

Percy Jackson minds her crumbling mansion in return for a godly letter of recommendation, then has to track down both of her pets, which escape after a friend drinks a potion.

Which sorceress of Colchis, a priestess of Hecate, used her magic to help Jason win the Golden Fleece?

Medea learns her drugs and charms from Hecate in the Argonautica, and holds her secret meeting with Jason outside the goddess's temple.

In modern Wicca, Hecate is often identified with which aspect of the Triple Goddess, alongside Maiden and Mother?

The Crone stands for the last stage of a woman's life in the Wiccan trio. Ancient Greeks pictured Hecate differently, as a young woman whose three forms were all the same age.

Hecate Strait, named after a Royal Navy survey ship, lies between Haida Gwaii and the mainland of which country?

Canada's Hecate Strait was named in the 1860s after HMS Hecate, a paddle sloop charting the British Columbia coast. Strong winds and shallow water make it dangerous for small boats.

Hecate shared the title Trivia with which goddess, worshipped in a sacred grove on the shores of Lake Nemi?

Diana was hailed as Trivia by Virgil and Catullus, and poets merged her with Hecate into one three-formed goddess of hunt, moon and underworld.

A temple frieze at Lagina shows Hecate helping to protect which newborn child of Cronus from the father's jaws?

Zeus was replaced by a stone wrapped in baby clothes, which Cronus swallowed instead. The Lagina frieze is the only evidence that Hecate had any part in the story of his birth.

Hecate's usual parents, Perses and Asteria, belonged to which group of Greek divine beings?

The Titans lost their war with the Olympians, yet Hecate kept every honour she had held on earth, at sea and in the sky. She was her parents' only child.

Which Olympian god, like Hecate a guide of souls to the underworld, was also honoured with shrines at Greek crossroads?

Hermes and Hecate both watched over roads, travellers and journeys, including the last one. An Athenian vase of about 440 BC shows the two escorting a goddess back up from the dead by torchlight.

One theory derives Hecate's name from Hekatos, meaning the far-darter, a title of which archer god?

Apollo was called Hekatos, the one who strikes from afar, and his twin sister Artemis was often equated with Hecate. Other scholars reject any Greek origin for the name.

Which Greek goddess, the moon in person, was frequently merged with Hecate in the spells of the Greek Magical Papyri?

Selene and Hecate were treated as one power in late magical texts, which blended in Artemis too. No artwork linking Hecate to the moon survives from before the Roman period.

Hecate advised the grieving Demeter to question which all-seeing god about her missing daughter?

Helios sees everything from his chariot, and he named Hades as the kidnapper when the two goddesses came to ask.

In which city did the sculptor Alcamenes set the first known triple-bodied Hecate, near the temple of Wingless Victory?

Athens set the statue up around 430 BC, and though it is lost, hundreds of copies survive. The travel writer Pausanias credited Alcamenes with inventing the three-figure design.

Hecate's greatest sanctuary stood at Lagina in ancient Caria, a region that now lies in which modern country?

Turkey's southwest holds the ruins, where the temple's columns were re-erected in 2020. The first dig there, in 1891, was also the first authorised excavation by a Turkish team.

Hecate's Deipnon, a supper set out for her and the restless dead, fell at which point of each lunar month?

The new moon closed the old month in the Greek calendar, so the meal cleared a household's slate before the next one began. Eggs, fish, garlic and small cakes were typical fare.

Where did ancient Greek households usually keep their small shrine to Hecate, guarding against restless spirits?

By the front door was the threshold between home and street, the kind of boundary Hecate guarded. Many shrines held a pillar with three figures of her facing different ways.

Some ancient writers named Hecate as the mother of which sea monster, who snatched six sailors from Odysseus's ship?

Scylla's mother was usually called Crataeis, and the poet of the Argonautica made that another name for Hecate. Most accounts gave Hecate no children at all.

Which early Greek poet devoted a long hymn of praise to Hecate in his poem on the birth of the gods?

Hesiod praised Hecate more warmly than later writers did, and his poem is the oldest text to mention her. One theory holds that she was a favourite goddess in his home village.

Hecate's mother Asteria was the sister of which goddess, who gave birth to divine twins on the island of Delos?

Leto was Asteria's sister, which made Hecate a first cousin of Artemis and her twin brother. Hecate and Artemis were later so alike that some writers treated them as one goddess.

Hecate adopted Galinthias, a woman turned into a polecat for tricking the goddesses who delayed which hero's birth?

Heracles was born only after Galinthias fooled the birth goddesses into loosening their grip on his mother. They made her a polecat in revenge, and Hecate took pity and kept her as a sacred servant.

The Pergamon Altar shows a three-bodied Hecate fighting beside the Olympian gods in their war against which foes?

The Giants were sons of Gaia, and Hecate killed one of them, Clytius, with her torches. On the altar she wields a different weapon in each of her three right hands.

Which ancient city honoured Hecate as its protector after a light in the sky exposed a night raid by Philip of Macedon?

Byzantium raised a statue to Hecate the light-bearer after the siege of 340 BC failed. Small temples to her stood close to the city gates.

Islanders of Aegina claimed that which legendary musician founded their yearly mystery rites in honour of Hecate?

Orpheus the Thracian was named as founder by the people of Aegina, who worshipped Hecate above every other god. Their wooden statue of her had one face and one body.

The comic playwright Aristophanes joked that the monthly meals left out for Hecate were quickly eaten by whom?

The poor helped themselves to offerings that rich households set out each month, a habit joked about in the play Plutus. A later commentary on the play said the goddess herself approved.

Which region of northern Greece, notorious in antiquity as a haven for witches, was a stronghold of Hecate's following?

Thessaly kept its name for witchcraft into Roman times, when the poet Lucan set his witch Erichtho there. A marble relief from the region shows Hecate crowning a racehorse.

In the ancient novel The Golden Ass, Hecate is named as one of the many guises of which Egyptian goddess?

Isis rescues the hero, a man turned into a donkey, and the novel treats Juno, Bellona and Hecate as her other names.

Which artist made the 1795 colour print The Night of Enitharmon's Joy, long known simply as Hecate?

William Blake showed a brooding triple figure with an owl, a bat and a donkey around her. The print, now in the Tate, was probably prompted by a stage revival of Shakespeare.

Trivia, Hecate's Latin name, shares its root with the medieval trivium of grammar, logic and which third subject?

Rhetoric completed the trio, which took its name from the Latin for a place where three roads meet. Arithmetic, geometry, astronomy and music formed the more advanced quadrivium.

In the Argonautica, which act is Jason forbidden to do as he walks away from his midnight sacrifice to Hecate?

To look back was forbidden, even if he heard footsteps behind him. Before the sacrifice he had to bathe in a stream, dress in dark robes and dig a round pit.

Which poisonous plant, sprung in myth from the drool of Cerberus, was Hecate said to have discovered?

Aconite, also called wolfsbane or monkshood, was one of several poisons tied to the goddess, along with belladonna and mandrake. One Roman poet has Athena turn the weaver Arachne into a spider with the juice of Hecate's herb.

Which fish was held sacred to Hecate, supposedly because its Greek name, trigle, echoed her three forms?

Red mullet was offered to her in sacrifice, and one statue of the goddess was said to be nicknamed after the fish. Roman gourmets later paid its weight in silver for a prize specimen.

Which shape-shifting phantom of Greek myth, said to have a single leg of copper, was sent out by Hecate?

Empusa shifts from beast to beautiful woman in a comedy by Aristophanes, where she appears before the god Dionysus on his way to the underworld. A fragment of another of his plays makes her Hecate herself.

Which nymphs of Greek myth, described in an ancient note on Homer's Iliad, are the followers of Hecate?

The Lampades take their name from the Greek word for torch, because they carry lights at the goddess's side. A scholar has also spotted them in a spell text that names Hecate in the next breath.

At Lagina's yearly festival, one girl in the procession to Hecate's temple carried which sacred object?

A key was carried back from the city of Stratonicea and used to open the sanctuary gates before the feast began. It also recalled Hecate's power to unlock the underworld.

Hecate's scenes in Shakespeare are widely thought to be later additions, possibly by which author of The Witch?

Thomas Middleton made Hecate the chief witch of his own play and gave her a clownish son called Firestone. Two songs cued in her Shakespeare scenes appear in full only in his script.

In the video game Hades II, Hecate is mentor to which Princess of the Underworld, the character the player controls?

Melinoë was carried to safety by Hecate as a newborn and returns to her base, the Crossroads, after every defeat. Her teacher is also one of the bosses she has to fight.

Late Greek magical papyri fused Hecate with which Mesopotamian goddess, queen of the land of the dead?

Ereshkigal lent her name to a spell headed Hecate Ereschigal, meant to ward off fear of punishment after death. One scholar thinks the name was borrowed mainly to sound mysterious and foreign.