Ananke
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In Greek mythology, Ananke or Anagke (Ancient Greek: "force, constraint, necessity"), was the personification of destiny, necessity and fate, depicted as holding a spindle. She marks the beginning of the cosmos, along with Chronos. She was seen as the most powerful dictator of all fate and circumstance which meant that the other Gods had to give her respect and pay homage as well as the mortals. She was also the mother of the Moirae, the three fates who were fathered by Zeus.
According to the ancient Greek traveller Pausanias, there was a temple in ancient Corinth where the goddesses Ananke and Bia (meaning violence or violent haste) were worshipped together in the same shrine.
She was worshipped until the creation of the Orphic mystery religion. Through the long process of the Orphic mysteries cult, it transpires that Ananke, symbolizing destiny and the inevitable, fell gradually into oblivion, until finally, she was replaced by the god Eros (the god of love), the force opposing fate and death. In Roman mythology, she was called Necessitas ("necessity").
Ananke in literature
Ananke is found in Victor Hugo's Romance novel Nôtre-Dame de Paris, written upon a wall of Nôtre-Dame by the hand of Dom Claude Frollo. In his Toute La Lyre, he also mentions Ananke as a symbol of love.
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