Fate

Fate, in Greek and Roman mythology, any of three goddesses who determined human destinies and in particular the span of a person’s life and the allotment of misery and suffering. Homer writes of Fate (moira) in the singular as an impersonal power and sometimes makes its functions interchangeable with those of the Olympian gods. From the time of the poet Hesiod (8th century bce) on, however, the Fates were personified as three very old women...