Perhaps then it is more than a coincidence that the first brand-name whistle-blower was a woman. In Greek mythology, Cassandra had the gift of prophecy. She correctly predicted the outcome of many events, warning the Trojans, for example, in “The Aeneid,” against accepting a wooden horse as a “gift” from their Greek opponents. However, when Cassandra spurned the god Apollo as a lover, he retaliated by making anyone who heard her prophecies believe they were lies. It was mostly men who disbelieved her, leading inevitably to disaster and tragedy as it is written, “Cassandra cried, and curs’d th’ unhappy hour/Foretold our fate; but by the god’s decree,/All heard, and non believed the prophecy.”