The Erinyes

Also Known As: (the Furies); individually Alecto, Tisiphone, and Megaera
Region/Culture: Ancient Greece and Rome
Mythos: Greek, Roman
Primary Type/Nature: Chthonic goddesses of vengeance, blood-guilt, and broken oaths
Mythical Attributes: They hunt down those who spill kindred blood, break sacred oaths, or violate the bonds of family and hospitality, driving them mad with relentless, inescapable pursuit.
Role in Mythos: They are the underworld’s enforcers of the old law of retribution, exacting a punishment that neither prayer, purification, nor high rank can easily deflect.
Relation to Humans: Mortals feared even to speak their name, calling them the Eumenides, “the Kindly Ones,” to avoid drawing their notice. Those they marked were tormented into madness, sickness, or ruin until they were purified, killed, or judged by a higher court.

The blood fell where the sea could not reach it. When Cronus swung the jagged sickle at his father and threw what he had cut behind him, most of that ruin dropped into the waves, but the drops that struck the ground sank in and stayed. Gaia held them through the slow turning of the seasons, and when at last she gave them up the world had three new daughters who would never forgive anything. They came out already old. Born from a wound and an act of betrayal, they would spend eternity attending to wounds and betrayals, and they would never once be in a hurry.

There were three of them, though the earliest singers spoke of the Erinyes as a swarm without count. Later the number settled at three sisters with three hard names. Alecto, the one who does not stop. Tisiphone, the avenger of murder. Megaera, the grudge that will not cool. Together they were the Erinyes, and mortals were so frightened of them that they preferred not to say the word at all, calling them instead the Eumenides, the Kindly Ones, the way you might speak softly near a sleeping dog.

To look at them was to understand the fear. Aeschylus put serpents in their hair and dressed them in black, their eyes weeping a thick dark fluid that was not quite blood, and even his Pythian priestess, who had seen a great deal, came stumbling out of the temple on her hands because she could not bear to share the room with them. He likened them to Gorgons, then corrected himself, because Gorgons at least had wings and these did not. Other poets disagreed and gave them wings after all, the better to overtake a running man. They smelled of the grave. Where they passed, the air went cold and close, and a low droning came off them like the breath of something that had no need to breathe.

Their work was older than the gods who governed Olympus, and it was simple. They punished the spilling of kindred blood. A son who struck his mother, a brother who killed a brother, a host who turned on a guest, a man who swore falsely with his hand on a sacred thing, all of these belonged to the Furies the moment the deed was done. They did not hold trials. A perjurer might leave the altar steady and dry-eyed, certain he had gotten away with it, and feel nothing for a day or a year, until a coldness settled at the back of his neck that no fire could warm, and the droning began, and did not end. They hounded their quarry into madness, into sickness, into the kind of ruin that makes a family line simply stop.

Where they came from depends on who is telling it. Hesiod gave them their origin in the blood of Uranus, which makes them as old as the first crime in heaven. Others called them daughters of Nyx, the Night, born without any father at all, and a few traced them to the dark powers of the underworld itself. The disagreement hardly changes the result. However they were made, they were made out of the principle that a wrong against blood must be answered, and they were made to be tireless.

The story that fixed them in memory belongs to the house of Atreus. Agamemnon came home from Troy and his wife Clytemnestra killed him in his bath, and his son Orestes, urged on by Apollo, came back in turn and killed his mother to avenge his father. That was where the Furies entered. Matricide was precisely their province, and Apollo’s blessing meant nothing to them. They came for Orestes in a pack, faces ringed with snakes, and drove him across the whole of Greece, sleepless and starving and half out of his mind, while he saw them in every shadow and no one around him could see them at all.

He ran until he reached Athens, and there the chase met something it had never met before. Athena refused to settle the matter by force and convened a court of citizens to judge him, the first murder trial. The jurors split evenly. Athena cast the deciding vote for acquittal, and the Furies, robbed of their prey by a younger god’s new idea of justice, threatened to poison the soil of Attica out of spite. Athena did not fight them. She offered them honor instead, a home beneath the city and a permanent place in its worship, the dignity of goddesses who could blight a country if they chose and would now be asked not to. They accepted. The Kindly Ones became kindly in fact, and the oldest vengeance in the world agreed, just this once, to be governed.

Their power was that there was no outrunning them and no buying them off. They needed no weapon beyond their own presence, because the madness was the punishment, and it followed underground, overseas, into temples, anywhere the guilty thought to hide. They enforced the oaths that held society together and the bonds of family that predated any written law. But they were creatures of an older order, and that was their limit. They could be placated, calmed by ritual and patient persuasion, bound by the judgment of the newer gods on the rare occasions those gods chose to intervene. Against a crime with no excuse they were absolute. Against the slow arrival of courts and juries and mercy, they could be reasoned with, and slowly, grudgingly, retired.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who are the Erinyes (Furies)?

The Erinyes, known to the Romans as the Furies, are the chthonic Greek goddesses of vengeance and retribution. They are usually counted as three sisters, Alecto, Tisiphone, and Megaera, and they punish grave crimes such as murder within a family, perjury, and the violation of sacred oaths and hospitality.

What did the Furies do to the people they hunted?

The Furies relentlessly pursued and tormented the guilty, driving them into madness, sickness, and ruin. Their pursuit was inescapable, following the wrongdoer underground, overseas, and even into temples, because the torment of being hunted was itself the punishment. They stopped only when their target was purified, killed, or cleared by a higher authority.

Why were the Furies called the Eumenides, or “Kindly Ones”?

The Greeks called them the Eumenides, meaning “the Kindly Ones,” as a euphemism to avoid attracting their wrath by speaking their true name. The title also reflects their transformation at the end of the myth of Orestes, when the goddess Athena persuaded them to abandon their vengeance and become benevolent protectors of Athens, honored in its worship.

What are the names of the three Furies?

The three Furies are Alecto, Tisiphone, and Megaera. Alecto means “the unceasing,” Tisiphone means “the avenger of murder,” and Megaera means “the grudging” or “jealous rage.” Earlier traditions did not fix their number, sometimes describing the Erinyes as a countless swarm before later writers settled on three sisters.

How were the Furies stopped in the myth of Orestes?

The Furies hunted Orestes for killing his mother Clytemnestra, until the goddess Athena convened the first murder trial in Athens to judge him. When the jury’s vote tied, Athena cast the deciding ballot for acquittal, and rather than fight the enraged Furies she offered them honor and a home beneath the city. They accepted, transforming from avengers into the Eumenides, the benevolent guardians of Athenian justice.