More about the Furies

Season 5, Episode 7: The Fish Tank

The Furies, or Erinyes, were three Greek goddesses of vengeance.  They were particularly concerned with homicide, unfillial behavior, disobedience to parents, violations of the respect due to old age, offenses against the gods, violations of the law of hospitality, and perjury.  The Wikipedia page puts it well: against the insolence of the young to the aged, of children to parents, of hosts to guests, and of householders or city councils to suppliants.  When Cronus castrated his father Uranus and threw the genitals into the sea, the furies arose from the spilled blood, while Aphrodite arose from the sea foam.  From this violent beginning, the furies were most concerned with patricide, matricide, and crimes of a child against a parent.  They had a spot in the underworld, where they would torture these people after their death, and they guarded the "Dungeon of the Damned," where Tantalus and Sysyphus are kept.  But they also appeared on earth.  Mostly, they would inflict madness on their victims. They also caused illness and disease, and could send plague and famine onto a country harboring a criminal they were after.  The furies would stop only after their target went through a right of purification and did some sort of assigned heroic task.

They are described as ugly, winged women.  They have poisonous serpents around their waists and wrists and through their hair.  They held whips, and were either dressed as mourners in long, dark robes, or as huntresses.

Originally, the Erinyes were the personification of the curses shouted out at criminals.

Sometimes they are not individually named, and there are bunches of them.  In later stories, they were limited to three, given names, and made more beautiful instead of monstrous.  Their names are Tisiphone (Murder Restitution or vengeful destruction, punisher of murders), Alecto (Unceasing or endless, the punisher of moral crimes), and Megaera (Grudge or jealous rage, the punisher of infidelity, oath breaking, and theft).  Individualizing them is more of a Roman thing, with Virgil recognizing three of them and giving them names.

My favorite appearance of the furies is in the Oresteia, a trilogy of plays by Aeschylus.  In the first play, "Agamemnon," Agamemnon returns home from Troy.  You may know Agamemnon as the commander-in-chief of the Greek army at Troy.  He had been itching to go to war with Troy, so when Helen left Menelaus (Agamemnon's brother) for Paris of Troy, Agamemnon was the one who was like, "We need to go after her!  The Trojans won't get away with this!"  You may also remember him as the guy who stole Achilles' slave girl, thus irritating Achilles into the plot of the Illiad.  (I'm not a fan of Agamemnon.)  So.  Agamemnon returns home after the Trojan War, and it turns out that ten years ago, in order to get good winds for the voyage to Troy, Agamemnon sacrificed his daughter.  Agamemnon's wife, Clytemnestra, has been stewing on this the whole time, so when Agamemnon shows up, she murders him in the bathtub in retribution.  (She also wants the crown and also wants to take her long-term relationship with her boyfriend public and also is ticked that Aagamemnon comes home with a new girlfriend (/sex slave), Cassandra, who gives away Clytemnestra's vengeance plan even though no one believes her.)

No furies yet, but in the second play, "The Libation Bearers," Agamemnon's son, Orestes, learns about his mom killing his dad, and he's commanded by Apollo to take vengeance on his mom for this.  He has a moral dilemma with this, as 1. Agamemnon sucked and 2. if he kills his mom, the furies will come after him.  But you don't argue with Apollo, so he kills his mom and her boyfriend, and the furies are set after him.

In the third play, "The Eumenides," Orestes flees to Athens, and asks for help from Athena, who sets up a trial of Athenian citizens.  Apollo defends Orestes and the Furies prosecute him, and they have a big old debate about if blood vengeance is necessary, if you have to honor your father and mother the same, and if you have to honor the old gods (like the Furies) the same as the Olympian gods (like Apollo). Basically, this is all way over Orestes' pay grade, and the whole thing is just so Athena can set up the practice of trial-by-jury in Athens.  In the end, Orestes is acquitted, which ticks off the Furies, who threaten to torture everyone in Athens because of it.  Athena tells them that maybe they should change and become protectors of justice rather than goddesses of vengeance.  She urges them to break the cycle of blood for blood, tells them that Athens will honor them forever, and then threatens that she knows where Zeus keeps his lightning bolts.  She renames them "the Eumenides," or the kindly ones.

The whole thing is bananas.