Erinyes

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Erinyes

In Greek mythology

Greek mythology

Greek mythology is the body of myths and legends belonging to the Ancient Greece concerning their List of Greek mythological figures#Immortals and Greek hero cult, Cosmology#Metaphysical cosmology, and the origins and significance of their own cult and ritual practices....
the Erinyes (?????e?, pl. of ?????? Erinys; lit. "the angry ones") or Eumenides (??µe??de?, pl. of ??µe???; lit. "the gracious ones") or Furies in Roman mythology

Roman mythology

Roman mythology, or more appropriately, Latin mythology, refers to the mythology beliefs of the Italic people inhabiting the region of Latium and its main city, Rome....
were female, chthonic

Chthonic

Chthonic designates, or pertains to, deities or spirits of the underworld, especially in relation to Ancient Greek religion.Greek khthon is one of several words for "earth"; it typically refers to the interior of the soil, rather than the living surface of the Landscape or the land as territory ....
deities of vengeance

Revenge

Revenge is a harmful action against a person or group as a response to a wrongdoing. Although many aspects of revenge resemble the concept of justice, revenge connotes a more injurious and punishment focus as opposed to a harmonious and restorative one....
or supernatural

Supernatural

The term supernatural or supranatural pertains to an order of existence beyond the scientifically visible universe. Religious miracles are typically supernatural claims, as are Spell and curses, divination, the belief that there is an afterlife for the dead, and innumerable others....
personification

Personification

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In Greek mythology

Greek mythology

Roman mythology

Roman mythology, or more appropriately, Latin mythology, refers to the mythology beliefs of the Italic people inhabiting the region of Latium and its main city, Rome....
were female, chthonic

Chthonic

Revenge

Supernatural

Personification

File:Wien Hofburg Constantia et Fortitudine.jpgPersonification is an ontological metaphor in which a thing or abstraction is represented as a person....
s of the anger of the dead. They represent regeneration and the potency of creation, which both consumes and empowers. A formulaic oath in the Iliad
ILiad

The iLiad is an electronic handheld device, or e-book device, which can be used for document reading and editing. Like the Sony Reader or Amazon Kindle, the iLiad makes use of an electronic paper display....
(iii.278ff; xix.260ff) invokes them as "those who beneath the earth punish whoever has sworn a false oath

Oath

An oath is either a promise or a statement of fact calling upon something or someone that the oath maker considers sacred, usually God, as a witness to the binding nature of the promise or the truth of the statement of fact....
." Burkert suggests they are "an embodiment of the act of self-cursing contained in the oath".

When the Titan Cronos

Cronus

Cronus or Kronos, , was the leader and the youngest of the first generation of Titan , divine descendants of Gaia , the earth, and Uranus , the sky....
castrated his father Ouranos and threw his genitalia into the sea, the Erinyes emerged from the drops of blood

Blood

Blood is a specialized bodily fluid that delivers necessary substances to the body's Cell s ? such as nutrients and oxygen ? and transports waste products away from those same cells....
, while Aphrodite

Aphrodite

Aphrodite is the classical Greek mythology goddess of love, sex, and beauty. According to Greek oral poet Hesiod, she was born when Uranus was castrated by his son Cronus....
was born from the seafoam. According to a variant account, they issued from an even more primordial level—from Nyx, "Night". Their number is usually left indeterminate. Virgil

Virgil

Publius Vergilius Maro was a classical Roman poet, best known for three major works?the Bucolics , the Georgics and the Aeneid?although several Appendix Vergiliana are also attributed to him....
, probably working from an Alexandria

Alexandria

Alexandria , with a population of 4.1 million, is the second-largest city in Egypt, and is the country's largest seaport, serving about 80% of Egypt's imports and exports....
n source, recognized three: Alecto

Alecto

Alecto is one of the Erinyes in Greek mythology. According to Hesiod, she was the daughter of Gaia fertilized by the blood spilled from Uranus when Cronus castrated him....
("unceasing," who appeared in Virgil's Aeneid

Aeneid

The Aeneid is a Latin Epic poetry written by Virgil in the late 1st century BC that tells the legendary story of Aeneas, a Troy who traveled to Italy, where he became the ancestor of the Rome....
), Megaera

Megaera

Megaera is one of the Erinyes in Greek mythology. She is the cause of jealousy and envy, and punishes people who commit crimes, especially marital infidelity....
("grudging"), and Tisiphone

Tisiphone

Tisiphone is the name of two figures in Greek mythology....
("avenging murder"). Dante

DANTE

DANTE is a not-for-profit organisation that plans, builds and operates the international networks that interconnect the various National Research and Education Networks in Europe and surrounding regions....
followed Virgil in depicting the same three-charactered triptych of Erinyes. The heads of the Erinyes were wreathed with serpent

Snake

Snakes are elongate legless carnivore reptiles of the suborder Serpentes that can be distinguished from legless lizards by their lack of eyelids and external ears....
s (compare Gorgon

Gorgon

In Greek mythology, the Gorgon was a vicious monster with sharp fangs. She was a protective deity from early religious concepts. Her power was so strong that one attempting to look upon her, would be turned to stone, therefore, such images were put upon items from temples to wine kraters for protection....
) and their eyes dripped with blood, rendering their appearance rather horrific. Sometimes they had the wing

Wing

A wing is a surface used to produce Lift for flight through the Earth's atmosphere or another gaseous or fluid medium. The wing shape is usually an airfoil....
s of a bat

Bat

Bats are mammals in the order Chiroptera. The forelimbs of all bats are developed as wings, making them the only mammals naturally capable of sustained flight ....
or bird

Bird

Birds are wing, Bipedalismal, endothermic , vertebrate animals that lay egg . There are around 10,000 living species, making them the most numerous tetrapod vertebrates....
and the body of a dog.

Erinyes in Mythology

The Erinyes often stood for the rightness of things within the standard order; for example, Heraclitus

Heraclitus

Heraclitus of Ephesus was a Pre-Socratic philosophy Greeks philosopher, a native of Ephesus, Ionia, on the coast of Asia Minor.Heraclitus is known for his doctrine of change being central to the universe, and that the Logos is the fundamental order of all....
declared that if Helios

Helios

Helios is the god of sun.In Greek mythology the sun was personified as Helios . Homer often calls him simply Titan or Hyperion , while Hesiod and the Homeric Hymn separate him as a son of the Titans Hyperion and Theia or Euryphaessa and brother of the goddesses Selene, the moon, and Eos, the dawn....
decided to change the course of the Sun

Sun

The Sun , a G V star, is the star at the center of the Solar System. The Earth and other matter orbit the Sun, which by itself accounts for about 98.6% of the Solar System's mass....
through the sky, they would prevent him from doing so. Predominantly, they were understood as the persecutors of mortal men and women who broke natural laws. In particular, those who broke ties of kinship through murdering a mother (matricide), murdering a father (patricide), murdering a brother (fratricide), or other such familial killings brought special attention from the Erinyes. It was believed in early epochs that human beings might not have the right to punish such crimes, instead leaving the matter of retribution to the dead person's Erinyes.

The Erinyes were connected with Nemesis

Nemesis (mythology)

Nemesis , also called Rhamnousia/Rhamnusia , at her sanctuary at Rhamnous, north of Marathon, Greece, in Greek mythology was the spirit of divine punitive justice against those who succumb to hubris, vengeful fate personified as a remorseless goddess....
as enforcers of a just balance in human affairs. The goddess Nike

Nike (mythology)

In Greek mythology, Nike , was a goddess who personified triumph throughout the ages of the ancient Greek culture. The Roman equivalent was Victoria ....
originally held a similar role as the bringer of a just victory. When not stalking victims on Earth, the Furies were thought to dwell in Tartarus

Tartarus

In classic Roman mythology, below Heaven, Earth, and Pontus is Tartarus, or Tartaros . It is a deep, gloomy place, a pit, or an abyss used as a dungeon of torment and suffering that resides beneath the Hades....
where they applied their tortures to the damned souls there.

The Erinyes are particularly known for the persecution of Orestes for the murder of his mother

The Oresteia

The Oresteia is a trilogy of Theatre of ancient Greece tragedy written by Aeschylus which concerns the end of the curse on the House of Atreus....
, Clytemnestra

Clytemnestra

Clytemnestra was the wife of Agamemnon, king of the Ancient Greece kingdom of Mycenae or Argos. In the Oresteia by Aeschylus, she was a femme fatale who murdered her husband, Agamemnon—said by Euripides to be her second husband—and his concubine Cassandra....
. Since Apollo

Apollo

In Greek mythology and Roman mythology, Apollo , is one of the most important and many-sided of the Twelve Olympians. The ideal of the kouros , Apollo has been variously recognized as a god of light and the sun; truth and prophecy; archery; medicine and healing; music, poetry, and the arts; and more....
had told Orestes

Orestes (mythology)

In Greek mythology, Orestes was the son of Clytemnestra and Agamemnon. He is the subject of several Ancient Greek theatre and of various legends connected with his madness and purification....
to kill the murderer of his father, Agamemnon

Agamemnon

In Greek mythology, Agamemnon / is the son of King Atreus of Mycenae and Queen Aerope, the brother of Menelaus and the husband of Clytemnestra; different mythological versions make him the king either of Mycenae or of Argos....
, and that person turned out to be his mother, Orestes prayed to him. Athena intervened and the Erinyes turned into the Eumenides ("kindly ones"), as they were called in instances portraying their more positive, beneficial qualities.

Nonetheless, many scholars believe that when they were originally referred to as the Eumenides, it was not to reference their good sides but as a euphemism

Euphemism

A euphemism is a substitution of an agreeable or less offensive expression in place of one that may offend or suggest something unpleasant to the listener, or in the case of #Doublespeak, to make it less troublesome for the speaker....
to avoid the wrath that would ensue from calling them by their true name. The taboo

Taboo

A taboo is a strong social prohibition against words, objects, actions, or discussions that are considered undesirable or offensive by a group, culture, society, or community....
in speaking the names of certain uncanny spirits included Persephone

Persephone

In Greek mythology, Persephone was the embodiment of the Earth's fertility at the same time that she was the Queen of the Greek Underworld, the kore , and the parthenogenesis daughter of Demeter and, in later Classical myths, a daughter of Demeter and Zeus....
, and there are parallels in many cultures (for instance, the tendency to refer to faeries

Fairy

A fairy is a type of mythological being or legendary creature, a form of spirit, often described as spirit#Metaphysical and metaphorical uses, supernatural or preternatural....
as "the fair folk" or "the little people

Little People

Little People is the name of a :Category:Toy companies for preschoolers, originally produced by Fisher-Price in the 1960s as the Play Family....
"). The Erinyes might also be recognized as Semnai ("the venerable ones"), the Potniae ("the Awful Ones"), the Maniae ("the Madnesses") the Praxidikae ("the Just-doers") and ("bending the knees").

Another myth says that the Erinyes struck the magical horse Xanthus

Balius and Xanthus

In Greek mythology, Balius and Xanthus were two immortal horses, the offspring of the harpies Podarge and the West wind, Zephyros ; following another tradition, their father was Zeus....
dumb for rebuking Achilles

Achilles

In Greek mythology, Achilles was a Greeks hero of the Trojan War, the central character and the greatest warrior of Homer's Iliad, which takes for its theme ; the Wrath of Achilles....
.

The Furies (their Roman name

Roman mythology

Roman mythology, or more appropriately, Latin mythology, refers to the mythology beliefs of the Italic people inhabiting the region of Latium and its main city, Rome....
) or Dirae ("the terrible") typically had the effect of driving their victims insane, hence their Latin

Latin

Latin is an Italic language, historically spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. Through the Military history of the Roman Empire, Latin spread throughout the Mediterranean and a large part of Europe....
name furor.

Contemporary and 20th-Century references

In T. S. Eliot
T. S. Eliot

'Thomas Stearns Eliot', Order of Merit , was a poet, dramatist, and literary critic. He received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1948. Among his most famous writings are the poems The Love Song of J....
's play The Family Reunion
The Family Reunion

The Family Reunion is a play by T. S. Eliot. Written mostly in blank verse, it incorporates elements from Greek drama and mid-twentieth-century detective fiction to portray the hero's journey from guilt to redemption....
, the protagonist Harry is haunted by the Eumenides for killing his wife.

In Jean-Paul Sartre
Jean-Paul Sartre

Jean-Paul Charles Aymard Sartre , commonly known simply as Jean-Paul Sartre , was a French existentialism philosopher, playwright, novelist, screenwriter, political activist, biographer, and literary criticism....
's play The Flies
The Flies

The Flies is a play by Jean-Paul Sartre, written in 1943. It is an adaption of the Electra myth, previously used by the Greek drama Sophocles, Aeschylus and Euripedes....
, the Erinyes (who represent remorsefulness) chase Orestes
Orestes

Orestes was the son of Agamemnon in Greek mythology; Orestes may also refer to:Drama*Orestes , an Classical Athens tragedy from 408 BCE by Euripides...
and Electra
Electra

In Greek mythology, Electra was an Argosian princess and daughter of King Agamemnon and Queen Clytemnestra, and was a sibling to sisters Iphigeneia, Chrysothemis, and brother Orestes....
for the murder of their mother Clytemnestra
Clytemnestra

Clytemnestra was the wife of Agamemnon, king of the Ancient Greece kingdom of Mycenae or Argos. In the Oresteia by Aeschylus, she was a femme fatale who murdered her husband, Agamemnon—said by Euripides to be her second husband—and his concubine Cassandra....
and her husband, King Aegistheus.

Tisiphone appears and is a major character (and the others are mentioned) in David Weber
David Weber

David Mark Weber is an American science fiction and fantasy author. He was born in Cleveland, Ohio, Ohio in 1952. Weber and his wife Sharon live in Greenville,_South_Carolina, South Carolina with their three children and "a passel of dogs"....
's book Path of the Fury
Path of the Fury

Path of the Fury is a stand-alone science fiction novel by David Weber, in three books of 34 chapters. It centers around former elite commando Alicia DeVries's quest to attain revenge on the interstellar pirates who killed her family....
and its expanded version In Fury Born.

The Erinyes are the main subject of the comic book The Kindly Ones
The Sandman: The Kindly Ones

The Kindly Ones is the ninth collection of issues in the DC Comics series, The Sandman . Written by Neil Gaiman, illustrated by Marc Hempel, Richard Case, D'Israeli, Teddy Kristiansen, Glyn Dillon, Charles Vess, Dean Ormston and Kevin Nowlan, coloured by Danny Vozzo, and lettered by Todd Klein....
from comic book series Sandman
Sandman

The Sandman is a figure in folklore who brings good sleep and dreams. Sandman may also refer to:...
and also appear in earlier volumes.

The Furies are what three girls looking to murder Cam and Alex in the book series T*Witches
T*Witches

T*Witches is a popular young adult fantasy novel series by H. B. Gilmour and Randi Reisfeld.The series, ten in all, is about identical twin sister witches separated at birth, Camryn Barnes and Alexandra Fielding, also known as Apollo and Artemis DuBaer....
call themselves, as they live in underground caves.

They are monsters in the series Percy Jackson and the Olympians
Percy Jackson and the Olympians

Percy Jackson & The Olympians is a series of adventure and fantasy books by Rick Riordan. Set in the contemporary United States, the series is based prominently on Greek mythology and Roman mythology, although some creative license is taken....
.

The Furies also feature in the television series Xena: Warrior Princess
Xena: Warrior Princess

Xena: Warrior Princess is an United States television series that aired from September 15, 1995 until June 18, 2001. The series was produced by Renaissance Pictures in association with Universal Studios....
.

In the fourth season of the TV show Charmed
Charmed

Charmed is an award-winning, Television in the United States cult television series that originally aired from October 7, 1998 until May 21, 2006, when its network, The WB Television Network, ceased operation....
, Piper interferes with the Furies' business and becomes a fury, which causes her to express her anger towards her deceased sister, Prue, who was killed in the previous season

In the computer game Freespace 2
FreeSpace 2

FreeSpace 2 is a 1999 Space combat simulator Personal computer game developed by Volition, Inc. as the sequel to Descent: FreeSpace — The Great War....
, the Erinyes class is a playable advanced assault fighter for the GTVA. It is considered one of the more advanced ships.

In Stephen King
Stephen King

Stephen Edwin King is an United States author of contemporary horror fiction, fantasy fiction and science fiction.Having sold an estimated List of bestselling fiction authors of his books, King is best known for his work in horror fiction, in which he demonstrates a thorough knowledge of the genre's history....
's novel "Rose Madder
Rose Madder

Rose madder can mean:*Rose madder, a pinkish color made from madder pigment or dye*Rose Madder , a novel by Stephen King...
", Erinyes is the name of the blind bull which guards Rose Madder's baby at the heart of a labyrinth.

American Thrash Metal band Trivium Album Shogun features a song named He Who Spawned the Furies.

Roger Zelazny
Roger Zelazny

Roger Joseph Zelazny was an United States writer of fantasy and science fiction short story and novels. He won the Nebula award three times and the Hugo award six times , including two Hugos for novels: the serialized novel ...And Call Me Conrad and the novel Lord of Light ....
wrote a novelette entitled "The Furies." In the tale the furies were three humans of unnatural power that set about to restore balance in the universe. It was published in his book "Four For Tomorrow" in 1967.

In the computer games City of Heroes
City of Heroes

City of Heroes is a MMORPG based on the superhero comic book genre, developed by Cryptic Studios and published by NCsoft. The game was launched in North America on April 28, 2004 and in Europe on 4 February 2005 with English language, German language and French language servers....
and City of Villains
City of Villains

City of Villains is a MMORPG based on the superhero comic book genre, developed by Cryptic Studios and published by NCSoft. Released on 2005-10-31 , the game is integrated with their previous release, City of Heroes....
, two humans drink from the Well of the Furies and gain godly superpowers. They also open Pandora's Box
Pandora's box

In Greek mythology, Pandora's box is the large jar carried by Pandora that contained evils to be unleashed on mankind ? ills, toils and sickness ? and finally hope....
, releasing the potential of human endeavour, heralding a golden age of superheroes.

Song "The Chorus of the Furies" Sung in Latin by Faith and the Muse
Faith and the Muse

Faith and the Muse is an underground Gothic rock/darkwave band composed of two musicians, Monica Richards and William Faith. They are well-regarded in the gothic music scene as innovators and icons....
on the album Evidence of Heaven
Evidence of Heaven

Evidence of Heaven is the third album by Faith and the Muse....
(Neue Ästhetik Multimedia) (1999
1999 in music

See also:* 1999 in music * :Category:Record labels established in 1999...
).

Erinyes

Erinyes in Mythology

Contemporary and 20th-Century references

See also