Hey everyone, welcome to Mythology Explained. In today’s video we’re discussing the Erinyes.
The Erinyes were chthonic goddesses of vengeance and retribution whom the Romans equated with their
furies. At times they were called Eumenides, meaning “Kindly Ones”, either to avoid naming
them directly, a surreptitious act employed to avoid notice, or done to placate them if
they were doggedly pursuing someone, harrying them with misery and torment.
Initially their number was indeterminate, but they were eventually quantified, said to be three in
number, a detail first established by Euripides, a Greek playwright. Later, they were named: Alecto
(Unceasing in Anger”), Tisiphone (“Avenger of Murder”), and Megaera (“Jealous”).
In appearance, they weren’t unlike the Gorgons, and because there are many different descriptions
of them, we’re just going to compile all of their features into one comprehensive
description. They were depicted as winged spirits, each with a nest of writhing snakes for hair.
The barking of dogs emitted from them, and foul gore wept from their eyes. Ragged garments clad
their bodies. Fetid breath came from their mouths, and they brandished whips and torches.
Despite what could be called a horrific appearance, they weren’t evil entities,
but they were the bane of those who had transgressed, committing the most unforgivable
offences. And this was their primary purpose, to avenge crimes of the most egregious nature,
crimes that disturbed the natural order.
They dwelt in the underworld, but they would surface to the land of the living
when it became incumbent on them to pursue and torment someone who had perpetrated
wickedness, which was their purpose. Crimes most likely to incite their ire - that were the most
egregious and, thus, likely to bring this terrible trio down upon you - were unfilial conduct
(meaning children who did not behave properly, but in the extreme), homicide, affronting the gods,
and perjury. Other crimes, such as unmitigated pride and predicting the future too accurately,
also fell under their purview. Seers and oracles who did not obfuscate what they divined,
rendering what they foresaw vague and ambiguous, could provoke the Erinyes.
Victims could invoke the Erinyes to bring their wrath down upon guilty parties by cursing them.
Supposedly, the most potent curse was that of a parent cursing their child, for it was because
of a crime committed by a son against his father that the Erinyes were born in the first place.
An account of their birth is given in Hesiod’s Theogony, which describes them as a product of
the Titans succeeding the Primordial Deities. Cronus, the youngest and boldest of the 12
first-generation Titans, answered his mother’s - Gaia’s - call to deliver her from her plight,
which was having her children trapped inside of her. Cronus lay in wait, then ambushed his father,
castrating him with a sickle of adamant. The severed genitals were flung into the sea,
but while they were in mid-flight, droplets of blood fell to the earth, impregnating Gaia,
who later gave birth to the race of giants and the three furies.
There were other accounts of their parentage, too.
Aeschylus, another Greek playwright, said they were the daughters of Nyx,
and Sophocles, yet another Greek playwright, said they were the daughters of Gaia and Erebus.
Among the people targeted by the Erinyes was Orestes, the son of King Agamemnon and of
Clytemnestra. He killed his mother as retribution for her killing his father. That his mother had,
in a way, precipitated this chain of events by murdering his father was of no consequence. The
furies pursued him, but later, in Athens, Orestes was exonerated by the goddess Athena herself.
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