Furies/Erinyes
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The Roman goddess of vengeance. They are equivalent to the Greek Erinyes. The Furies, who are usually characterized as three sisters (Alecto, Tisiphone, and Magaera) are the children of Gaia and Uranus. They resulted from a drop of Uranus' blood falling onto the earth. They were placed in the Underworld by Virgil and it is there that they reside, tormenting evildoers and sinners. However, Greek poets saw them as pursuing sinners on Earth. The Furies are cruel, but are also renowned for being very fair. The Furies, from the Roman name, Furiae, were the avenging goddesses of Greek mythology and were known as the Erinyes ("the angry ones"). They were born from the blood of Ouranos that fell into the womb of Gaia, when Cronos, his son, castrated him. The Furies were portrayed as ugly women with snakes entwined in their hair, and were pitiless to those mortals who had wrongly shed blood. They relentlessly pursued Orestes, who avenged his father Agamemnon's murder by killing Clytemnestra, his mother. The Furies were only persuaded to abandon their persecution of Orestes after his acquittal by the Areopagus, an ancient Athenian council persided over by the goddess Athena. The verdict calmed the anger of the Furies, whose name was then changed to the less-threatening Eumenides ("the soothed ones"). Megaera, the grudging or unwilling, is one of the three Erinyes or Furies. They were created by drops of Uranus' blood. The Erinyes are the three goddesses of revenge, they punished those who escaped or defied public justice. The other two sisters are Alecto, the unceasing, and Tisiphone, the avenging. The three are women with fiery eyes, dogs' heads, and their head are wreathed with serpents. Their whole appearance is terrific and appalling. The sisters are sometimes called the daughters of night and are brought about by murder, perjury, ingratitude, disrespect, harshness, and the laws of hospitality. Megaera, Alecto, and Tisiphone are impartial and impersonal and they pursue wrongdoers until they sinners are driven mad and die. Alecto was one of the Erinyes or Furies in Greek mythology. The Furies were three avenging deities. Their names were Tisiphone (the avenger of murder), Megaera (the jealous one), and Alecto (unceasing in anger). When Cronus killed Uranus, his blood fell on Gaia and created the Furies. The Furies had snakes for hair and blood dripped from their eyes. they also had bats' wings and dogs' heads. They were persecutors of men and women who committed parricide, killed a brother, or murdered a fellow clansman. Their effect on their victim was madness. A famous legend about the Furies describes their relentless pursuit of the Theban prince Orestes for the murder of his mother, Queen Clytemnestra. Orestes had been told by Apollo to find the killer of his father, King Agamemnon, whom Clytemnestra had murdered. The Furies, heedless of his motives, tormented him until Orestes pleaded to Athena, who persuaded the avenging goddesses accept Orestes' plea that he had been cleansed of his guilt. When they were thus to show mercy, they transformed themselves, from being the Furies of frightful appearance into the Eumenides, meaning "kind-hearted."