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In Greek mythology the Erinyes (the Romans called them the Furies) were female personifications of vengeance. They were usually said to have been born from the blood of Uranus that fell upon Gaia when Cronus castrated him; i.e., they were chthonic (earth) deities. According to a variant account, they were born from Nyx. Their number is usually left indeterminate, though Virgil, probably working from an Alexandrian source, recognized three; Alecto ("unceasing"), Megaera ("grudging"), and Tisiphone ("avenging murder"). The heads of the Erinyes were wreathed with serpents, their eyes dripped with blood, and their whole appearance was terrific and appalling. Sometimes they had the wings of a bat or the body of a dog.

The Erinyes generally stood for the rightness of things within the standard order; for example, Heraclitus declared that if Helios decided to change the course of the Sun through the sky, they would prevent him from doing so. But for the most part they were understood as the persecutors of mortal men and women who broke "natural" laws. In particular, those who broke ties of kinship through patricide, murdering a brother (parricide), 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 to the dead man's Erinyes to exact retribution. The goddess Nike filled a similar role. When not stalking victims on EarthEarth also known as the Earth or Terra is the planet on which we live, the third planet outward from the Sun. It is the largest of the solar system's terrestrial planets, and the only planetary body that modern science confirms as harbouring life. The pla the Furies were thought to dwell in TartarusIn Greek mythology, Tartarus or Tartaros is both a deity and a place in the underworld even lower than Hades. In ancient orphic sources and in the mystery schools Tartaros is also the unbounded first-existing "thing" from which the Light and the cosmos is where they applied their tortures to the damned souls there.

The Erinyes are particularly known for the persecution of OrestesOrestes in Greek legend, was the son of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra. According to the Homeric story Orestes was absent from Mycenae when his father returned from the Trojan War and was murdered by his wife's lover Aegisthus. Eight years later Orestes retur for the murder of his mother, ClytemnestraClytemnestra (also Klytaimnestra or Clytaemnestra "praiseworthy wooing") was the wife of Agamemnon, king of the Greek kingdom of Mycenae or Argos. She is the daughter of Tyndareus and Leda and mother of Iphigeneia, Orestes, Chrysothemis and Electra. She i. Since ApolloApollo ( Greek: , Apollon is a god in Greek and Roman mythology, the son of Zeus and Leto, and the twin of Artemis (goddess of the hunt). In later times he became in part confused or equated with Helios, god of the sun, and his sister similarly equated wi had told Orestes to kill the murderer of his father, AgamemnonAgamemnon ( Greek: ) ("very resolute"), one of the most distinguished of the Greek heroes, was the son of King Atreus of Mycenae (or Argos) and Queen Aerope, and brother of Menelaus. Another account makes him the son of Pleisthenes (the son or father of A, and that person turned out to be his mother, Orestes prayed to him. Athena intervened and the Erinyes turned into the Eumenides ("kind-hearted"), as they always did in their beneficial aspects.

As a euphemismA euphemism is a word or phrase which people use in place of terms which they consider to be more disagreeable or offensive to themselves and/or to their audience. The linguistic taboo may be an unspeakable name for a deity, such as Persephone, Hecate, Ne, the Erinyes were known as Semnai ("the venerable ones"). The Erinyes have also been referred to as the Potniae, the Awful Ones, the Maniae, the Madnesses, and the Praxidikae, the Vengeful Ones.

The Furies, (their Roman name) or Dirae ("the terrible") typically had the effect of driving their victims insane, hence their Latin name furor.