Furies

In Greek mythology, spirits of vengeance, principally of murder within the family but also of other breaches of natural order such as filial disobedience, inhospitality, and oath-breaking; they may have been considered the personifications of curses. The Furies were also associated with fertility, and were appeasingly called the Eumenides ‘kindly ones’. Represented as winged maidens with serpents twisted in their hair, they inhabited Hades, the underworld.

Their number was eventually fixed at three: Alecto (unresting), Tisiphone (avenger of murder), and Megaera (resentful).

According to common tradition, the Furies were the daughters of Earth (Gaia), and sprang from the fallen blood of Uranus after he had been castrated and deposed by the Titan Kronos. In a variant, they were the offspring of Erebus, god of darkness, and his sister Night (Nyx).

Some of their most noted victims were Orestes, who killed his mother for murdering his father; Alcmaeon, who killed his mother Eriphyle for her vanity and deceit; and Oedipus, who had unknowingly killed his father and married his mother.