In ancient Roman mythology, the goddesses of vengeance were called furies. They appear in the form of furious, raging women in anger. The word "fury" comes from the Latin furire - "to rave". In ancient Greek mythology, they correspond to Erinyes (from ancient Greek - "wrathful").
Birth of the Furies
According to legend, the furies were born during the world's first crime. Earth-Gaia and Sky-Uranus gave birth to many children, the youngest of whom was Kronos, the god of time. He planned to overthrow his father and take over the world. The drops of Uranus's blood spilled onto the ground and gave birth to the furies.
Their number varied in different sources from nine sisters to thirty thousand, but the myths have retained the names of the three most ruthless fury goddesses. Vixen embodies envy and anger, Tisiphona takes revenge for the murders, and Alecto is tormented by the inability to obtain forgiveness. The ancient Greeks portrayed them as ugly old women with bloody eyes, whose gray hairs were entwined with poisonous snakes.
Erinyes (furies) serve the god of the underworld, Hades (in Roman mythology, Pluto). By his order, they fly to the surface to kindle anger, madness and a thirst for revenge in people's hearts.
However, Erinius can also be called the deities of justice. Hearing the screams of the victim, they, with whips and torches in their hands, begin to pursue the killer until revenge is accomplished. They punish pride, avarice, greed and any excess of man "his measure."
From revenge to justice
The hero of the tragedy of Aeschylus, Orestes, killed his mother and her lover in order to avenge the death of his father, who fell from their treacherous blow. Fleeing the wrath of Erinius, Orestes turned to the court. Despite the fact that the court acquitted the murderer, the vengeful goddesses did not back down. They continued to torment him with remorse, from which no court can save the guilty. Then the goddess of wisdom Athena persuaded Erinius to stay on the surface so that all people could honor them as goddesses of just punishment.
So the Erinians turned into eumenides (good-minded), living in a grove on the slope of the Athenian acropolis. Here the blind king Oedipus found his last refuge. Since Oedipus himself punished himself for his crimes, the goddesses grant him mercy and a peaceful death. In such a hypostasis, the Greek historian Heraclitus calls them "the guardians of the truth."
Later, the word "fury" became a household word. It means an evil, hot-tempered woman who, in a frenzy, destroys everything in her path. The expression "turned into a fury" is especially popular, which illustrates how a calm and balanced woman can instantly turn into a furious and vindictive woman. The name of one of the furies, Vixen, has also become a household name for grumpy, quarrelsome and quarrelsome persons.