FURIES, EUMENIDES, or ERINYES, called by the Romans Fust and Diaz, were Greek mythological divinities, the avengers of murder, perjury and filial ingratitude. They sprang from the drops of blood which fell from Uranus when he was mutilated by his son Kro nos or Saturn. Others make them the daughters of Acheron and Night, and of Pluto and serpine. Later mythologists reckon three of them and call them Alecto the unresting, Me grra the jealous, and Tisiphone the avenger. They were supposed to be the ministers of the gods and to execute their irrevocable decrees; their sphere of action consequently was both in the infernal regions, to punish condemned souls, and on the earth to rack the guilty conscience and chastise by mental torments. dEschylus, in the celebrated tragedy of the Eumenides, intro duced 50 furies, and with them Horror, Terror, Paleness, Rage and Death upon the stage. These terrible beings were described as clothed in black robes, with serpents instead of hair, with fingers like claws, a whip of scorpions in one hand and a burning torch in the other, an out stretched tongue and eyes dripping with gore.
They were suckers of the blood of men; when they were enraged, a venom oozed from them that spread like a leprosy-spot wherever it fell and made the ground barren. They were re garded with great dread and the Athenians hardly dared to speak their names, but called them the venerable goddesses, by a similar eu phemism the name Eumenides, signifying the soothed or well-pleased goddesses, being intro duced. They dwelt in the cave called after them, at the northeast corner of the Areopagus at Athens, below the seats of the judges. Eri nyes, the more ancient name, signifies the hunt ers or persecutors of the criminal, or the angry goddesses. The sculptors represented them as beautiful hunting nymphs, whose character was indicated only by the sternness of their expres sion, by the torch, dagger and other similar em blems.