nothing of the true sense of these allegorical figures, gave them a turn
suitable to their genius.

FURIES, EUMENIDES _or_ DIRAE, were the daughters of Nox and Acheron.
Their names were Alecto, Megaera, and Tisiphone. As many crimes were
committed in secret, which could not be discovered from a deficiency of
proof, it was necessary for the judges to have such officers as by
wonderful and various tortures should force from the criminals a
confession of their guilt. To this end the Furies, being messengers both
of the celestial and terrestrial Jupiter, were always attendant on their
sentence.

In heaven they were called Dirae, (_quasi Deorum irae_) or ministers of
divine vengeance, in punishing the guilty after death; on earth
_Furies_, from that madness which attends the consciousness of guilt;
_Erynnis_, from the indignation and perturbations they raise in the
mind; _Eumenides_, from their placability to such as supplicate them, as
in the instance of Orestes, and Argos, upon his following the advice of
Pallas, and in hell, _Stygian dogs_.

The furies were so dreaded that few dared so much as to name them. They
were supposed to be constantly hovering about those who had been guilty
of any enormous crime. Thus Orestes, having murdered his mother
Clytemnestra, was haunted by the Furies. OEdipus, indeed, when blind and
raving, went into their grove, to the astonishment of all the Athenians,
who durst not so much as behold it. The Furies were reputed so
inexorable, that if any person polluted with murder, incest, or any
flagrant impiety, entered the temple which Orestes had dedicated to them
in Cyrenae, a town of Arcadia, he immediately became mad, and was hurried
from place to place, with the most restless and dreadful tortures.

Mythologists have assigned to each of these tormentresses their proper
department. Tisiphone is said to punish the sins arising from hatred and
anger; Megaera those occasioned by envy; and Alecto the crimes of
ambition and lust. The statues of the Furies had nothing in them
originally different from the other divinities. It was the poet AEschylus
who, in one of his tragedies, represented them in that hideous manner
which proved fatal to many of the spectators. The description of these
deities by the poet passed from the theatre to the temple: from that
time they were exhibited as objects of the utmost horror, with Terror,
Rage, Paleness, and Death, for their attendants; and thus seated about
P