Erinyes

Proper noun

Erinyes (singular Erinys)

1. (Greek) The Furies; the goddesses of vengeance against serious moral offence (such as oath-breaking), latterly known as protectors of Athens, of pre-Olympian origin and variously described as having sprung from the spilled blood of Uranus or as daughters of Nyx; identified with the Roman Dirae.
   • The Erinyes, as defenders of older mother-right, deny the possibility of absolution for the slayer of a mother.1924, Herbert Weir Smyth, “VIII. Orestea. III: Eumenides”, in Aeschylean Tragedy, page 227
   • In six of the twelve Homeric passages in which Erinys or the Erinyes are mentioned, the common denominator is a crime or insult that occurs between blood kin: The Erinyes take action when a son steals his father's concubine, a son kills his father and marries his mother, two brothers argue, a son...1999, Sarah Iles Johnston, Restless Dead: Encounters Between the Living and the Dead in Ancient Greece, University of California Press, page 252

   Synonyms:

   Eumenides, Furies