In Greek mythology the Erinyes or Eumenides (the Romans called them the Furies) were female personifications of vengeance. When a formulaic oath in the Iliad (iii.278ff; xix.260ff) invokes "those who beneath the earth punish whoever has sworn a false oath"—"the Erinyes are simply an embodiment of the act of self-cursing contained in the oath" (Burkert 1985 p 198). They were usually said to have been born from the blood of Uranus when Cronus castrated him. According to a variant account, they issued from an even more primordial level—from Nyx, "Night". Their number is usually left indeterminate, though Virgil, probably working from an Alexandrian source, recognized three: Alecto ("unceasing," who appeared in Virgil's Aeneid), Megaera ("grudging"), and Tisiphone ("avenging murder"). The heads of the Erinyes were wreathed with serpents (compare Gorgon), their eyes dripped with blood, and their whole appearance was horrific and appalling. Sometimes they had the wings of a bat or bird, or the body of a dog.

The Erinyes generally stood for the rightness of things within the standard order; for example, Heraclitus declared that if Helios decided to change the course of the Sun through the sky, they would prevent him from doing so. But for the most part they were understood as the persecutors of mortal men and women who broke "natural" laws. In particular, those who broke ties of kinship through parricide, murdering a brother (fratricide), or other such familial killings brought special attention from the Erinyes. It was believed in early epochs that human beings might not have the right to punish such crimes, instead leaving the matter to the dead man's Erinyes to exact retribution.

The Erinyes were connected with Nemesis as enforcers of a just balance in human affairs. The goddess Nike originally filled a similar role, as the bringer of a just victory. When not stalking victims on Earth, the Furies were thought to dwell in Tartarus, where they applied their tortures to the damned souls there.

The Erinyes are particularly known for the persecution of Orestes for the murder of his mother, Clytemnestra. Since Apollo had told Orestes to kill the murderer of his father, Agamemnon, and that person turned out to be his mother, Orestes prayed to him. Athena intervened and the Erinyes turned into the Eumenides ("kindly ones"), as they were called in their beneficial aspects.

Many scholars believe that when they were originally referred to as the Eumenides it was not to reference their good sides but as a euphemism to avoid their wrath that would ensue from calling them by their true name. This taboo on speaking the names of certain uncanny spirits included Persephone; there are parallels in many cultures (for instance, the tendency to refer to faeries as "the fair folk" or "the little people"). The Erinyes might also be recognized as Semnai ("the venerable ones"), the Potniae ("the Awful Ones"), the Maniae ("the Madnesses") and the Praxidikae ("the Vengeful Ones").

Another myth says that the Erinyes struck the magical horse Xanthus dumb for rebuking Achilles.

The Furies (their Roman name) or Dirae ("the terrible") typically had the effect of driving their victims insane, hence their Latin name furor.

• In The Divine Comedy Dante sees the Erinyes at the gates of the city of Dis, which is the entry point to the four lower circles of Hell.
• Leconte de Lisle's tragedy "Les Érinnyes" (1872), with accompanying music composed by Massenet.
• Jean-Paul Sartre's 1943 play The Flies (Les Mouches) uses a retelling of the Oresteia (with the titular Flies being the Furies) in a modern perspective against religion [1].
• David Weber has written a science fiction novel, Path of the Fury, in which the last remaining Fury, Tisiphone, helps a soldier to obtain vengeance. It was later rewritten and expanded as In Fury Born.
• Neil Gaiman's ninth volume of The Sandman (Vertigo), entitled "The Kindly Ones" (1996) revolves around a young woman seeking out the Erinyes for vengeance for the murder of her son.
• In Dungeons & Dragons, Erinyes are female devils who are described as possibly fallen angels who suck

• The Furies are portrayed by Asa Lindh, Celi Foncesca, Annmarie Dennis, Graciela Heredia, and Smeta Choto in Xena: Warrior Princess.
• The Furies are also featured in a single episode of Charmed. ( Hell Hath No Fury (Charmed episode) )
• The Furies are mentioned in an episode of CSI when Warrick Brown mentions the three due to a tattoo that a suspect has
• The Furies [[2]] is a London based rock band, formed in 2003 members are Elmo Jones, Eliseo Soardi, Suroj Sureshbabu, Jez Macdonald

• Nemesis (mythology)
• Karma
• Lilith

• Iliad xiv.274-9; xix.259f.
• Virgil, Aeneid vii, 324, 341, 415, 476.
• Burkert, Walter, 1977 (tr. 1985). Greek Religion (Harvard University Press)