Orestes had been told by the oracle to kill his mother, as a divinely ordained punishment for her murder of her husband. But there is no slaying that does not involve guilt, as Apollo himself knew when he slew the foul dragoness. The awful Furies hound Orestes from Argos to the altar in the innermost shrine of the Delphic temple. Here is laid the Æschylean scene. The Furies, with their hair of coiling snakes, mutter in a savage sleep, ready at a signal to fall once more upon the wretch who has obeyed the god against the human conscience. The suppliant Orestes, doubting and hopeless, crouches at the altar steps. And towering over them all stands the saving God who had once, in a fair vale of purification, put upon his own head the crown of victorious goodness. He promises Orestes no easy rescue from the earthly consequences of his god-directed act. He must be pursued once more by the hateful spawn of Darkness over the sea and through sea-girt cities. But at last he shall come to Athens, a suppliant of Athena, and Apollo himself will come and gain for him freedom and the forgiveness of his kind, and justice among men shall be forever established. This is no mere praise, however splendid, of the wisdom and the justice of Athens. It is rather the embodiment of the idea which to the Greeks shone as a “far-off heavenly star” above all the expedients of practical religion, or all the necessities of worldly power. Among the hills and cliffs of Delphi dwelt a god whose ways were past finding out, whose commands led to terror but whose service led to peace.