Before passing to the shift from Erinyes to Semnae it may be well to note that another tragedian—priest as well as poet—held to the more primitive view, realized definitely that the Erinyes, the avengers, were merely angry implacable Keres. To Sophocles in the _Oedipus Tyrannus_[610] Apollo is the minister, not, as in the _Eumenides_, of reconciliation, but of vengeance. He has taken over the functions of the Erinyes. With the lightning and fire of his father Zeus he leaps full-armed upon the guilty man; but even Apollo cannot dispense with the ancient avengers. With him ‘Dread and unerring Follow the Keres.’ The Keres here are certainly regarded as a kind of Fate, but to translate the word ‘Fates’ is to precipitate unduly the meaning. The words calls up in the poet’s mind[611], not only the notion of ministers of vengeance, but also the reminiscence of ghostly fluttering things. He says of the guilty man: ‘Fierce as a bull is he, Homeless, with desolate foot he seeks to flee The dooms of Gaia’s central mound. In vain, they live and flit ever around.’ Again, in the _Electra_ of Euripides[612], though the Erinyes are fully personified as dog-faced goddesses, yet they are also Keres. ‘They hunt you like dread Keres, goddesses Dog-faced, in circling madness.’ Here the word Keres seems to be used because Moirae is of too beneficent and omnipotent association; Keres keeps the touch of personal ghostly vengeance. * * * * * To resume: the Erinyes are attributive epithets of ghosts, formless in Homer, but gradually developed by literature, and especially by the genius of Aeschylus, into actual impersonations. In accordance with this merely attributive origin it is not strange that quâ Erinyes their cult is practically non-existent. In only one instance do we hear of a definite place of worship for the Erinyes _as such_. Herodotus[613] tells us that at Sparta the children of the clan of the Aegidae ‘did not survive.’ Accordingly in obedience to an oracle the Aegidae ‘made a sanctuary to the Erinyes of Laios and Oedipus.’