FURIES, EUMENIDES _or_ DIRÆ, were the daughters of Nox and Achĕron. Their names were Alecto, Megæra, and Tisiphŏne. 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 Diræ, (_quasi Deorum iræ_) 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; _Eumenĭdes_, 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. Œdipus, 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 Cyrenæ, 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. Tisiphŏne is said to punish the sins arising from hatred and anger; Megæra 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 Æschylus 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 Pluto's throne, whose ministers they were, they awaited his orders with an impatience congenial to their natures.