Thus, according to Homer's idea, wherever there is a cry of righteous indignation, rising up to Heaven from the breast of an injured person, there may be a Fury or Furies; for they are not {135} limited or defined in any way as to number. It is not, however, on every petty occasion of common offence that these dread ministers of divine vengeance appear. Only, when deeds of a deeper darkness are done, do these daughters of primeval Night (for so Æschylus symbolises their pedigree) issue forth from their subterranean caverns. There is something volcanic in their indignation, whose eruption is too terrible to be common. They chiefly frequent the paths, that are dabbled with blood. A murdered father, or a murdered mother especially, were never known to appeal to them in vain, even though Jove's own prophet, Apollo, add his sanction to the deed. An Orestes may not hope to escape the bloody chase, which the "winged hounds," invoked by a murdered Clytemnestra, are eager to prepare--the sacred precincts of an oracular Delphi may not repel their intrusion--the scent of blood "laughs in their nostrils," and they will not be cheated of their game. Only one greatest goddess, in whose hands are the keys of her father's armoury of thunder, may withstand the full rush of these vindictive powers. Only Pallas Athena, with her panoply of Olympian strength, and her divine wisdom of reconciliation can bid them be pacified. In order to understand thoroughly the situation of the matricide Orestes, in the present play, we must consider further the ancient doctrine of pollution attaching to an act of murder, and the consequent necessity of purification to the offender. The nature of this is distinctly set forth by Orestes himself in a reply to his sister Iphigenia, put into his mouth by Euripides. "Loxias," he says, "first sent me to Athens, and There first arrived, no host would entertain me, As being hated of the immortal gods, And some, who pitied me, before me placed Cold entertainment on a separate board; Beneath the same roof though I lodged with them, No interchange of living voice I knew, But sat apart and ate my food alone." Iphig. Taur. 954. Like an unclean leper among the Jews, the man polluted with human blood wandered from land to land, as with a Cain's mark upon his brow, and every fellow-being shrank from his touch as from a living plague. "For wisely thus our ancestors ordained, That the blood-tainted man should know no joy From sight of fellow-mortal or from touch, But with an horrid sanctitude protected Range the wide earth an exile." EURIP. Orest. 512. {136}