Orestes--She slew her wedded lord, and slew my sire. Erinnyes--Death gave her quittance, then. But thou yet livest. Orestes--And while she lived, why did you not pursue her? Erinnyes--No tie of blood bound her to whom she slew. Orestes--But I was tied by blood-affinity To her who bare me? Erinnyes--Else, thou accursed one, How nourished she thy life within her womb? Wouldst thou renounce the holiest bond of all? The Erinnyes, it will be noticed, recognize no rights on the part of the father and the husband; to them there exists only the right of the mother. That Clytemnestra slew her husband is indifferent to them; on the other hand, they demand punishment for the matricide, committed by Orestes: in killing his mother he had committed the worst crime imaginable under the old gentile order. Apollo, on the contrary, stands on the opposite principle. Commissioned by Zeus to avenge the murder of his father, he had led Orestes to the murder of his own mother. Apollo now defends Orestes' action before the judges, saying: That scruple likewise I can satisfy. She who is called the mother of the child Is not its parent, but the nurse of seed Implanted in begetting. He that sows Is author of the shoot, which she, if Heaven Prevent not, keeps as in a garden-ground. In proof whereof, to show that fatherhood May be without the mother, I appeal To Pallas, daughter of Olympian Zeus, In present witness here. Behold a plant, Not moulded in the darkness of the womb, Yet nobler than all scions of Heaven's stock. According to Apollo, the act of begetting confers the superior right; whereas, according to the views in force until then, the mother, who gives to the child her blood and its life, was esteemed the sole possessor of the child, while the man, the father of her child, was regarded a stranger. Hence the Erinnyes reply to the strange notions of Apollo: Thou didst lead astray Those primal goddesses with draughts of wine, O'erturning ordinance. Young, thou wouldst override our ancient right. The judges, thereupon, make ready for the sentence. One half stand by the old, one half by the new right; a tie is threatened; thereupon Athene seizes the ballot from the altar and dropping it in the urn, says: To me it falls to give my judgment last. Here openly I give it for Orestes. No mother bore me. To the masculine side For all save marriage my whole heart is given,-- In all and everything the father's child. So little care I for a woman's death, That slew her lord, the guardian of her home. Now though the votes be even, Orestes wins. The new right won. Marriage with the father as head, had overpowered the gyneocracy.