In this episode, host Meghan Sullivan talks all about the Furies, and takes listeners on a rollercoaster journey full of vengeful ghosts, avenging goddesses, remorseless trouble makers and defenders of justice.
*Quick Note: In one section it's mentioned that in The Aeneid Megaera turns into a bird and terrorizes the Trojans (Book 12). Although Megaera is mentioned in the preceding paragraph, it's actually not clear WHICH Fury turns into a bird.
In this episode, host Meghan Sullivan talks all about the Furies, and takes listeners on a rollercoaster journey full of vengeful ghosts, avenging goddesses, remorseless trouble makers and defenders of justice.
*Quick Note: In one section it's mentioned that in The Aeneid Megaera turns into a bird and terrorizes the Trojans (Book 12). Although Megaera is mentioned in the preceding paragraph, it's actually not clear WHICH Fury turns into a bird.
Hey, everyone! I'm Meghan Sullivan and welcome to another History N’ Games episode for Hades, the rogue action RPG developed by SuperGiant Games and available on PC, Xbox and Switch.
I recently got a request to do a video on the fearsome threesome known as the Fury sisters Megaera Alecto, and Tisiphone, and I thought: that’s a great idea! So here we are. What I didn’t expect was for my research to be such a hair-raising, bloody good time. What do I mean by that? Well I’m talking about the real-life origins of the Furies, most commonly referred to in Ancient Greek as the Erinyes which translates to the “Angry Ones”, whose evolution from the vengeful ghosts of murder victims to punishers of those who transgress the natural order of things to straight up trouble makers or even sometimes benevolent goddesses is quite a fascinating tale. So, please stick around until the very end of the episode to learn all about these unique beings...because if you don’t... I’ll be….furious….get it?..what? I thought it was clever! BTW, if you enjoy this episode, please please consider supporting me on Patreon at patreon.com/meghanrsullivan and following me on Youtube at Meg Sullivan so I can do History N’ Games full time. Thank you!
So, let’s start by reviewing who the Fury sisters are. According to the game codex in Hades, “The ancient Fury Sisters deal retribution for eternity against all those whose lives unspeakably befouled the lives of others.” The Furies also happen to punish those who transgress the natural order of things, which is why in Hades The Furies appear as three female bosses whose job it is to stop the protagonist Zagreus from leaving the Underworld which is of course taboo since the dead cannot dwell amongst the living. By the way, we’ll talk about the Fury Sisters’ individual appearances and personalities a little bit later on, and please forgive me: I am going to TRY to at least give one semi accurate Greek pronunciation for a lot of the names, but I don’t speak Greek so I’ll probably mostly stick to the standard English pronunciation. So apologies to all my Greek friends. I appreciate your patience. Alright, back to the game.
Now, if you’re a literature or history fan you probably noticed that Supergiant Games pulled a lot of their inspiration from ancient sources, including Virgil’s The Aeneid written over 2,000 years ago.In this classic Virgil describes how the Furies are three individual sisters with distinct personalities and duties. But the actual origin of the Furies is far older than Virgil, and even older than Homer, who lived nearly 1,000 years before Virgil. By starting from their earliest origins, I’m hoping it helps us all to better understand the etymology and true function of the furies. So let’s get into it.
The very first possible reference to the Furies or a Fury is on a 3,000 year-old stone inscription found on the Greek island of Crete written in the Linear B language of the Mycenaeans. The inscription mentions offerings to a being named Erinu, which may be the origin of the Greek word Erinys, the singular word for a Fury.
But since we don’t know much more about this deity other than its name, we have to look at a different source to try and confirm this. Luckily The ancient geographer Pausanias might be able to help out. He mentions the Arcadians--a mountainous people in the Peloponnese of Southern Greece-- worshiped a goddess known as Demeter Erinys, whom scholars think might be a contemporary or local form of Erinu. The name Demeter Erinys means Angry, Implacable or Furious Demeter. Why is she so angry? Because the story goes that in order to flee from the advances of the god of oceans and rivers Poseidon, the grain goddess Demeter turned herself into a mare, but then Poseidon turned himself into a stallion and forced himself on her. Naturally Demeter was enraged by this assault, and only calmed down once she bathed in a river to purify herself The locals then worshipped her as both Demeter Erinys--Furious Demeter and (Demeter Leusia)--Bathed Demeter. Interestingly enough, a similar story about a goddess named Erinys being assaulted by Posidon was told in the Greek city-state of Boeotia, which suggests the Mycenaean cult these stories were based on may have been pretty widespread. And it’s possible this cult had Chthonic associations. Pausanias claims that the statue of Demeter Erinys depicted a woman holding a torch, while a statue of her nearby counterpart, another angry Arkadian Demeter known as Black Demeter -- was portrayed as having a woman’s body with a mare’s face and serpent hair. Torches, serpents and horses all have Chthonic associations, which indicates that this goddess--perhaps one of the earliest forms of a fury was tied to the Underworld in some way. And that’s important because soothing or appeasing an angry Cthonic being --like say a Fury--was once considered vital to early human communities.
In Ancient Greece, it was so important to placat Underworld gods, heroes and ghosts--all of which had the power to curse entire communities-- that there were special rituals devoted to them. These rituals were completely different from the ones used for the gods of Mount Olympus. For example instead of using a raised alter to allow the smoke from sacrificial meat to waft up towards the heavens and please the gods like in Olympian rituals, the Greeks used a low-lying hearth with a trench dug under it so that the blood of a sacrificial animal would seep into the earth and feed the literally bloody thirsty spirits of the Underworld. And instead of sharing the sacrificial animal as part of a large communal meal between the gods and mortals, the Ancient Greeks would devote the whole animal to the Underworld deity or ghost in an attempt to appease them. Rituals to Olympians took place at dawn and were usually in the hopes of receiving some sort of benefit, but rituals to underworld beings were performed at night and tied to purification and aversion. People were so anxious to stay on the right side of the Underworld that instead of calling Chthonic beings by their proper names, like Hades and the Erinyes (The Angry Ones), the Greeks gave them epithets like Plato (the wealthy one) and Eumenides/ or Evmehneethees (The Kindly Ones) in the hopes of avoiding their anger. But when did that anger start to become its own entity and not an epithet or the name of a specific goddess or goddesses?
It’s not entirely clear when and how this happened, but this evolution can be seen starting in Homer’s Iliad, written sometime in the 8th century BCE, hundreds of years after the fall of Mycenaean civilization. In the Iliad beings known as the Erinyes or “Angry Ones” are called upon at least three times. Once during an oath ceremony instigated by the ambitious king of Mycenae Agamemnon, once by King Amyntor who calls on the Erinyes to curse his son Phoenix after the latter sleeps with the king’s mistress, and once by Althea who summons a being known as Erinys to avenge her slain brothers. Then later in the Odyssey, Homer relays the story of Melampus, king of Argos, who is driven mad on account of a Fury, although it’s not exactly clear why. It’s in the Iliad and Odyssey where you can start to see the Fury as a type of avenger or personified curse that acts on behalf of the family of a murder victim or punishes mortals for transgressing social taboos like harming a family member or breaking an oath.
Homer’s contemporary Hesoid underlines this idea of angry beings who punish oath breakers by stating in his Works and Days ``beware all fifth days; they are harsh and angry; it was on the fifth, they say, that the Erinyes assisted at the bearing of Oath [in order]to be a plague on those who take false oath.” Hesiod is also the first to mention their origins. Though later authors would credit different parents to the Furies like say Erebus (Darkness) and Nyx or neechh (Night) in his Theogony Hesiod claims that the Erinyes were born after the titan Cronus castrated his father OOrahnOHS or Uranus, when the blood from the act spilled onto Earth impregnating her. By the way, I like how Supergiant games tries to find a balancing act between these different origin tales by recounting the story of Cronus and his father’s castration as the origin of the furies in Tisiphone’s character codex, while mentioning her sister Meg is treated as a kind of surrogate daughter to Nyx in her character codex. Very clever. At any rate, Hesiod’s early tale of inner-family violence helps to explain the origin of the furies and their function as avengers of aggrieved family members.
The Furies association with blood feuds between families --or more notoriously, amongst family members--continued to be reflected hundreds of years later in the 5th century BCE works of playwrights like (ehs-hee-lee-ohs) Aeshylus and Euripedes (or Evripídis), who both portray the Furies as relentlessly tormenting the hero Orehstes after he murders his mother, who murdered his father, for murdering Orestes’ sister. It’s Orestes’ mother--Clytmnestra --Klytémnistra-who summons the Furies to avenge her murder, although some scholars argue that she herself, as well as her various family members over the course of the Orestian trilogy are basically furies themselves, murder victims or the family members of murder victms crying out for bloody vengence.
Which is interesting because the idea of an angry ghost thirsting for vengeance might actually be one of the oldest forms (or even the original function) of a Fury. According to author and scholar Jane Harrison, a Fury may have originally been a specific type of black Ker--an angry spirit or ghost--associated with a murder victim. Murder then as it is now was considered the most heinous of crimes, and in Archaic Greece it was the family’s job to bring the killer of a loved one to justice because the angry dead demanded it. However, what happens if the killer IS a family member? It’s one of the worst sins of all, and the killer is considered doubly tainted by a miasma--a pollution so real and so powerful it could infect an entire city like a contagious disease.
Thus why there were various homicide laws that forbade a murderer from entering a town, socializing, or even speaking until they had been ritually purified. Both Orestes --who murdered his mother, and the hero of the Argonautica, Jason --who murdered his brother in law are two such examples of this. Both men are portrayed as forbidden from speaking until they go through a purification ritual to absolve them of their crime. This ritual --known as Katharmos--involves being washed in the blood of an animal victim. And there’s another rather unusual ritual mentioned by ancient sources as well. To try and avoid the Furies wrath for murdering her husband (for murdering their daughter), Clytemnestra in the play Agamemmnon makes sure to smear Agemmemnon’s forehead with his own blood after she kills him. Meanwhile in the Argonautica Jason laps up a bit of his victim’s blood and spits it out after murdering Medeia’s brother. Both of these murderers also mutilate the corpse in a ritual known as maschilismos. What is going on here? Well, both acts seem to be some sort of ritual expiation in the hope of both disempowering the angry dead--the empousa--and or allowing the Furies to overlook their cruel deeds by transferring the blood crime back onto the victim by using the victim’s own blood to do so.
Now, it’s not clear to me if these rituals were actually performed in Ancient Greece (although I assume at some point they were and remained in people’s collective consciousness), but the idea of a curse or a taint on an entire family for murdering someone was VERY real; in the 7th century BCE a powerful clan--known as the ALKmeeohneed was exiled from Athens for decades after killing suppliants that had claimed sanctuary in a temple. Killing suppliants was an egregious crime, one that especially caught the attention of the Furies, because killing those under the protection of the gods was of course a violation of the natural order of things. Thus the entire family was thrown out of Athens lest their miasma bring calamity to the entire city-state.
Clearly it was a bad idea to make ghosts and especially the furies --who worked on their behalf--angry. But could the Furies ever be appeased? At first it seems like the answer is no. After all, they were known to chase sinners to the ends of the earth and even called upon Dike --justice-- to help them in their pursuit. But as it turns out there is evidence that the furies’ rage could be soothed. The oldest evidence of course is in the form of Bathed Demeter, a gentler form of the wrathful goddess Demeter Erinyes whom we talked about earlier, and in the last play of the Orestia trilogy, --known as the Eumenides-- the playwright Aeschylus claims that --at least in Athens--the Furies were transformed from the Erinyes --the Angry Ones --into the Eumenides--the Gracious or Kindly Ones during the trail of Orestes for the murder of his mother Clytemnestra.
Now before I go any further keep in mind the play is actually an allegory for the transition from a matriarchy to a patriarchy, ancient religious beliefs to newer ones, and most importantly for Aeshylus who may have been signaling his support for new judicial laws that had just been passed in Athens-- the transition from vigilante justice to a more sophisticated court system. But what’s also interesting about this play --and relevant to us is that it tries to explain the origins of a local group of goddessse associated with the Areopagus, the hill in Athens where murder trials were held.
In the play Orestes is acquitted of the crime of matricide, for which the Furies have been chasing him and driving him mad, causing madness being their signature power. Unhappy with the verdict, the Furies threaten plague and misery on the city of Athens, which as Chthonic beings they had the power to do. The goddess Athena tells them that if they relent in their anger, they shall be worshipped by the local populace as the Eumenides --the Kindly Ones, also known in Athens as the Semnai--the Venerable Ones. The Furies agree to this arrangement and thus are placated. From then on, they were worshipped in Athens, where they had a sanctuary and a grotto near the Areopagus So, a happy ending of sorts? I guess?
And there’s more evidence the Greeks believed the Furies could be appeased. In Sophocles's play, Oedipus at Colonus, Oedipus (or ee-thee-poos) arrives in a grove outside of Athens dedicated to the Eumenides, who as we know are the kinder, gentler version of the Erinyes.There he makes a sacrifice to the goddesses and begs their forgiveness for the blood crime of killing his own father. Once he does so, his suffering finally comes to an end. So another sort of happy ending. But what would Oedipus’ sacrifice have consisted of? According to various ancient authors, these sacrifices might include black sheep--animal victims were always black for Underworld beings-- and nephalia-- a drink made of honey and water. Interestingly in the Argonautica the sorceress Circe Kirke specifically burns cakes of flour, oil and honey while asking the Furies not to torment Jason and Mediea for the murder of Media’s brother. So a bloodless offering so to speak. Whatever was sacrificed to the Furies, it’s clear the Greeks believed it was technically possible to calm the furies down, though it wasn’t easy to placate these fightful goddesses.
Speaking of frightening, what did the Furies actually look like? Well, we know what Demeter Erinys looked like ---a goddess with a mare’s head and serpent hair, but the Erinyes of Homer and Hesiod don’t have a description. For that we have to look once again to Aechylus who is the first to describe their fightful apparence: which is somewhere between a serpent haired Gorgon and a wingless Harpy. Since Gorgons and Harpies are also Underworld beings associated with Chthonic imagery like snakes, horses and wind, it’s not surprising the Furies were described in a similar fashion by Aeschylus. Although oddly, the 2nd century geographer Pausanias claims to have seen statues of the Semnai in Athens--the nicer version of the Furies, and says there was nothing frightful about them. And some Archaic pottery shows the Furies as normal women wearing hunting dresses--appropriate considering it's their job to hunt down sinners. But most of the time, the Furies were described or depicted as terrifying beings with snakes in their hair and oozing eyes, or having other various frightening features like dog heads or bat wings. Basically they were terrifying to look upon.
These visuals and beliefs about the Furies became so popular they even carried over to Greek colonies in Italy and Sicily, where we see the furies displayed on extraordinary pieces of Etruscan pottery. And their evolution continued with the rise of Rome, where we start to see more individualized Furies emerge.
These more individual furies appear in many Latin works, but most famously they appear in Virgil’s The Aeneid. In his work, the furies are no longer recognizable as angry ghosts or purely avenging goddesses but rather hateful entities that seem to enjoy punishing sinners and wreaking havoc wherever they go. And it’s during this point in time that the Furies are portrayed as three sisters.
Ok Now here is where we start to get into the weeds a little bit. It’s not clear if Virgil is the first one to refer to the Furies as three individual sisters or not. It depends on when you think the Orphic Hymns and Apollodorus --or Pseudo Apollodorus’ famous work The Bibliothiki --were written--which ranges from somewhere between the 3rd century BCE and the 2nd century AD. Both of these sources mention three Fury sisters named Megaera (the jealous one or one who holds a grudge), AHlecto (the unceasing one), and Tisiphone -or Tee-see-phone (the one who avenges murder). But it’s hard to say just how old these two sources actually are. Thus it’s possible that Virigl IS the first person to name the Furies as three individual sisters--sorry for the long-winded explanation; just wanted to get that out there. At any rate, Virgil then goes on to describe each sister in detail as they’re called upon by the goddess Juno to terrorize the Trojans.
In the Aeneid, Alecto’s mission is to cause the Trojans' downfall through war. She does this by first possessing the body of Queen Amata and convincing her fellow Latin mothers to riot against the Trojans, and then by disguising herself as Juno's priestess in order to try and convince a man named Turnus to fight the Trojans as well. When that doesn’t work she attacks him with a torch, which makes his blood boil for war. Meanwhile Megeara turns into a bird and starts attacking the Trojans in order to terrorize them. And finally Tisiphone has the most frightening imagery of all: Virgil describes her as guarding the gates of the Underworld, in a “blood-wet” dress, a departure from other ancient authors who imagined the Erinyes--at least perhaps in their kinder form--dressed in purple.
These fascinating details would be echoed and added on to by later Latin authors like Ovid in his Metamorphosis and Statius in his work The Thebaid, which recounts the story of the Seven Against Thebes. And even 1,000 years after the ancient Greek and Roman religions were replaced by Christianity, the Furies continued to be evoked by various authors. In Canto IX of Dante's 14th century Inferno, Tisiphone and her sisters appear to Dante and Virgil before the gates of Dis, threatening to summon the Gorgon Medusa and turn them to stone. The Furies are also mentioned by authors like Chaucher--who calls upon Tisiphone to help him properly narrate his tragedy Troilus (Troy-Loose) and Criseyde, and Milton, who describes them in Paradise Lost as harpy-footed Furies. Even today the Furies are evoked, in terms like furious and sayings like Hell hath no Fury like a woman scorned.”
In short, for thousands of years the furies have lived on in people’s imaginations and psyches. And it’s pretty clear Supergiant Games has honored the various descriptions of these angry beings. For example, in the game’s codex entry for Alecto, it says quote “she appears to be on questionable terms with her own sisters, and is not permitted in the House of Hades due to profane acts of insubordination long past.” Which is interesting, because in the Aeneid, Alecto is mentioned as relishing her work a little too much, and for that is disliked by parents and sisters. And in the Inferno when Virgil and Dante are visited by the Fury Sisters outside the gates of Dis, Dante invisions them approaching with Megaera on the left, Alecto (“raving”) on the right, and Tisiphone in the middle. And raving definitely describes Alecto in Hades; when she first meets Zagreus, she’s furious about “having to clean up her sister’s messes.”
Meg’s character seems to be partially based on her ancient history. For example in Hades Megaera is the one to punish Sisiphus in Tartarus. And in the Thebaid, it’s Megaera who’s credited with torturing Phlegyas by urging him to eat unholy food in Tartarus which despite his eternal hunger he just can’t stomach. And like her sisters, Meg is portrayed with bat wings, or at least one bat wing. WHich may be inspired from at least one description of the Furies having bat wings. Now there IS one interesting difference between Meg and her ancient counterpart: the name Megeara means “the jealous one,” but in Hades Meg isn’t really all that jealous. In fact you can have a fling with Meg and Thanatos at the same time, which tells me she’s pretty open-minded when it comes to relationships. So there’s that.
But the fury sister who is the most like both her ancient Greek and Roman counterpart is Tisiphone. Not only does she have the sunken eyes deadly vapors and taut, pale skin ascribed to her by Statius, she’s also the most closely associated with the original function of the furies: the ghostly avenger of murder victims. Which is made pretty clear by her inability to say anything but the word murder. But although Tissiphone only utters a single word in Hades she’s actually the Fury most evoked in ancient sources. Like In Book IV of Ovid's Metamorphoses, where it’s Tisiphone who spurs on the war between Polynices and Eteocles at the behest of their father, Oedipus. And as I mentioned earlier. It’s Tisiphone who’s called upon by Chaucer to help write one of his tragic tales, and strangely it’s Tisiphone who’s mentioned in a story about a Fury falling in love with a mortal and killing him after he rejects her. Why she didn’t just whip his butt I don’t know. BTW, I like that all three Fury sisters in Hades are portrayed with a whip, which according to ancient sources was their primary weapon. And I like that when a Fury is defeated in battle they drop Titan blood, a type of currency that can be used to purchase things in the game.I mean it's appropriate since titan’s blood is where they came from in the first place.
I think what I’m trying to say is Supergiant Games did a great job portraying the Furies. They’re both historically accurate and yet I like the developer to also put their own spin on each sister to make them fun and memorable.
What do YOU think of the Fury sisters? Did you enjoy this episode? Let me know in the comment section below and Please be kind….you wouldn’t want me THIS Meg furious...would you? Thanks so much for tuning in guys. See you later!