ond their reach, nor did any mortal dare to offer to their victims an
asylum from their persecutions.

The Furies are frequently represented with wings; their bodies are black,
blood drips from their eyes, and snakes twine in their hair. In their hands
they bear either a dagger, scourge, torch, or serpent.

When they pursued Orestes they constantly held up a mirror to his horrified
gaze, in which he beheld the face of his murdered mother.

These divinities were also called Eumenides, which signifies the
"well-meaning" or "soothed goddesses;" This appellation was given to them
because they were so feared and dreaded that people dared not call them by
their proper title, and hoped by this means to propitiate their wrath.

In later times the Furies came to be regarded as salutary agencies, who, by
severely punishing sin, upheld the cause of morality and social order, and
thus contributed to the welfare of mankind. They now lose their
awe-inspiring aspect, and are represented, more especially in Athens, as
earnest maidens, dressed, like Artemis, in short tunics suitable for the
chase, but still retaining, in their hands, the wand of office in the form
of a snake.

Their sacrifices consisted of black sheep and a libation composed of a
mixture of honey and water, called Nephalia. A celebrated temple was
erected to the Eumenides at Athens, near the Areopagus.

MOIRAE OR FATES (PARCAE).

The ancients believed that the duration of human existence and the
destinies of mortals were regulated by three sister-goddesses, called
Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropos, who were the daughters of Zeus and Themis.

The power which they wielded over the fate of man was significantly
indicated under the figure of a thread, which they spun out for the life of
each human being from his birth to the grave. This occupation they divided
between them. Clotho wound the flax round the distaff, {140} ready for her
sister Lachesis, who span out the thread of life, which Atropos, with her
scissors, relentlessly snapt asunder, when the career of an individual was
about to terminate.

Homer speaks of one Moira only, the daughter of Night, who represents the
moral force by which the universe is governed, and to whom both mortals and
immortals were forced to submit, Zeus himself being powerless to avert her
decrees; but in later times this conception of one inexorable,
all-conquering fate became amplified by the poets into that above
described, and the Mo