Orestes Pursued by the Furies by William-Adolphe Bouguereau

Image: The Remorse of Orestes or Orestes Pursued by the Furies (alternate titles in other languages - French: Les Remords d’Oreste, Portuguese: O Remorso de Orestes, and Spanish: El Remordimiento de Orestes), a 1862 oil on canvas painting by William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825-1905), dimensions 227 cm x 278 cm, located in Chrysler Collection, Norfolk, Virginia.

According to Greek mythology, Orestes was the son of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra. Orestes was absent from Mycenae when his father Agamemnon returned from the Trojan War with the Trojan princess Cassandra as his concubine. But Agamemnon and was murdered by his wife Clytemnestra, in retribution for his sacrifice of their daughter Iphigeneia to obtain favorable winds for the Greek’s voyage to Troy. Eight years later Orestes returned from Athens and with his sister Electra avenged his father's death by killing his mother Clytemnestra and her lover Aegisthus.

According to Pindar, the young Orestes was saved by his nurse Arsinoe or his sister Electra, when Clytemnestra planned to kill him. He escaped to Phanote on Mount Parnassus, where King Strophius sheltered and raised him. When he was twenty years old, his sister Electra urged him to avenge his father's death. So he returned home along with his friend Pylades, son of King Strophius.

In ‘The Greek Myths’ the poet Robert Graves translates and interprets the legends and myths about Clytemnestra, Agamemnon and Orestes. Graves asserts that the sacrilege, for which the Erinyes (or Furies or Dirae in Roman mythology who were female chthonic deities of vengeance or supernatural personifications of the anger of the dead) pursued Orestes, was actually the killing of his mother, who symbolized matriarchy.

In Aeschylus's Eumenides, Orestes went mad after killing his mother and he was pursued by the Erinyes. He took refuge in the temple of Delphi. But, even though Apollo had ordered him to kill his mother, he was powerless to save Orestes. At last Athena received him on the acropolis of Athens and arranged for a formal trial of the case before a jury of twelve judges, including her. While the Erinyes demanded their victim, Orestes pleaded the orders of Apollo. When the votes of the judges were counted the result was a tie, and then Athena cast the last vote for the acquittal of Orestes.

The same myth is told differently by Sophocles and Euripides in their plays on Electra. Many other authors also wrote on the story with more details, and even contradictions.