Tisiphone
Tisiphone, or Tilphousia, was one of the three Erinyes or Furies. Her sisters were Alecto and Megaera.[1] She was the one who punished crimes of murder: parricide, fratricide and homicide.
In Literature[edit]
In Book VI of Virgil's Aeneid, she is described as the guardian of the gates of Tartarus, 'clothed in a blood-wet dress'.[2]
In Book IV of Ovid's Metamorphoses, she is described as a denizen of Dis who wears a dripping red robe and who has a serpent coiled around her waist. At the behest of Juno, Tisiphone drives Athamas and Ino mad with the breath of a serpent extracted from her hair and a poison made from froth from the mouth of Cerberus and Echidna's venom.[3]
According to one myth, she fell in love with a mortal, Cithaeron, but was spurned; in her anger she formed a poisonous snake from her hair, which bit and killed him.[4]
In Book I of Chaucer's "Troilus and Criseyde", the narrator calls upon her to help him to write the tragedy properly.[5]
Ships[edit]
Between 1779 and 1816 there was a British navy fireship (later converted to a sloop) named after the goddess.[6]
See also[edit]
References[edit]
- ^ "Mythological Index". The Ovid Collection. University of Virginia Library.
- ^ "Virgil: Aeneid VI (A.S.Kline's translation)". poetryintranslation.com. Retrieved 2015-10-25.
- ^ Ovid, Metamorphoses Bk IV:464-511.
- ^ Pseudo-Plutarch. De fluviis.
- ^ Geoffrey Chaucer, "Troilus and Criseyde", Book I:5, in "The Riverside Chaucer", 3rd Edition, ed. Larry D. Benson, Oxford University Press, 1988, p.473
- ^ http://www.kenthistoryforum.co.uk/index.php?topic=16287.0 Kent History Forum
External links[edit]
Media related to Tisiphone (mythology) at Wikimedia Commons
