Alecto: Greek Fury of Endless Anger

The Story of Alecto

Alecto was one of the three Furies, or Erinyes, the goddesses of vengeance. Hesiod says the Furies were born from the drops of blood that fell on Gaia when Cronus attacked Uranus. Her sisters were Megaera and Tisiphone, and her name means the unceasing one.

The Furies lived in the Underworld and rose up to punish terrible crimes, especially crimes against one's own family, broken oaths and the murder of guests. They were pictured as fearsome women with snakes in their hair, carrying whips and torches. Alecto stood for endless anger that never rests.

The most famous story of the Furies is the pursuit of Orestes. After Orestes killed his mother Clytemnestra to avenge his father Agamemnon, the Furies hunted him across Greece. Athena finally put him on trial in Athens, and after his acquittal she persuaded the Furies to accept a new home and honors in the city.

Alecto has her greatest role in Virgil's Aeneid. Juno summoned her from the Underworld to stop the Trojans from settling peacefully in Italy. Alecto filled Queen Amata and the hero Turnus with fury, and she made the hounds of Ascanius chase a sacred stag, sparking a war between the Trojans and the Latins.

The Greeks feared to speak the Furies' names, so they often called them the Eumenides, the kindly ones, or the Semnai, the venerable goddesses. They had a shrine in a cave below the Areopagus in Athens. The Romans called them the Furiae, and the English word fury comes from that name.