# The Eumenides — Character guide

> Key figures in The Eumenides by Aeschylus.

- [Orestes](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_eumenides_se/characters/orestes.md): Orestes arrives at Athens bloodstained and exhausted, a suppliant who has already been purified at Delphi yet remains unacquitted. His dilemma is that obedience to Apollo made him a matricide, and the Furies will not acc
- [Athena](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_eumenides_se/characters/athena.md): Athena enters Athens to find Orestes at her image and the Furies closing in, each side certain of its claim. Where the Furies demand that the doer simply suffer, she insists on asking what motive drove him, a question th
- [Apollo](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_eumenides_se/characters/apollo.md): Apollo sheltered Orestes at Delphi and sent him on to Athens under Hermes' guard, promising purification and release. In the trial he stands as the accused's advocate, insisting that he merely revealed the will of Zeus a
- [The Furies](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_eumenides_se/characters/the_furies.md): The Erinyes are the hunters of the guilty, feared by ordinary gods and mortals yet cherished by Night and the wronged dead. Their rule is simple: the doer must suffer, and no plea of justification or intention can move t
- [Clytemnestra](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_eumenides_se/characters/clytemnestra.md): Clytemnestra appears only as a dream, showing the wound in her throat and taunting the Furies for letting her killer escape. She reminds them of the offerings she once poured and burned for them, and of the shame she now
- [Zeus](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_eumenides_se/characters/zeus.md): Zeus is the authority behind Apollo's command and the ground on which Orestes' defense rests, cited as the highest law that overrides all lesser claims. His justice is treated as an ultimate fact that does not depend on 
- [Agamemnon](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_eumenides_se/characters/agamemnon.md): Murdered king of Argos, father of Orestes, whose death drives the plot.
- [The Eumenides](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_eumenides_se/characters/the_eumenides.md): These ancient daughters of Night exist to punish kin-murder, and they pursue Orestes relentlessly because a mother's blood cries out for payment. Their power is real but strangely vulnerable: Clytemnestra's ghost must ro
- [Hermes](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_eumenides_se/characters/hermes.md): Messenger god, briefly mentioned or appearing in the narrative.
- [Themis](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_eumenides_se/characters/themis.md): Titaness of divine law and order, referenced in the context of justice.
- [Mother Earth](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_eumenides_se/characters/mother_earth.md): Primordial goddess, invoked as a source of oracles and life.
- [Bromios](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_eumenides_se/characters/bromios.md): Epithet of Dionysus, referenced in the context of ecstatic worship.

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