Tisiphone Explained

Tisiphone^[1] (grc|Τισιφόνη|Tisiphónē, "Avenger of murder"),^[2] or Tilphousia, is one of the three Erinyes or Furies in Greek mythology. Her sisters are Alecto and Megaera.^[3] They reside in the Greek underworld and ascend to earth in pursuit of the wicked.^[2] She and her sisters punish crimes of murder: parricide, fratricide and homicide.

In culture

Literature

• In book I poem 3 of Tibullus's elegies, Tisiphone, unkempt with fierce snakes instead of hair, chases impious souls here and there in Tartarus.^[4]
• In Book VI of Virgil's Aeneid, she is described as the guardian of the gates of Tartarus, "clothed in a blood-wet dress".^[5]
• In Book X of the Aeneid, she is described as "pale" and raging "among the warring thousands" during the battle between Mezentius and Aeneas's men.^[6]
• 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.^[7]
• Tisiphone has a prominent role in Statius' Thebaid, where she spurs on the war between Polynices and Eteocles at the behest of their father, Oedipus. One of her more gruesome feats in the epic is to drive the hero, Tydeus, to cannibalism. In a bizarrely pastoral scene, Tisiphone first appears in the epic lounging beside the Cocytus river in the underworld, letting her serpent locks lap at the sulfuric waters.^[8]
• 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.^[9]
• In Book I of Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde, the narrator calls upon her to help him to write the tragedy properly.^[10]
• In Canto IX of Dante's Inferno, she appears with her sisters before the gates of Dis, threatening to unveil the Medusa.
• In Henry Fielding’s Tom Jones (Book I, ch. VIII), Bridget smiles “one of those smiles which might be supposed to have come from the dimpled cheeks of the august Tisiphone.”
• In the David Weber space opera In Fury Born, Tisiphone appears as an ancient Greek spirit who is mind-melded with a super-soldier Alicia Devries, and they (along with a starship AI named Megaera) save the universe from evil pirates.
• In Evie Shockley's poetry collection Suddenly We, the final stanza of the poem "breonna taylor's final rest (or, the furies are still activists)" invokes Tisiphone in her role as avenger of murder victims.
• In Warhammer 40k, at the beginning of the 31st millennium the first official execution of a traitor in the Imperium is accomplished with a Power Sword named Tisiphone, made for former Luna Wolves Legionary Iacton Qruze and lent to Primarch Rogal Dorn for that purpose.

Ships

• was a fire ship of the Royal Navy launched in 1781 and sold for breaking up in 1816.^[11]

Astronomy

• Minor planet 466 Tisiphone is named after her.^[12]

See also

• Family tree of the Greek gods

Notes and References

1. pronounced:
2. https://www.britannica.com/topic/Tisiphone Tisiphone
3. Web site: Mythological Index. The Ovid Collection. University of Virginia Library.
4. Tibullus, 1.3.69–70.
5. Web site: Virgil: Aeneid VI (A.S.Kline's translation). poetryintranslation.com. 2015-10-25.
6. Web site: Virgil: Aeneid X (A.S.Kline's translation). poetryintranslation.com. 2018-04-15.
7. Ovid, Metamorphoses Bk IV:464-511.
8. Statius, Thebaid Bk I:88-91.
9. Book: Pseudo-Plutarch. Pseudo-Plutarch. De fluviis.
10. Geoffrey Chaucer, "Troilus and Criseyde", Book I:5, in The Riverside Chaucer, 3rd Edition, ed. Larry D. Benson, Oxford University Press, 1988, p.473
11. Book: Winfield, Rif. British Warships in the Age of Sail 1714 - 1792: Design, Construction, Careers and Fates. Seaforth. 2007. 378. 978-1844157006.
12. Book: (466) Tisiphone In: Dictionary of Minor Planet Names . 52. Springer . 2003 . 978-3-540-29925-7 . 10.1007/978-3-540-29925-7_467. (466) Tisiphone.