Furies
2 of the 6 encyclopedias on this shelf carry an entry for Furies. Both are reproduced below, so you can see where they agree and where they differ.
Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)
called also the Erinyes (e-rin'iez) and the Eumenides (u-men'i-dez). In Grecian mythology, the three goddesses who punished crimes, especially secret crimes which have escaped public justice. Their names were Alecto, the unresting; Megaera, the jealous; and Tisiphone, the avenger. Their work on earth was to torment the guilty with mental sufferings. In the lower world they punished sinful souls. The name Erinyes, which is their most ancient appellation, signifies the hunters of criminals. The later name, Eumenides, means the soothed goddesses, given as was another name meaning the venerable goddesses, for euphemistic reasons, the Athenians having such a horror of the Furies that they feared almost to mention them. In Aeschylus' drama, The Eumenides, fifty Furies were introduced, accompanied by Horror, Paleness, Terror, Rage, and Death. See Fates These terrible beings were described as clothed in black robes, with serpents instead of hair, with fingers like claws, a whip of scorpions in one hand and a burning torch in the other, an outstretched tongue, and eyes dripping with gore.-Americana.
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
in classical mythology, the three daughters of Nox and Achero, or of Pluto and Proserpine, also called the Eumenides. Sometimes they were represented young and beautiful, with or without serpents twining These avenging about their heads. deities of the ancients were called Alecto, Megara, and Tisiphone, to which some add Nemesis. They were supposed to be the ministers of the gods. Their sphere of action was consequently both in the condemned infernal regions, to punish con souls, and on the earth, to rack the guilty The most usual mode of conscience. typifying the Furies was by giving them a frightful aspect, with a burning torch in one hand and a whip of scorpions in the other, and always attended by Terror, Paleness, Rage, and Death.
What Has Changed in the Last Century
The stories Aiton's told in 1910 and Collier's in 1921 are the ones still told: Alecto, Megaera and Tisiphone, the black robes, the serpent hair, the scorpion whip and the torch. What has moved is the evidence behind them. Michael Ventris's decipherment of Linear B in 1952 opened Bronze Age Greek records, and a Knossos tablet appears to name a deity "Erinu" — pushing the Erinyes back some seven centuries before Aeschylus staged the Eumenides in 458 BC. Aiton's confident gloss of Erinyes as "the hunters of criminals" is no longer accepted; the name's origin is now treated as genuinely obscure, and the claim that Aeschylus brought fifty Furies on stage comes from a late ancient anecdote rather than the play, whose chorus was far smaller.
Written for this edition, 2026.