From Greek and Roman Mythology & Heroic Legend, by Professor H. Steuding, Translated from the German and Edited by Lionel D. Barnett. The Temple Primers, London: J. M. Dent; 1901; pp. 12-12.
[11]Greek and Roman Mythology & Heroic Legend
GREEK MYTHOLOGY
Greek Religion from the Beginning of the Homeric Age
Erinyes. § 19. In Homer, however there is as yet no mention of such a divine retribution after death. A few favourites of the gods are rewarded with a blissful immortality, and he is aware of the punishment of a few great evil-doers like Sisyphos and Tantalos, who have sinned against the gods themselves; elsewhere however punishment — even the punishment of murder — is left to earthly avengers. It is only in the absence of a kinsman bound by law to take blood-vengeance that, according to the oldest view, the wrathful soul (Erinys) of the slain itself pursues the slayer. This is particularly the case when a man has murdered a parent or brother, who otherwise would himself be bound to take blood-vengeance. In Homer however the angry individual souls have already developed into special goddesses of vengeance represented in the sacred trinity of the Erinyes, who in the service of Zeus watch over moral order in the world, and hence are also called Praxidikai. To soften them, men were wont in Athens to give them the flattering name of Semnai, ‘august ones,’ and in Sekyon and Argos that of Eumenides, ‘kindly ones.’
§ 20. Like dogs and birds of prey — which as devouring corpses were believed to be animated by their souls, — and probably represented as such in earlier times, the Erinyes pursue the flying man-slayer in the form of black winged women around whose heads snakes writhe. In their hands they hold 12 snakes or burning torches, or a whip the blow of which inspires him whom it smites with madness and stupefaction. Their dwelling is the lower world, from which they are conjured up by the curse of the sufferer as well as by the self-damnation of the perjured.
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Greek Religion from the Beginning of the Homeric Age :
Harpies.