Wineless libationsWaterMilkHoneyThe name of the dead spokenA debt to the dead paid
Invocation Approach
Tone
Grave exact
Address
TisiphoneAvenger of BloodRevered One
Relationship
The debt owed to the dead
Warning
She is not asked for revenge on the living without cost
Resonance
Those carrying a death that was never answered
Symbols
BloodThe keyThe torchThe serpent girdle
Mythology Summary
Tisiphone, the avenger of blood, is one of the three Erinyes as Vergil names them (Aeneid 6.240, 12.845), and she is the one most closely tied to the answering of murder. The Erinyes are Hesiod's daughters of Ouranos' blood on Gaia (Theogony 183-187), and the Iliad already calls them the powers who punish a false oath (19.259-260). Aeschylus' Eumenides, produced in 458 BCE, dramatises the oldest claim on them: Orestes, pursued for his mother's death, is tried at the Areopagus and the Erinyes are given a cult there as the Semnai Theai.
Modern Practice
Called on where a death has never been answered - a killing, a disappearance, a loss that was someone's doing and went unmarked. The work is to name the dead and the debt precisely; she is not asked to make the living sorry as a substitute for justice, and the Athenian cult gave her no wine.