Tisiphone

* Erebus (Father)
* Nyx (Mother)

**Tisiphone**, also called **Tilphousia**, is the Goddess of Punishment from Greco-Roman mythology. She's one of the Erinyes and is tasked with tormenting those committed murder, especially parricide.

## Overview

**Tisiphone**, or **Tilphousia**, was one of the three Erinyes or Furies. She was the daughter of Gaea fertilized by the blood spilled from Uranus when Cronus castrated him. She is the sister of Alecto and Megaera.

She and her sisters punished crimes of murder: parricide, fratricide and homicide.

## Appearance

Tisiphone appears as a skeletal-like woman with gray-tinted skin, hovering pale-green hair styled into a ponytail, and golden eyes with jet-black scleras. Like her sisters, she only has a single bat-like wing, which is located on the left side of her body and is a purplish-blue color.

She speaks with a raspy voice and winced while doing so, implying that the act is physically difficult for her to perform.

## Personality

Tisiphone could arguably be considered the most naive and child-like among the Erinyes, having a very black-and-white view of the world despite her millions-years-old age. Thanatos once stated that having it not for the nature of her origins and duties, one might never believe she is among the oldest gods in the underworld.

She has a strange fascination with deadly poisons and venomous creatures, especially snakes, and can often be seen playing around or taking care of one of the pet snakes in her free time. She also has a habit of wearing them into her hair or having them curl around her neck and arms, which led the ancient Greeks to mistakenly portray the Erinyes as snake-haired goddesses.

According to her, murder is a crime that must be punished, especially if said crime is committed against a family member, and to let the murderer go unpunished is not only an insult toward her but toward the gods as a whole. However, she did admit that, when it comes to the gods, this rule is much more lenient.

## History

### Early Years

The Erinyes - Alecto, Tisiphone, and Megaera - were created by Ouranos millions of years ago to serve as guardians of honor and to enforce the authority of the Titans. However, when Ouranos was overthrown by Kronos and Rhea, they banished the Erinyes into the underworld where they were adopted by Erebus and Nyx and became tormentors of the shades who descended there.

### The Titanomachy

During the Titanomachy, Tisiphone and her sisters, much like other chthonic gods, swore an oath of servitude to Hades and the Olympian dynasty, and from then on, they became Hades' new bodyguards and personal torturers, in charge with collecting information from captured prisoners as well as hunting down defects and traitors among their followers.

After the Olympians achieved victory, she and her sisters returned to the underworld, having grown to love the underworldly realm as their new home. As part of their agreement with Hades, they got their positions as castigators back and are now in-charge of enforcing the rules settled down by the Olympians among humanity.

### Fostering Dionysus

According to Ovid's "Metamorphoses", Tisiphone was the goddess who, at the behest of Hera, drove Athamas and Ino mad with the breath of a serpent and poison made from froth from the mouth of Cerberus I and Echidna's venom.

### Oedipus' Curse

After Oedipus found out he had killed his father Laius and committed incest with his mother Jocasta, he gouged out his own eyes in a frantic state. Seeing this as an opportunity, his sons Eteocles and Polynices, turned on him because of his transgressions and usurped his authority. Angered, he cursed his sons for their actions before wandering into the wilderness.

In the underworld, Tisiphone heard Oedipus' curse and arrived at Thebes to enact his curse and sow fury between the brothers, resulting in the succession war that would be the basis for the epic poem, the "Thebaid", as well as many other plays such as "Seven Against Thebes" or "The Phoenician Women".

### The *Oresteia*

After he had killed his mother Clytemnestra, Orestes became the target of the wrath of Tisiphone for his crime of matricide and he had no choice but to flee from the palace of Argos. As he ran across Ancient Greece in an attempt to escape from her, and thanked to the support of Hermes and Apollo, he was able to come and ask the *pythia* for advice and she told him to come to Athens and seek Athena's help.

At Athens, Athena arranged for him a trial on the Areopagus, which was made up of a group of twelve Athenian citizens and was supervised by none other than Athena herself. After the trial came to an end, the votes were tied and Athena casted the deciding vote and determined that Orestes would not be killed. This, unsurprisingly, didn't go well with Tisiphone's desires to have his crimes punished, and she threatened to torment all inhabitants of Athens and to poison the surrounding countryside.

To protect her patron city, Athena promised that the Erinyes would receive due honor from the Athenians, in addition to reminding them that she possessed the key to the shrine where Zeus keeps Keraunos, the Master Bolt that had defeated the other older deities. This mixture of bribes and veiled threats pacified Tisiphone, who were then led by Athena in a procession to their new abode.

Later on, it was revealed that this entire veneration Athena set up for the Erinyes still didn't save Orestes at the end, as the moment he took his last breath, Tisiphone personally came to capture his shade and threw him into the Fields of Punishment for endless torment.

### The *Aeneid*

During the battle between Mezentius and Aeneas' men, Tisiphone was described to have been raging "among the warring thousands". According to Hermes, in the battle, she had her throat cut by an unknown person with a cursed dagger and she hadn't been able to heal that curse since then.

## Equipment

**Scourge**: Tisiphone and the Erinyes all wield enchanted brass-studded scourges created by the Elder Cyclopes, which they use in physically torturing those damned to the Fields of Punishment in the underworld. It possesses similar properties to the death scythes wielded by reapers, which allow it to damage the target's body and soul simultaneously.

## Trivia

* Her name "Tisiphone" means "vengeful destruction" or "avenging murder".
* 466 Tisiphone, a minor planet, is named after Tisiphone.
	+ HMS *Tisiphone*, a fireship of the Royal Navy launched in 1781, was named after her.
* It's unknown why Tisiphone's throat won't regenerate itself.
* Tisiphone prefers eating out than cooking her own meals.
* Tisiphone is the only one to fully memorize the phone numbers of all of her colleagues.
* In Greek mythology, Tisiphone is said to be the guardian of the gates of Tartarus.
* In some myths, the four immortal horses that pulled Ares' chariot are Tisiphone's children with the North Wind Boreas.
* According to one myth, Tisiphone 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.