Orestes

Smuggled abroad as a boy on the day of the murder, Orestes returns grown, commanded by Apollo’s oracle to avenge his father. Recognition at the tomb, the false report of his own death, the killing of Aegisthus and then — past his moment of faltering — of his mother: so the Libation Bearers. The Furies rise from her blood and hound him to Athens, where Athena empanels the first homicide court and casts the tying vote for mercy — tragedy’s founding myth of law.