When Orestes came to his country, years had passed.
   He had been a wanderer in many lands, always pursued by the same terrible shapes.
   He was worn with suffering, but in his loss of everything men prize there was a gain too.
   "I have been taught by misery," he said.
   He had learned that no crime was beyond atonement, that even he, defiled by a mother's murder, could be made clean again.
   He traveled to Athens, sent there by Apollo to plead his case before Athena.
   He had come to beg for help; nevertheless, in his heart there was confidence.
   Those who desire to be purified cannot be refused and the black stain of his guilt had grown fainter and fainter through his years of lonely wandering and pain.
   He believed that by now it had faded away.
   "I can speak to Athena with pure lips," he said.
   The Goddess listened to his plea.
   Apollo was beside him.
   "It is I who am answerable for what he did," he said. "He killed at my command."
   The dread forms of his pursuers, the Erinyes, the Furies, were arrayed against him, but Orestes listened calmly to their demand for vengeance.
   "I, not Apollo, was guilty of my mother's murder," he said, "but I have been cleansed of my guilt,"
   These were words never spoken before by any of the House of Atreus.
   The killers of that race had never suffered from their guilt and sought to be made clean.
   Athena accepted the plea.
   She persuaded the avenging Goddesses also to accept it, and with this new law of mercy established they themselves were changed.
   From the Furies of frightful aspect they became the Benignant Ones, the Eumenides, protectors of the suppliant.
   They acquitted Orestes, and with the words of acquittal the spirit of evil which had haunted his house for so long was banished.
   Orestes went forth from Athena's tribunal a free man.
   Neither he nor any descendent of his would ever again be driven into evil by the irresistible power of the past.
   The curse of the House of Atreus was ended.
 

Adapted from Mythology,
The House of Atreus
by Edith Hamilton