The material of the following paper falls conveniently under two headings, but the arguments respecting each are intimately connected, and cannot fairly be appreciated apart. It may be well, therefore, at the outset, to summarise briefly the conclusions at which I have arrived.
1. The Erinyes at Delphi and elsewhere are primarily local ancestral ghosts. The conception of Homer, and in part of the tragedians, of the Erinyes as abstract, detached ministers of divine vengeance is comparatively late, and belongs rather to literature than to popular faith.
2. The ghosts of important persons are conceived of as locally influential after death, and, being potent for good or evil, present a sort of neutral fond. In this neutral aspect they are Κῆρες, Μοῖραι, Τύχαι.
3. This neutral fond of Κῆρες, Μοῖραι, Τύχαι etc., is probably from the first conceived of in its dual aspect. The ghosts are pleased or angry, white or black, Eumenides or Erinyes—probably from the first the malignant aspect is somewhat uppermost.