“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. “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. “It is I who am answerable for what he did,” he said.
“I can speak to Athena with pure lips,” he said. He believed that by now it had faded away. 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 had come to beg for help nevertheless, in his heart there was confidence. He traveled to Athens, sent there by Apollo to plead his case before Athena. He had learned that no crime was beyond atonement, that even he, defiled by a mother’s murder, could be made clean again.
He was worn with suffering, but in his loss of everything men prize there was a gain too. He had been a wanderer in many lands, always pursued by the same terrible shapes. When next he came to his country, years had passed.
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