The Orphic Hymns

Of the Erinyes. Incense: storax and frankincense powder. Hear, goddesses honored by all, loud-roaring revelers, Tisiphone and Alekto and divine Megaira;

Each of the three names is a little sentence. Tisiphone joins tisis, "vengeance," with phonos, "murder": she avenges blood. Alekto is "the one who never stops," and Megaira "the grudging one," from megairō, to begrudge. Homer speaks of the Erinyes without numbering or naming them; the three names belong to later writers. The hymn also calls them euasteirai, women who raise the Bacchic cry euoi, so the avengers are pictured like maenads in their frenzy.