"Antinous, how can I drive my mother from our house
against her will, the one who bore me, reared me too?
My father is worlds away, dead or alive, who knows?
Imagine the high price I’d have to pay Icarius
if all on my own I send my mother home.
Oh what I would suffer from her father –
and some dark god would hurt me even more
when mother, leaving her own house behind,
calls down her withering Furies on my head,
and our people’s cries of shame would hound my heels."
– Homer
The Odyssey, Book 2, lines 144-153. Telemachus tells Antinous that he cannot drive his mother out of her house, for fear that he would suffer the wrath of the Furies. The Furies were the ancient Greek goddesses of vengeance and retribution who punished people for crimes against the natural order of things.