Orestes was the son of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra. When Agamemnon was murdered by Aegisthus and Clytemnestra upon his return from Troy, the child Orestes was saved by his sister Electra, who took him to Phocis where he was brought up in the household of King Strophius with the king’s son Pylades. When his boyhood was over, Apollo ordered him to avenge his father by killing Aegisthus and Clytemnestra. For slaying his mother Orestes was pursued by the Furies. According to Aeschylus, he fled to Delphi seeking asylum and was purified by Apollo himself. This purification, however, was not enough to absolve him, and he was afterwards tried for his crime at Athens, on the Areopagus (the Hill of Ares). The court was divided and in the end he was acquitted by Athena, who gave her casting vote in his favour. An alternate tradition has seers telling him to go to Thrace and bathe at the place where the rivers Arda, Hebrus and Tonsus meet. There he built temples and founded the city of Orestias. Orestes married his cousin Hermione, daughter of his uncle Menelaus, and they had a son called Tisamenus.
