Orcus, one of the names of the god of hell, the same as Pluto, though confounded by some with Charon. He had a temple at Rome. The word Orcus is generally used to signify the infernal regions. Horace, bk. 1, ode 29, &c.—Virgil, Æneid, bk. 4, li. 502, &c.—Ovid, Metamorphoses, bk. 14, li. 116.
Orcynia, a place of Cappadocia, where Eumenes was defeated by Antigonus.
Ordessus, a river of Scythia, which falls into the Ister. Herodotus.
Ordovices, the people of North Wales in Britain, mentioned by Tacitus, Annals, bk. 12, ch. 53.
Oreădes, nymphs of the mountains (ὀρος, mons), daughters of Phoroneus and Hecate. Some call them Orestiades, and give them Jupiter for father. They generally attended upon Diana, and accompanied her in hunting. Virgil, Æneid, bk. 1, li. 504.—Homer, Iliad, bk. 6.—Strabo, bk. 10.—Ovid, Metamorphoses, bk. 8, li. 787.
Oreas, a son of Hercules and Chryseis.
Orestæ, a people of Epirus. They received their name from Orestes, who fled to Epirus when cured of his insanity. Lucan, bk. 3, li. 249.——Of Macedonia. Livy, bk. 33, ch. 34.
Orestes, a son of [♦]Agamemnon and Clytemnestra. When his father was cruelly murdered by Clytemnestra and Ægisthus, young Orestes was saved from his mother’s dagger by means of his sister Electra, called Laodicea by Homer, and he was privately conveyed to the house of Strophius, who was king of Phocis, and who had married a sister of Agamemnon. He was tenderly treated by Strophius, who educated him with his son Pylades. The two young princes soon became acquainted, and, from their familiarity, arose the most inviolable attachment and friendship. When Orestes was arrived to the years of manhood, he visited Mycenæ, and avenged his father’s death by assassinating his mother Clytemnestra, and her adulterer Ægisthus. The manner in which he committed this murder is variously reported. According to Æschylus he was commissioned by Apollo to avenge his father, and, therefore, he introduced himself, with his friend Pylades, at the court of Mycenæ, pretending to bring the news of the death of Orestes from king Strophius. He was at first received with coldness, and when he came into the presence of Ægisthus, who wished to inform himself of the particulars, he murdered him, and soon after Clytemnestra shared the adulterer’s fate. Euripides and Sophocles mention the same circumstance. Ægisthus was assassinated after Clytemnestra, according to Sophocles; and, in Euripides, Orestes is represented as murdering the adulterer, while he offers a sacrifice to the nymphs. This murder, as the poet mentions, irritates the guards, who were present, but Orestes appeases their fury by telling them who he is, and immediately he is acknowledged king of the country. Afterwards he stabs his mother, at the instigation of his sister Electra, after he has upbraided her for her infidelity and cruelty to her husband. Such meditated murders receive the punishment which, among the ancients, was always supposed to attend parricide. Orestes is tormented by the Furies, and exiles himself to Argos, where he is still pursued by the avengeful goddesses. Apollo himself purifies him, and he is acquitted by the unanimous opinion of the Areopagites, whom Minerva herself instituted on this occasion, according to the narration of the poet Æschylus, who flatters the Athenians in his tragical story, by representing them as passing judgment even upon the gods themselves. According to Pausanias, Orestes was purified of the murder, not at Delphi, but at Trœzene, where still was seen a large stone at the entrance of Diana’s temple, upon which the ceremonies of purification had been performed by nine of the principal citizens of the place. There was also, at Megalopolis in Arcadia, a temple dedicated to the Furies, near which Orestes cut off one of his fingers with his teeth in a fit of insanity. These different traditions are confuted by Euripides, who says that Orestes, after the murder of his mother, consulted the oracle of Apollo at Delphi, where he was informed that nothing could deliver him from the persecutions of the Furies, if he did not bring into Greece Diana’s statue, which was in the Taurica Chersonesus, and which, as it is reported by some, had fallen down from heaven. This was an arduous enterprise. The king of the Chersonesus always sacrificed on the altars of the goddess all such as entered the borders of his country. Orestes and his friend were both carried before Thoas the king of the place, and they were doomed to be sacrificed. Iphigenia was then priestess of Diana’s temple, and it was her office to immolate these strangers. The intelligence that they were Grecians delayed the preparations, and Iphigenia was anxious to learn something about a country which had given her birth. See: [Iphigenia]. She even interested herself in their misfortunes, and offered to spare the life of one of them provided he would convey letters to Greece from her hand. This was a difficult trial; never was friendship more truly displayed, according to the words of Ovid, ex Ponto, bk. 3, poem 2:
Ire jubet Pylades carum moriturus Orestem,
Hic negat; inque vicem pugnat uterque mori.