When the judge fails to deliver the justice that the Maids hope for, they call upon the mythological Furies, female goddesses whose job is to enact vengeance on men. The modern justice system, rather than rectifying the injustice done to the maids in the past, offers no punishment for Odysseus and so they are forced to call upon more ancient and brutal forces. This scene of Athena vs. the Furies also echoes Aeschylus’s play
The Eumenides.