What is "tisiphone"

Tisiphone, or Tilphousia, was one of the Erinyes or Furies, and sister of Alecto and Megaera. She was the one who punished crimes of murder: parricide, fratricide and homicide. In Book VI of Virgil's Aeneid, she is described as the guardian of the gates of Tartarus, 'clothed in a blood-wet dress'. According to one myth, she fell in love with a mortal, Cithaeron, but was spurned; in her anger she formed a poisonous snake from her hair, which bit and killed him.

Between 1779 and 1816 there was a British navy fireship (later converted to a sloop) named after the goddess.

Tisiphone is the name of two figures in Greek mythology.

Tisiphone may also refer to:

In Biology:

• Tisiphone (genus), a genus of butterflies of the subfamily Satyrinae in the family Nymphalidae
• An archaic taxonomic synonym for Agkistrodon, a.k.a. moccasins, a genus of venomous pitvipers found in North America from the United States south to northern Costa Rica
• An archaic taxonomic synonym for Calloselasma, a.k.a. the Malayan pit viper, a monotypic genus created for a venomous pitviper species, C. rhodostoma, that is found in Southeast Asia from Thailand to northern Malaysia and on the island of Java

Other:

• 466 Tisiphone, an asteroid which orbits among the Cybele family of asteroids

Tisiphone is a genus of butterflies of the subfamily Satyrinae in the family Nymphalidae.