The Eumenides, 1

At Delphi, the Pythia (oracle) emerges to give her morning blessing.  She pays homage to the pantheon of gods, and especially to Apollo, to whom the temple is dedicated.  Turning to go inside the temple, she is horrified by the sight: a distraught man (Orestes) in blood-stained clothes; and in the corner, asleep, the hideous Furies.  But then she sees Apollo himself, and departs.

Apollo pledges his continued protection to Orestes, who is beseeching him under high anxiety over his fate.  He has been wandering, and chased by the Furies, since the murder of Clytemnestra.  Apollo assures him that he was only doing the express will of the god-- Apollo himself shoulders the murder.  They leave.

The ghost of Clytemnestra arises from Hades, where she's been having a hell of a bad time.  All there look down on her for her own act of murder, none give her sympathy for her son's.  She scolds the Furies for not devoting themselves to the job, and after all the sacrifices she has sent their way [also during her life?].  But she can't even awaken them, as hard as she screams...

Finally the Furies (now the Chorus) awake, and bemoan that they must continue their pursuit of Orestes.  They hate their job.  They can't get it done while he is under the protection of Apollo-- he, a performer of matricide!  But they are avowed to continue.

Apollo confronts the Furies face-to-face, with neither party backing down.  Apollo tries to kick them out of his temple, and makes fun of their grotesque appearance.  All claim righteousness for the part they play: the Furies, for chasing a matricide, blaming Apollo for allowing it to happen; Apollo, for instigating the murder as retribution for Clytemnestra's murder of her husband.  And how come the Furies aren't upset over that, if they chase down the murderers of family blood?  Argument over the familial status of spouses, Apollo claiming that a denial of such is an insult even to Zeus and Hera themselves, and to Aphrodite, and to all that is holy.  They mean to take this disagreement before Athena to be judged.

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We have here a huge problem of multiplied duties interfering with one another.  Is this a grand critique of the Greeks' religious system, or will it be resolved properly in the end?  It seems that the rigid system of duties performed out of honor can't help but lead to tighter and tighter contradictions, and even the gods cannot escape the illogic of it all.