Orestes appears also as a central figure in the legends of many other places. In Cappadocia he introduced the worship of Artemis Tauropolos at Comana and Castabala. Near Gythium in Laconia was a stone called Zeus Cappotas; here the madness left Orestes. In Trcezen there was before the temple of Artemis a stone on which Orestes was purified, and a hut in front of the temple of Apollo Thearius in which he stayed till the purification was accomplished. Seven stadia from Megalopolis, on the left of the road to Messene, was a shrine of the Maniae, i.e. , the Erinnyes. Immediately beyond it was a tumulus, on the summit of which was an upright stone like a finger, Δακτύλου Κίνημα, where Orestes bit off his own finger in his madness. Beyond the mound was another shrine of the Erinnyes, worshipped now as Eumenides in association with the Charites (see Graces). Here the Erinnyes, who had hitherto appeared black to Orestes, appeared white to him, and the madness left him. Then he cut off his hair as an offering at a place 'K.oυρeiov. The name of the tumulus is clearly connected with the belief still frequently occurring that a hand appears out of the tomb of any person who has murdered a mother or been murdered by her. The tumulus itself was obviously one of those graves, which were especially common in Lydia, a tumulus with a pillar on the apex; such tumuli were found in Laconia, where, as Athenaeus says, they were called "the graves of the Phrygians who came with Pelops.” In these legends it is apparent that Orestes is the guilt - laden mortal who is purified from his sin by the grace of the gods; his purification is a type of the merciful justice which the gods intend should be shown to all persons whose crime is mitigated by extenuating circumstances. These legends belong to an age when higher ideas of law and of social duty were being established; the implacable blood-feud of primitive society gives place to a fair trial of the culprit, and in Athens, when the votes of the judges are evenly divided, mercy prevails. In the religion of Delphi similar ideas underlie the ancient festival Septerion: in it Apollo himself is the murderer, and his example sets forth to mankind the method of purification which heaven opens to such sinners, if they are not entirely and wilfully guilty. Orestes is not a figure of the Apollo religion, but is clearly connected with the cultus of the Erinnyes; and his relation to these goddesses, and the intention of the myth, are very plain in the Megalopolitan legend above mentioned. The Troezenian legend has no appearance of being really ancient, just as the tales that connect Orestes with the district Orestea in Arcadia, or Orestias in Epirus, are obviously fictions of a later time. On the other hand, the Orestes of Tauric and Cappadocian legend is a different person, connected with the spread of Artemis-worship; it is not improbable that a similarity of name caused the identification of two heroes belonging respectively to the cultus of Artemis and of the Erinnyes.

Orestes had an historic part assigned to him as Greek mythology became systematized. Phocian auxiliaries restored him to the throne of his father, and, according to Hellanicus, he began the Aeolic migration to Asia Minor. He was buried on the road from Tegea to Thyrea, and Herodotus (it 67) tells a quaint story of the manner in which the Spartans discovered his bones and, in obedience to an oracle, carried them to Sparta.