Harpies were generally depicted as birds with the heads of maidens, faces pale with hunger and long claws on their legs. Roman and Byzantine writers detailed their ugliness.[6][AI-generated source?] Pottery art depicting the harpies featured beautiful women with wings.Ovid described them as human-vultures.[7]
ToHesiod, they were imagined as fair-locked and winged maidens, who flew as fast as the wind:
[T]he Harpyiai (Harpies) of the lovely hair, Okypete (Ocypete) and Aello, and these two in the speed of their wings keep pace with the blowing winds, or birds in flight, as they soar and swoop, high aloft.[8]
Even as early as the time ofAeschylus, harpies were thought to be ugly creatures with wings, and later writers carried their notions of the harpies so far as to represent them as most disgusting monsters. ThePythian priestess ofApollo compares the appearance of theErinyes, chthonic goddesses of vengeance, with those of harpies in the following lines ofThe Eumenides:
Before this man an extraordinary band of women [i.e. the Erinyes] slept, seated on thrones. No! Not women, but rather Gorgons I call them; and yet I cannot compare them to forms of Gorgons either. Once before I saw some creatures in a painting [i.e. harpies], carrying off the feast ofPhineus; but these [i.e. the Erinyes] are wingless in appearance, black, altogether disgusting; they snore with repulsive breaths, they drip from their eyes hateful drops; their attire is not fit to bring either before the statues of the gods or into the homes of men.[9]
The harpies seem originally to have been wind spirits (personifications of the destructive nature of wind).[12][AI-generated source?] Their name means 'snatchers' or 'swift robbers',[13] and they were said to steal food from their victims while they were eating and carry evildoers (especially those who have killed their families) to theErinyes. When a person suddenly disappeared from theEarth, it was said that he had been carried off by the harpies.[14] Thus, they carried off the daughters of KingPandareus and gave them as servants to the Erinyes.[15] In this form they were agents of punishment who abducted people and tortured them on their way toTartarus. They were depicted as vicious, cruel, and violent.
Hesiod calls them two "lovely-haired" creatures, the daughters ofThaumas and theOceanidElectra and sisters ofIris.[8][AI-generated source?]Hyginus, however, cited a certain Ozomene[21] as the mother of the harpies but he also recounted that Electra was also the mother of these beings in the same source. This can be explained by the fact that Ozomene was another name for Electra. The harpies possibly were siblings of the river-godHydaspes[22] andArke,[23] as they were called sisters of Iris and children of Thaumas. According toValerius, Typhoeus (Typhon) was said to be the father of these monsters[16] while a different version byServius told that the harpies were daughters ofPontus andGaea or ofPoseidon.[24]
They were namedAello ("storm swift") andOcypete ("the swift wing"),[25] andVirgil addedCelaeno ("the dark") as a third.[26][27]Homer knew of a harpy named Podarge ("fleet-foot").[28] Aello is sometimes also spelled Aellopus or Nicothoe; Ocypete is sometimes also spelled Ocythoe or Ocypode.
Homer called the harpyPodarge as the mother of the two horses (Balius and Xanthus) ofAchilles sired by the West WindZephyrus[29] while according toNonnus, Xanthus and Podarkes, horses of the Athenian kingErechtheus, were born to Aello and the North WindBoreas.[30] Other progeny of Podarge were Phlogeus and Harpagos, horses given byHermes to theDioscuri, who competed for the chariot-race in celebration of the funeral games ofPelias.[31] The swift horseArion was also said to begotten by loud-piping Zephyrus on a harpy (probably Podarge), as attested byQuintus Smyrnaeus.[32]
Names and family of harpies according to various sources
A harpy inUlisse Aldrovandi'sMonstrorum Historia, Bologna, 1642.Amedieval depiction of a harpy as a bird-woman.
The most celebrated story in which the harpies play a part is that of KingPhineus ofThrace, who was given the gift ofprophecy by Zeus. Angry that Phineus gave away the god's secret plan, Zeus punished him by blinding him and putting him on an island with a buffet of food which he could never eat because the harpies always arrived to steal the food out of his hands before he could satisfy his hunger. Later writers add that they either devoured the food themselves, or that they dirtied it by dropping upon it some stinking substance, so as to render it unfit to be eaten.
This continued until the arrival ofJason and theArgonauts. Phineus promised to instruct them respecting the course they had to take, if they would deliver him from the harpies. TheBoreads, sons ofBoreas, the North Wind, who also could fly, succeeded in driving off the harpies. According to an ancient oracle, the harpies were to perish by the hands of the Boreades, but the Boreades were to die if they could not overtake the harpies. The harpies fled, but one fell into the river Tigris, which was hence called Harpys, and the other reached the Echinades, and as she never returned, the islands were called Strophades. But being worn out with fatigue, she fell down simultaneously with her pursuer; and, as they promised no further to molest Phineus, the two harpies were not deprived of their lives.[33] According to others, the Boreades were on the point of killing the harpies, when Iris or Hermes appeared and commanded the conquerors to set them free, promising that Phineus would not be bothered by the harpies again. "The dogs of great Zeus" then returned to their "cave in Minoan Crete". Other accounts said that both the harpies as well as the Boreades died.[34] Thankful for their help, Phineus told the Argonauts how to pass theSymplegades.[35]
Tzetzes explained the origin of the myth pertaining to Phineus, the harpies, and the Boreades in his account. In this late version of the myth it was said that Phineus, due to his old age, became blind, and he has two daughters namedEraseia andHarpyreia. These maidens lived a very libertine and lazy life, abandoning themselves to poverty and fatal famine. Then Zetes and Calais snatched them away somehow, and they disappeared from those places ever since. From this account all myths about them [i.e., the harpies] started, as was also retold by Apollonius in his own story of the Argonauts.[36][AI-generated source?]
Aeneas encountered harpies on the Strophades as they repeatedly made off with the feast theTrojans were setting.Celaeno utters a prophecy: the Trojans will be so hungry they will eat their tables before they reach the end of their journey. The Trojans fled in fear.
Here the repellent harpies make their nests, Who drove the Trojans from the Strophades With dire announcements of the coming woe. They have broad wings, with razor sharp talons and a human neck and face, Clawed feet and swollen, feathered bellies; they caw Their lamentations in the eerie trees.[37]
In Canto XXXIII ofOrlando Furioso, authorLudovico Ariosto has the Christian Ethiopian Emperor Senapo (Prester John) afflicted with harpies under circumstances nearly identical to those in the myth of Phineus. He has been blinded by God himself, and the harpies contaminate his every meal. Senapo is delivered from this torment byAstolfo, a paladin from the court ofCharlemagne.[38]
Harpies also found a role inShakespeare'sTempest, where the spiritAriel tortured the antagonists Antonio, Sebastian, and Alonso for their crimes by staging a banquet scene similar to that in theAeneid.
Theharpy eagle is a real bird named after the mythological animal.
The term is often used metaphorically to refer to a nasty or annoying woman. InShakespeare'sMuch Ado About Nothing, Benedick spots the sharp-tonguedBeatrice approaching and exclaims to the prince, Don Pedro, that he would do an assortment of arduous tasks for him "rather than hold three words conference with this harpy!"
In theMiddle Ages, the harpy, referred to in German as theJungfrauenadler [de][39] or "maiden eagle" (although it may not have been modeled after the original harpy of Greek mythology), became a popularcharge inheraldry, particularly inEast Frisia, seen on, among others, thecoats-of-arms ofRietberg,Liechtenstein, and theCirksena. Among the earliest examples is the city of Nuremberg's device, which used the harpy as early as 1243.[40]
The harpy also appears in British heraldry, although it remains a peculiarly German device.[39]
^Aeschylus,Eumenides50 This article incorporates text from this source, which is in thepublic domain.
^Virgil,Aeneid 3.216 This article incorporates text from this source, which is in thepublic domain.
^Hyginus,Fabulae14 This article incorporates text from this source, which is in thepublic domain.
^Tzetzes ad Lycophron,167:"Allegorically, harpies are the winds, as they are now, from the act of flying in the air." &653"and the winds are called harpies and names of winged female demons"
^Virgil."Book III" .Aeneid (Williams). Translated by Williams, Theodore – viaWikisource.
^Hyginus, Gaius.Fabulae (in Latin) – viaWikisource.Zetes et Calais Aquilonis uenti et Orithyiae Erechthei filiae filii; hi capita pedesque pennatos habuisse feruntur crinesque caeruleos, qui peruio aere usi sunt. hi aues Harpyias tres, Thaumantis et Ozomenes filias, Aellopoda Celaeno Ocypeten, fugauerunt a Phineo Agenoris filio eodem tempore quo Iasoni comites ad Colchos proficiscebantur...
Gaius Valerius Flaccus,Argonautica translated by Mozley, J H. Loeb Classical Library Volume 286. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1928.Online version at theio.com.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca,Tragedies. Translated by Miller, Frank Justus. Loeb Classical Library Volumes. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1917.Online version at theio.com.
Tzetzes, John,Histories or Chiliades unedited translation by Ana Untila (Book I), Gary Berkowitz (II-IV), Konstantinos Ramiotis (V-VI), Vasiliki Dogani (VII-VIII), Jonathan Alexander (IX-X), Muhammad Syarif Fadhlurrahman (XI), and Nikolaos Giallousis (XII-XIII), with translation adjustments by Brady Kiesling affecting about 15 percent of the total . These translations are based on the 1826 Greek edition of Theophilus Kiesslingius.Online version at the Topos Text Project.
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