Harpies
The Snatchers
HAR-peez
Winged snatchers who carry people off without a trace and foul whatever food they leave behind.
The Story
Granddaughters of Oceanus through Thaumas and the Oceanid Electra, the Harpies are the personified squall: when someone vanished and no body turned up, the Harpies had taken them. Hesiod describes them as fair-haired and faster than birds or winds, which is a long way from the later carrion-hags.
Their set piece is the punishment of Phineus, a blind seer who told mortals too much of the future. Every time food was set in front of him they seized it and fouled the rest, so that he starved in sight of a full table, until the Argonauts arrived and the two winged sons of the North Wind, the only crewmen who could match them for speed, chased them off for good.
Did You Know?
- The harpy eagle of Central and South America is named for them, the largest eagle in the Americas, and one that hunts monkeys out of the canopy.
- The Harpy Tomb from Xanthos, now in the British Museum, shows winged female figures carrying off small human forms. Whether they are Harpies or Sirens has been argued for two centuries.
- In Hesiod they are lovely-haired and swift as the wind. The hideous filth-spreading version comes from Virgil, and it is Virgil's that stuck.