Record #77
Harpies
Winged female monsters that pollute, torment, and devour.
Original Text
In Hesiod’s Theogony, the Harpies are winged divinities who wear long loose hair and are swifter than the birds and winds, in the Aeneid (Book III), they are vultures with a woman’s face, sharp curved claws and filthy underparts, and are weak with a hunger they cannot appease. They swoop down from the mountains and plunder tables laid for feasts. They are invulnerable and emit an infectious smell; they gorge all they see, screeching the whole while and fouling everything with excrement. Servius, in his commentaries on Virgil, writes that just as Hecate is Proserpina in hell, Diana on earth, and Luna in heaven, and is called a threefold goddess, so the Harpies are Furies in hell, Harpies on earth, and Dirae (or Demons) in heaven. They are also confused with the Parcae, or Fates.
By order of the gods, the Harpies harried a Thracian king who unveiled men’s futures, or who bought a long life with the price of his eyes, for which he was punished by the sun, whose works he had insulted by choosing blindness. He had prepared a banquet for all his court and the Harpies contaminated and devoured the dishes. The Argonauts put the Harpies to flight; Apollonius of Rhodes and William Morris (The Lifeand DeathofJason) tell the fantastic story. Ariosto in Canto XXXIII of the Furioso transforms the Thracian king into Prester John, fabled emperor of the Abyssinians.
Harpy comes from the Greek harpazeinto snatch or carry away. In the beginning they were wind goddesses, like the Maruts of Vedic myth, who wielded weapons of gold (the lightning) and milked the clouds.
By order of the gods, the Harpies harried a Thracian king who unveiled men’s futures, or who bought a long life with the price of his eyes, for which he was punished by the sun, whose works he had insulted by choosing blindness. He had prepared a banquet for all his court and the Harpies contaminated and devoured the dishes. The Argonauts put the Harpies to flight; Apollonius of Rhodes and William Morris (The Lifeand DeathofJason) tell the fantastic story. Ariosto in Canto XXXIII of the Furioso transforms the Thracian king into Prester John, fabled emperor of the Abyssinians.
Harpy comes from the Greek harpazeinto snatch or carry away. In the beginning they were wind goddesses, like the Maruts of Vedic myth, who wielded weapons of gold (the lightning) and milked the clouds.