The Harpies

Harpy means 'snatcher', and in the earliest sources that is all they are: personified sudden disappearance. When someone vanished without trace, Homer says the Harpies took them. They are storm-winds given a name and a grievance, daughters of the sea-god Thaumas and the Oceanid Electra, and sisters of Iris the rainbow.

The physical description hardened later into birds with women's faces — the same drift that happened to the Sirens. Their names are Aello, Ocypete and Celaeno: squall, swift-flier and dark one.

Their most famous appearance is a punishment detail. The blind seer Phineus had been given the gift of prophecy and used it too freely, revealing the gods' plans, so Zeus set him at a table of food he could never eat. Every time he reached for it the Harpies swooped, snatched what they could, and fouled what was left so nothing was edible.

The Argonauts freed him. Zetes and Calais, winged sons of the north wind, chased the Harpies through the sky and would have killed them, but Iris intervened for her sisters and swore on the Styx that they would leave Phineus alone. In gratitude he told the Argonauts how to get through the Clashing Rocks.

They are a useful reminder that Greek myth distinguishes between a monster and an instrument. The Harpies are not evil; they are enforcement, and they stop the moment the sentence is lifted.