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Bestiary of Cryptids & Legendary CreaturesHarpies are swift winged women who snatch food from a hungry seer and confront the wandering Trojans with a prophecy of famine.
Also recorded as Harpy, Harpiai, Aello, Ocypetes, Celaeno
Phineus has food brought to his house, yet hunger is destroying him. Whenever he reaches for a meal, wings descend. The visitors now approaching his door have come for directions; he needs them to make it possible for him to eat. [2]
Read the manuscriptHesiod names the Harpies Aello and Ocypetes, long-haired daughters of Thaumas and Electra, a daughter of Ocean. Iris, the swift divine messenger, is their sister. Their wings keep pace with wind and birds. This brief family portrait in the Theogony does not yet give them the ruined feast by which later readers would know them. That encounter receives its fullest Greek treatment in Apollonius’s Argonautica. [1][2]
The Argonauts reach Phineus after a difficult passage through the Bosporus. Jason leads them aboard the Argo in search of the fleece, and the seer’s knowledge could help them continue. But prophecy is the source of his suffering as well as his usefulness. Apollo gave him the gift; by revealing Zeus’s intentions without restraint, he offended the god whose secrets he could tell. Zeus punished him with blindness, lingering age and the loss of pleasure in food. [2]
In R. C. Seaton’s translation of the Argonautica, Phineus hears the approaching men and recognizes the visitors promised by an oracle. Leaning on his staff, he feels his way along the walls towards the door. Weakness overcomes him at the courtyard threshold. The Argonauts gather around the old man until he can draw breath and speak. Neighbours have continued bringing food when they come to ask the will of heaven; the household has not been abandoned. What no neighbour can prevent is the swoop that takes a meal from his hands. [2]
Phineus appeals especially to Zetes and Calais, the sons of Boreas, god of the North Wind. They are kin by marriage: he once brought their sister Cleopatra home as his wife. The two are moved to tears, but Zetes hesitates. Helping someone whom the gods are punishing could bring punishment upon the helpers. Holding the old man’s hand, he asks for an oath that their intervention will not cost them divine favour. Phineus swears, calling upon Apollo, his own afflictions and the powers below. Only then do the brothers take their places beside him. [2]
The younger men prepare a feast. Scarcely has Phineus touched it when the Harpies dart from the clouds. The heroes shout, but the food is already gone. Zetes and Calais lift their swords and follow the creatures over the sea. Their fingers almost reach the fleeing wings. At the Floating Islands, the pursuit is close to a killing when Iris descends from heaven and orders the brothers to stop. They may not strike the hounds of Zeus. [2]
Iris swears by the waters of Styx that the Harpies will never again approach Phineus’s home. The brothers accept her pledge and turn back, a movement that gives the islands their new name, Strophades, the Islands of Turning. The Harpies withdraw to their den in Crete, while Iris returns to Olympus. Meanwhile, the men who stayed behind wash Phineus, sacrifice sheep and lay a great supper. He eats ravenously among them. They remain awake through the night waiting for the brothers, and the restored seer begins explaining the journey ahead.
Apollonius makes the Harpies audible before they can be stopped: they sweep down with a yell and disappear across the sea. Their crooked beaks take the food; the stench remains after their departure. It is so strong that people cannot bear even to stand nearby. Phineus nevertheless forces down the little they sometimes leave him. His survival is part of the punishment, since it gives the next attack a living victim. [2]
Virgil’s Aeneid gives the creatures female faces, claws in place of hands and bodies covered in feathers. Their faces are marked by perpetual hunger, and they foul the food they seize. The combination brings a human expression into an encounter dominated by predatory movement and bodily disgust. Hesiod’s earlier genealogy leaves most of this anatomy unspecified; Virgil’s fuller image belongs to his own violent meeting on the Strophades. [1][4]
The Harpies’ speed is more than a match for an ordinary pursuer. In Apollonius, they can outstrip the west wind. Even the winged sons of Boreas need the tireless strength Zeus gives them to keep close. The god who imposed Phineus’s suffering also makes its ending possible, though he does not hand the rescuers unrestricted power over the creatures. Iris calls them his hounds. They belong to an authority that remains above both the torment and the rescue. [2]
The Library, an ancient collection of mythological accounts, preserves more than one explanation for Phineus’s blindness. Alongside punishment for foretelling the future, it records the claim that Boreas and the Argonauts blinded him because he had blinded his own sons at their stepmother’s instigation. Another version attributes the punishment to Poseidon after he helped the children of Phrixus find their route from Colchis to Greece. The seer can therefore enter the encounter with a different history, even when his immediate need remains the same. [3]
A fixed household and a moving ship meet in Phineus’s rescue. His neighbours can provision the house but cannot protect its table; the strangers can challenge the attackers because two of them have wings. Their arrival briefly brings an answer from outside the local community. In return, his knowledge reaches beyond his own doorway to a sea passage that could destroy them. Hospitality resumes as an exchange of practical help. [2][3]
The Library gives the pursuit a harsher possible ending. One Harpy falls into the Peloponnesian river Tigres, which thereafter bears her name, Harpys. The other reaches the islands and falls exhausted with her pursuer. Different names accompany the alternatives: Nicothoe or Aellopus for the first, Ocypete or Ocythoe for the second, with another form attributed to Hesiod. The mythographer then names Apollonius’s account as an alternative in which no harm is done and an oath stops the attacks. In the Argonautica itself, it is Iris who swears that oath. [3][2]
The same voyagers later face the Sirens. In the Library, Orpheus counters their music with his own, while Butes alone swims towards them and is rescued by Aphrodite. The contrast lies in what interrupts the travellers: food is taken away at Phineus’s house, while song invites the sailors towards another shore. Wings alone do not explain either encounter; each escape depends on a different companion’s gift. [3]
Apollonius does not end the chase with a corpse. The brothers must recognize the moment at which pursuit has done enough. Iris’s promise restores Phineus’s life without ending the Harpies’ existence. Two oaths hold the episode together: the old man’s assurance permits the intervention, and the goddess’s assurance brings it to a halt. The meal between Phineus and the waiting crew gives that agreement a visible result. He can use what other people have continued to provide. [2]
Virgil brings the Trojans to the Strophades during their search for a new homeland. In John Dryden’s translation, Aeneas’s party lands after a storm and finds cattle and goats without a keeper. They kill animals, invite the gods to share the feast and eat on the grass. The Harpies sweep from the heights, snatch the meat and foul the remainder. A second meal beneath a hollow rock and trees fares no better. Aeneas orders weapons concealed in the grass, ready for the next attack. [4]
The signal sounds, and the men strike. Their swords rebound from the creatures’ feathers. Celaeno remains on a high cliff after the others fly away. She accuses the Trojans of slaughtering their cattle and making war on the islands’ inhabitants. They will reach Italy, she says, but before they build their city, famine will force them to eat the very dishes beneath their food. Aeneas’s father, Anchises, answers with a prayer to avert the threat, then orders the company back to sea. [4]
Much later, beside the Tiber, the Trojans place their food on cakes of bread. When the meal proves too small, they eat those too. Ascanius, Aeneas’s son, smilingly observes that they are eating their plates. Aeneas recognizes a sign of arrival. He recalls his father’s prediction of the same event and declares that their wandering has found its destination. Prayers and a renewed feast follow. The image once spoken as a curse has become something they can recognize without being destroyed by it. [5]
Dante’s Inferno XIII carries the Harpies into a different punishment. In the poem’s severe Christian afterlife, people who died by suicide have become trees in a dark, pathless wood. Harpies nest there, with broad wings, human faces and necks, clawed feet and feathered bellies. Dante explicitly recalls the Trojans’ departure from the Strophades. The creatures have kept their ancient association with torment, but their food is now the leaves of suffering trees. [6]
The traveller hears voices without seeing anyone. At his guide Virgil’s prompting, he breaks a twig from a thorn tree. Blood and words come from the wound. The soul within protests that he was once human and asks for pity. Virgil explains the traveller’s disbelief and invites the injured speaker to tell his story so that his reputation might be repaired in the living world. Later, the soul explains the Harpies’ feeding: tearing the leaves causes pain and opens a way for it to be voiced. Dante’s traveller cannot undo the wound through which he has learned to hear the person.
Ronald Leroy Kowalke returned to that wood in Canto XIII: Harpies, a 1970 etching in his Dante’s Inferno portfolio. The National Gallery of Art records the work as one of ten etchings on wove Rives BFK paper. Its inscription names both the creatures and the canto, in the artist’s hand. That precise reference keeps the image attached to Dante’s speaking trees. The title invites a return to the scene in which seeing a monster is easier than recognizing the human suffering around it. [7][6]
Argonautica II.178–340 follows Phineus from hunger through supper and his first warning to the sailors. Library 1.9.21–22 preserves alternative endings and the passage through the rocks. Aeneid III.209–269 and VII.107–147 connect the spoiled feast to the edible tables. Theogony 265–269 names the sisters; Inferno XIII transforms their feeding. The National Gallery records Kowalke’s named response to that canto. [2][3][4][5][1][6][7]
Hesiod · Theoi Classical Texts Library · Loeb Classical Library 57, 1914 · Translated by H. G. Evelyn-White
265–269
Checked 2026-10-11
Apollonius Rhodius · Theoi Classical Texts Library · Loeb Classical Library 1, 1912 · Translated by R. C. Seaton
II.178–340, through restored supper and first Clashing Rocks advice
Checked 2026-10-11
Pseudo-Apollodorus · Theoi Classical Texts Library · Loeb Classical Library 121, 1921 · Translated by J. G. Frazer
1.9.21–22; Sirens at 1.9.25
Checked 2026-10-11
Artwork
Select a folio to enlarge it. Its caption describes the account, landscape or artistic choices behind the image.
Manuscript checked 2026-10-11. Artistic interpretations © Scott Schubr / Luminary Oddities.
Return to the Bestiary ↑His advice is no longer an unqualified disclosure of everything he knows. Some knowledge must remain with the gods. He does, however, tell the sailors how to approach the Clashing Rocks: send a dove through first, and follow only if it survives. In the Library’s continuation, the bird loses the tip of its tail but gets through. The crew rows into the opening as the rocks recoil, escaping with damage to the stern. The man they have helped to eat gives them the knowledge they need to remain alive. [2][3]
Virgil · Internet Classics Archive, MIT · Dryden English translation, 1697 · Translated by John Dryden
III.209–269, through prayer and departure; Dryden English lines differ
Passage numbers follow the Latin poem; Dryden’s English verse has different line divisions.
Checked 2026-10-11
Virgil · Internet Classics Archive, MIT · Dryden English translation, 1697 · Translated by John Dryden
VII.107–147, through recognition, prayers and renewed feast; Dryden English lines differ
Aeneas recalls Anchises’s prediction here; the earlier island warning is spoken by Celaeno.
Checked 2026-10-11
Dante Alighieri · Project Gutenberg · Longfellow English translation, 1867 · Translated by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
XIII.1–108, especially 10–15 and 100–102
Checked 2026-10-11
National Gallery of Art
1971.8.1.3; Artwork overview, Portfolio Title, Inscriptions
Checked 2026-10-11