Harpy: Descendancy

Though the number of harpies is sometimes erratic in even the more accurate, and original Greek mythology, the number was settled at three, sister of the names: Celaeno, the dark, or “the darkness though also known as “fleet foot” or Podarge, then Aello “storm swift”, and Ocypete, “the swift wing”. Their home was on Strophades, and their job specifically was to torture travelers as they made their way to Tartarus, –as if the destination wasn’t as bad as the journey. They would also kidnap men, and bring them back to their lair on the rocks of Strophades, and either eat them or just kill them.

Harpies are not the embodiment of disgraced and irritating women, as the more modern belief goes, –originally, they were seen by the Greeks as the personifications of the destructive nature of wind. Likewise, harpies are vicious, cruel, and exceedingly violent in traditional Greek myth. The harpies were sisters to Iris, the Greek personification of the rainbow, who was also a goddess who acted as messenger to the gods, and one of the oldest goddesses who shared parentage from Maia, and a Titan. Thaumas was their father, –he shares his name with a centaur, thus is easily confused as one. He was actually the son of Pontus and Gaia, who married the mother of the harpies, and Iris, the Oceanid Electra. Electra was so famous, she has a syndrome named after her.

However, despite their monstrous form and nature, harpies did also have the ability to bring life into the world. Through a coupling with the spirit or god of the West Wind, Zephyros, one harpy gave birth to the famed “horses of Achilles”, according to the Illiad. Later it was believed that mares could become impregnated by the wind itself, because of their strange heritage.