Harpy (from Latin: Harpyia, Greek: Άρπυια, Harpuia, pl. Άρπυιαι, Harpuiai) in Greek mythology, the Harpies ("snatchers"^[1]) were mainly winged death-spirits (Harrison 1903, p 176ff), best known for constantly stealing all food from Phineas. The literal meaning of the word seems to be "that which grabs" as it comes from the ancient Greek word αρπάξ which means to grab. Image File history File links Harpy. ... A legendary creature is a mythological or folkloric creature (often known as fabulous creatures in historical literature). ... This article is about a biological term. ... This article is about the mythological sea nymphs. ... For other uses, see Sphinx (disambiguation). ... This article is about the mythological creatures. ... For other uses, see Latin (disambiguation). ... The bust of Zeus found at Otricoli (Sala Rotonda, Museo Pio-Clementino, Vatican) Greek mythology is the body of stories belonging to the Ancient Greeks concerning their gods and heroes, the nature of the world and the origins and significance of their own cult and ritual practices. ... In Greek mythology, Phineas (also spelled Phineus) was a King of Thrace, son of Agenor, who had the gift of prophecy. ...

The Harpy could also bring life. A Harpy was the mother by the West Wind Zephyros of the horses of Achilles (Iliad xvi. 160). In this context Jane Harrison adduced the notion in Virgil's Georgics that mares became gravid by the wind alone, marvelous to say (iii.274). Zephyr and Hyakinth; Attic red figure cup from Tarquinia, circa 480 BCE. Boston Museum of Fine Arts. ... For other uses, see Achilles (disambiguation). ... title page of the Rihel edition of ca. ... For other uses, see Virgil (disambiguation). ... Georgics Book III, Shepherd with Flocks, Vatican The Georgics, published in 29 BC, is the second major work by the Latin poet Virgil. ...

Though Hesiod (Theogony) calls them two "lovely-haired" creatures, Harpies as beautiful winged bird-women are a late development, in parallel with the transformation of the "Siren, a creature malign though seductive in Homer, but gradually softened by the Athenian imagination into a sorrowful death angel" (Harrison p 177). On a vase in the Berlin Museum (Harrison, fig 19), a harpy has a small figure of a hero in each claw, but her head is recognizably a Gorgon, with goggling eyes, protruding tongue and fangs. Roman bronze bust, the so-called Pseudo-Seneca, now identified by some as possibly Hesiod Hesiod (Hesiodos, ) was an early Greek poet and rhapsode, who presumably lived around 700 BC. Hesiod and Homer, with whom Hesiod is often paired, have been considered the earliest Greek poets whose work has survived... This article is about the mythological sea nymphs. ... This article is about the Greek mythological monster. ...

Mythology

Harpy in Ulisse Aldrovandi, Monstrorum Historia , Bologna, 1642

A medieval depiction of a Harpy as a bird-woman.

The Harpies were sisters of Iris, daughters of Typhon and Echidna. Image File history File linksMetadata Size of this preview: 591 × 599 pixels Full resolution (636 × 645 pixel, file size: 94 KB, MIME type: image/jpeg) Ulyssis Aldrovandi; Monstrorum historia; Bologna 1642 from cs wp (smazat) (teď) 17:25, 7. ... Image File history File linksMetadata Size of this preview: 591 × 599 pixels Full resolution (636 × 645 pixel, file size: 94 KB, MIME type: image/jpeg) Ulyssis Aldrovandi; Monstrorum historia; Bologna 1642 from cs wp (smazat) (teď) 17:25, 7. ... Ulisse Aldrovandi Ulisse Aldrovandi (11 September 1522 - 10 November 1605) was an Italian naturalist, the moving force behind Bolognas botanical garden, one of the first in Europe. ... Image File history File links Harpyie. ... Image File history File links Harpyie. ... The Middle Ages formed the middle period in a traditional schematic division of European history into three ages: the classical civilization of Antiquity, the Middle Ages, and modern times. ... Iris, by Luca Giordano In Greek mythology, Iris is the personification of the rainbow and messenger of the gods. ... Zeus darting his lightning at Typhon, Chalcidian black-figured hydria, ca. ... In the most ancient layers of Greek mythology Echidna (ekhis, meaning she viper) was called the Mother of All Monsters. Echidna was described by Hesiod as a female monster spawned in a cave, who mothered with her mate Typhoeus (or Typhon) every major monster in the Greek myths, (Theogony, 295...

Phineas, a king of Thrace, had the gift of prophesy. Zeus, angry that Phineas revealed too much, punished him by putting him on an island with a buffet of food which he could never eat. The Harpies always arrived and stole the food out of his hands right before he could satisfy his hunger, and befouled the remains. This continued until the arrival of Jason and the Argonauts. The Boreads, sons of Boreas, the North Wind, who also could fly, succeeded in driving the Harpies and killing one of them, as a request from Iris, who promised that Phineas would not be bothered by the Harpies again, and "the dogs of great Zeus" returned to their "cave in Minoan Crete". Thankful for their help, Phineas told the Argonauts how to pass the Symplegades. (Argonautica, book II; Ovid XIII, 710; Virgil III, 211, 245). In Greek mythology, Phineas (also spelled Phineus) was a King of Thrace, son of Agenor, who had the gift of prophecy. ... For other uses, see Monarch (disambiguation). ... Thracian Tomb of Kazanlak  Thrace (Bulgarian: , Greek: , Attic Greek: ThrāíkÄ“ or ThrēíkÄ“, Latin: , Turkish: ) is a historical and geographic area in southeast Europe. ... For prophecy in the context of revealed religions see Prophet. ... A Chinese buffet restaurant in the U.S. A buffet (buh-FAY or /bÉ™.ˈfei/) is a meal-serving system where patrons serve themselves. ... This article is about the hero from Greek mythology. ... The Boreads, in Greek mythology, were Calais and Zetes. ... There was one person and one god known as Boreas in Greek mythology. ... Iris, by Luca Giordano In Greek mythology, Iris is the personification of the rainbow and messenger of the gods. ... In Greek mythology, the Symplegades were a pair of rocks at the Hellespont that clashed together randomly. ... The Argonautica (Greek: ) is a Greek epic poem written by Apollonius Rhodius in the 3rd century BC. The only surviving Hellenistic epic, the Argonautica tells the myth of the voyage of Jason and the Argonauts to retrieve the Golden Fleece from the mythical land of Colchis. ... For other uses, see Ovid (disambiguation) Publius Ovidius Naso (March 20, 43 BC – 17 AD) was a Roman poet known to the English-speaking world as Ovid who wrote on topics of love, abandoned women and mythological transformations. ... For other uses, see Virgil (disambiguation). ...

In this form they were agents of punishment who abducted people and tortured them on their way to Tartarus. They were vicious, cruel and violent. They lived on Strophades. They were usually seen as the personifications of the destructive nature of wind. The Harpies in this tradition, now thought of as three sisters instead of the original two, were: Aello ("storm swift"), Celaeno ("the dark") — also known as Podarge ("fleet-foot") — and Ocypete ("the swift wing"). This article is about the deity and the place in Greek mythology. ... Strofades (in Greek Strofadhes; in Latin Strophades; also Stamphane Islands; Strivali) is a small group of Greek islands in the Ionian Islands. ... In Greek mythology,, Aello was one of Hippolytes Amazons. ... In Greek mythology, Celaeno referred to several different beings. ... In Greek mythology, Podarge (fleet-foot) referred to several different beings. ... In Greek mythology, Harpies (robbers) were first beautiful winged women: Hesiod (Theogony) calls them as two lovely-haired creatures. ...

Aeneas encountered Harpies on the Strophades as they repeatedly made off with the feast the Trojans were setting. Celaeno cursed them, saying the Trojans will be so hungry they will eat their tables before they reach the end of their journey. The Trojans fled in fear. Aeneas flees burning Troy, Federico Barocci, 1598. ... Walls of the excavated city of Troy This article is about the city of Troy / Ilion as described in the works of Homer, and the location of an ancient city associated with it. ... In Greek mythology, Celaeno referred to several different beings. ...

Heraldry

In the Middle Ages, the harpy, often called the "virgin eagle", became a popular charge in heraldry, particularly in East Frisia, seen on, among others, the coats-of-arms of Reitburg, Liechtenstein, and the Cirksenas. The Middle Ages formed the middle period in a traditional schematic division of European history into three ages: the classical civilization of Antiquity, the Middle Ages, and modern times, beginning with the Renaissance. ... In heraldry, a charge is an image occupying the field on an escutcheon (or shield). ... Heraldry in its most general sense encompasses all matters relating to the duties and responsibilities of officers of arms. ... The landscape to the north of Greetsiel, in East Frisia. ... A coat of arms or armorial bearings (often just arms for short), in European tradition, is a design belonging to a particular person (or group of people) and used by them in a wide variety of ways. ...

Theories of origin

R.D. Barnett suggests in "Ancient Oriental Influences on Archaic Greece" — an essay in The Aegean and the Near East, Saul S. Weinberg, ed. (Locust Valley, N.Y.,1956) — that the Harpies were originally adapted from the ornaments on bronze caldrons from Urartu: Urartu at its greatest extent 743 BC Urartu (Biainili in Urartian) was an ancient kingdom in the mountainous plateau between Asia Minor, Mesopotamia, and Caucasus mountains, later known as the Armenian Highland, and it centered around Lake Van (present-day eastern Turkey). ...

These made such an impression in Greece that they seem to have given rise to the siren type in archaic Greek art, and as they appeared to flutter at the rim of such noble cooking vessels, apparently gave rise to the familiar Greek legend of Phineus and the Harpies, who are thus depicted in Greek art. The very name of Phineus, the victim of their persecutions, may be nothing but a corruption of the name of a king of Urartu, Ishpuinish or Ushpina (ca. 820 B.C.), who was perhaps associated by the Greek merchants with these vessels.^[2]

Other scholars point out that this theory is based upon the idea that the Harpies were bird monsters with human heads, which was not true in the original myths.

In their winged human form, the Harpies are no different from a large number of Greek divinities and as such would not need a special explanation for how they came to be. The later bird composite form is considered by most authors to have been a confusion with an early depiction of the Sirens as bird women. In Greek mythology, the Sirens or Seirenes (Greek Σειρῆνας) were sea nymphs who lived on an island called Sirenum scopuli which was surrounded by cliffs and rocks. ...

Harpies in fiction

The familiar figures of harpies, with their composite form and violent nature, are much employed in video games and other products of market-directed culture. Image File history File links Broom_icon. ...

• Harpies appear in Dante's Divine Comedy, in Canto XIII of the Inferno, where they hound suicides. They also appear, clearly in reference to Dante, in The Amber Spyglass, the third book of Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials, when Lyra and Will journey to the land of the dead to rescue Lyra's friend Roger. The harpies have their traditional Greek role of escorting the spirits of the dead in Pullman's book, and Lyra persuades them to help guide the dead out of limbo/hell to peace.

• In the Playstation video game Suikoden 2, harpies are encountered towards the middle of the game as semi-weak enemies.

• In William Shakespeare's "The Tempest", the spirit Ariel disguises itself as a harpy to deliver a message of its master, Prospero.

• In many fantasy role-playing games, such as Dungeons & Dragons and Fighting Fantasy, Harpies are relatives - or maybe even the same species under another name - of the Sirens, and consequently possess the ability to hypnotize their victims by singing.

• In The Last Unicorn (film), a Harpy, captured by Mommy Fortuna, resembles a giant vulture with 3 breasts of a woman. The Harpy's name is Celaeno(spelled Celeno in this work), "The Darkness", a lesser known harpy of Greek mythology. The Film is based on the novel The Last Unicorn by Award Winning Fantasy Author, Peter S. Beagle which features a more traditional harpy.

• A Harpy guards the area above the volcano in the 8-bit computer game Magicland Dizzy.

• Harpy is Monster in My Pocket #21. In the video game, they appear in threes at the stage 4 construction site.

• In Warcraft 3, the expansion and World of Warcraft the harpies are a fierce and barbarous race living in tribes. See also Harpies at the Warcraft race page.

• In the MMOG EVE Online, the Harpy is a so-called Assault Frigate for the Caldari race, designed as a very powerful railgun platform with strong defenses.

• In the TV show Charmed Harpies are powerful female demons. The ones seen have dark skin and are dressed in black with long black talon like finger nails. They have super-strength and can shoot small energy blasts from their hands.

• In the Yu-Gi-Oh! trading card game, there is a set of attractive harpy monsters known as "Harpie Lady", which originated from Mai Valentine's deck in the manga and anime. They were originally sex themed in the Japanese uncut versions.

• In Spirited Away, Yubaba owns a harpy which is later turned into a hummingbird.

• In God of War, the Harpies are a small, frequently encountered enemy, and servants of Ares.

• In Command & Conquer: Tiberian Sun, the Harpy is a light helicopter used by the Brotherhood of Nod.

• In the PC game, Guild Wars Nightfall, the Skree are race of bird-people based on the Harpies.

• In the Castlevania series of games (most notably Symphony of the Night and later installments following that games formula) Harpies often appear as enemies, usually in the Clock Tower area of the game.

• In the Serious Sam series of PC and console games the Scythian Witch-Harpy appears throughout various stages of the game as a standard airborne enemy creature that slash and have a projectile attack.

• In the PC game, King's Quest V: Absence Makes the Heart Go Yonder! King Graham encounters harpies on an island en route to Mordack's castle, Graham escapes being eaten by them when he plays a lyre (hence the reason why they are called "harp-ies"), the creatures change their minds and instead fight over the instrument.

• In the animated series She-Ra, Harpies are an evil race of beings who live in a dark area of Etheria called Talon Mountain. They are lead by a Harpy named Hunga.

• In an episode of Hercules: The Legendary Journeys called "Beanstalks and Bad Eggs", three Harpies hatch out of Golden eggs.

• In Xena: Warrior Princess, Harpies appear in the episode "Mortal Beloved". They guard the castle were Hades is trapped.

• In Tomb Raider: The Last Revelation Harpys were enemies in the Alexandria levels Pharos Temple Of Isis & Cleopatra's palace, They could perform two kinds of attacks. They can either fire energy bolts at Lara Croft or attack her with their talons.

• In Vampire The Masquerade Harpies are the keepers of the Social Order in the sect known as the Camarilla. They are the rumor mongers, and keep track of status. They rival Elders in social power.

• Fans of Neon Genesis Evangelion generally refer to the vicious, bird-like MP Evas that appear in End of Evangelion as Harpies.

• In the computer game Cythera, harpies are smallist, greyish white, manta-ray-like magical creatures that have the ability to make the MPC loose control.

• In the MMORPG RuneScape, harpies are found as Harpie Bug Swarms, a Slayer monster found on the island of Karamja.

• In the Final Fantasy series of video games, harpies are encountered in battle.

• In The Adventures of Sinbad TV Series, Harpies are frequent monsters that appear throughout the series. Some usually are under the employment of the evil sorcerer Turok and his daughter Rumina.

• In The Shadow Thieves Philonecron chains Mr. Metos to a cliff and sends harpies on him.

• In the Super Sentai series Mahou Sentai Magiranger and its counterpart from the Power Rangers series Power Rangers: Mystic Force there is a harpy based monster named Hades Beastwoman Peewee Harpy who is known in Mystic Force as Screamer.

• In the MMORPG LastChaos, harpies are a frequently found enemy in the game world of Dratan.

• In the RPG/RTS hybrid Spellforce 2, harpies are enemy flying units.

DANTE is also a digital audio network. ... Dante shown holding a copy of The Divine Comedy, next to the entrance to Hell, the seven terraces of Mount Purgatory and the city of Florence, in Michelinos fresco. ... The Amber Spyglass is the third and final novel in the His Dark Materials series, written by British novelist Philip Pullman, and published in 2000. ... Philip Pullman CBE (born October 19, 1946) is an English writer. ... The trilogy (U.K versions), in order of succession from left to right. ... This article is in need of attention from an expert on the subject. ... William Shakespeare (National Portrait Gallery), in the famous Chandos portrait, artist and authenticity unconfirmed. ... For other uses, see The Tempest (disambiguation). ... This article is about the role-playing game. ... For a list of Fighting Fantasy media, see List of Fighting Fantasy gamebooks Fighting Fantasy is a series of single-player role-playing gamebooks created by Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone, originally published by Puffin and now by Wizard Books. ... In Greek mythology, the Sirens or Seirenes (Greek Σειρῆνας) were sea nymphs who lived on an island called Sirenum scopuli which was surrounded by cliffs and rocks. ... The Last Unicorn is a 1982 fantasy film, based on the novel written by Peter S. Beagle, and adapted by him for the screenplay. ... In Greek mythology, Celaeno referred to several different beings. ... For the 1982 feature film based on the novel, see The Last Unicorn (film). ... Peter Soyer Beagle (born in 1939) is an American fantasist and author of novels, nonfiction, and screenplays. ... The Yolkfolk as shown on the Magicland Dizzy title screen. ... Monster in My Pocket was a toy line developed by Morrison Entertainment Group, headed by Joe Morrison and John Weems, and released by Matchbox in 1990 consisting of small, soft plastic monsters from religion and mythology, literary fantasy, and unexplained phenomena. ... Computer and video games redirects here. ... Cranes are essential in large construction projects, such as this skyscraper In project architecture and civil engineering, construction is the building or assembly of any infrastructure. ... Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos, released by Blizzard Entertainment in 2002, is a real-time strategy computer game and the second sequel to Warcraft. ... World of Warcraft (commonly abbreviated as WoW) is a massive multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) developed by Blizzard Entertainment and is the fourth game in the Warcraft series, excluding expansion packs and the cancelled Warcraft Adventures: Lord of the Clans. ... A massive multiplayer online game (MMOG) is a type of computer game that enables hundreds or thousands of players to simultaneously interact in a game world they are connected to via the Internet. ... EVE Online is a persistent world multiplayer online game set in space. ... For other uses, see Charm. ... Serialized in Weekly Shonen Jump Shonen Jump BANZAI! Shonen Jump Comics House Original run 1996 – March 2004 Volumes 38 volumes, with 343 total chapters TV anime: Yu-Gi-Oh! Director Various Studio Toei Animation Network TV Asahi Original run April 4, 1998 – October 10, 1998 Episodes 27 TV anime: Yu... Mai Kujaku (孔雀 舞 Kujaku Mai), known as Mai Valentine in the English anime and English video games, is a character in the manga Yu-Gi-Oh! and the anime Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters (known as simply Yu-Gi-Oh! in English-speaking countries). ... Spirited Away , lit. ... God of War is a video game for the Sony PlayStation 2 console released on March 22, 2005. ... The Brotherhood of Nod, often simply referred to as Nod or The Brotherhood, is one of three prominent fictional factions in the Tiberian series of Westwood Studios Command & Conquer real-time strategy video games. ... Guild Wars Nightfall is a fantasy Competitive/Co-operative Online RolePlaying Game (CORPG) and the third stand-alone campaign in the Guild Wars computer game series developed by ArenaNet. ... This article is about the entire video game series. ... Serious Sam is the title of a series of first-person shooters created by the Croatian company Croteam. ... “Lyres” redirects here. ... It has been suggested that this article be split into articles entitled She-Ra (character) and She-Ra: Princess of Power, accessible from a disambiguation page. ... Etheria is a fictional planet in the Masters of the Universe continuity, introduced in the animated film The Secret of the Sword. ... Hercules: The Legendary Journeys was a television series produced from 1995 to 1999, very loosely based on the tales of the classical culture hero Hercules. ... Xena. ... This article is about the city in Egypt. ... PHAROS IPA: [feÉ™.rÊŒs] (Platform for Search of Audiovisual Resources Across Online Spaces) is the name given to a planned (and currently being developed) European Internet multimedia search engine led by the Italian system integrator Engineering Ingegneria Informatica SpA. // The PHAROS platform, co-financed by the European Commission and... This article discusses the ancient goddess Isis. ... This is a disambiguation page — a navigational aid which lists other pages that might otherwise share the same title. ... Lara Croft is a fictional British video game character and the heroine of the Tomb Raider series of video games, movies, and comic books. ... Vampire: The Masquerade (Revised Edition) cover. ... The Neon Genesis Evangelion franchise is a multi-billion dollar umbrella of Japanese media properties generally owned by the anime studio Gainax. ... The End of Evangelion (Japanese: 新世紀エヴァンゲリオン 劇場版, Shin seiki Evangelion Gekijō-ban) is an animated movie by Hideaki Anno. ... Kythira, also seen as Kythera, Cythera or Tsirigo, is an island, one of the Ionian Islands. ... An image from World of Warcraft, one of the largest commercial MMORPGs as of 2004, based on active subscriptions. ... RuneScape is a Java-based MMORPG operated by Jagex Ltd. ... This article is about the Final Fantasy franchise. ... This article or section is incomplete and may require expansion and/or cleanup. ... The Shadow Thieves are a thieves guild based in the fictional city of Athkatla, a large port city within the Dungeons & Dragons Forgotten Realms campaign setting. ... 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Harpies in reality

The American Harpy Eagle is a real bird named after the mythological animal. Binomial name (Linnaeus, 1758) The American Harpy Eagle (Harpia harpyja) is a neotropical eagle, often simply called the Harpy Eagle. ...

In modern culture, the term is often used to refer to a nasty or annoying woman. For example, in the 2005 movie Sahara, the character Al Giordino states, 'Wasn't there some point where he stood back and said, "Bob, don't take that job! Bob, don't marry that harpy!" You know?'^[3] In another example, Ann Coulter created a controversy when she referred to some widows of 9-11 attack victims (Jersey Girls) as "harpies." Ann Hart Coulter (born December 8, 1961)[1] is an American best-selling author, columnist and political commentator. ... The Jersey Girls or Jersey Widows is a commonly-used moniker referring to four women from New Jersey, (Kristen Breitweiser, Patty Casazza, Lorie Van Auken, and Mindy Kleinberg), whose husbands were killed in the September 11, 2001 attacks. ...

References

1. ^ The unelided form arepuia is inscribed on a black-figured vessel in Berlin illustrated in Jane Ellen Harrison, Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion, 1903, fig.18. The major painted decor of the vase is the slaying of the Gorgon.
2. ^ Greek Mythology - Myths Concerning Aia
3. ^ imdb.com - Memorable quotes for Sahara

The black-figure pottery technique is a style of ancient Greek pottery painting in which the decoration appears as black silhouettes on a red background. ... Jane Ellen Harrison (September 9, 1850–April 5, 1928) was a ground-breaking English classical scholar and feminist. ... This article is about the Greek mythological monster. ...

See also

• Sirens (for comparable dire bird-women in Greek mythology)
• Tantalus (for another Greek character punished with never being allowed to quench his hunger or thirst)