Harpies
("Snatchers")

Terrible female monsters that looked like bird with ugly women's heads. Originally they were the personifications of the storm winds, but in time they became physical beings. Three of them were called Podarge, Aello and Ocypete.

In early art they were pictured as blond young women, but in time they took the shape more known, with pale, disgusting faces and long claws.

No one seems to know who their parents were, but Thaumas and Electra have been suggested, as well as Dionysos, Typhon and Phineus, to name a few.

The Harpies plagued the blind seer Phineus because he had left his wife Cleopatra for another woman, who was cruel to his sons. They would defecate his food or steal it, and this continued until the Argonauts came and the Boreades drove them away.

They acted as punishing beings, and when king Pandore sinned against the gods they took his daughters Clytia and Cameira to be tortured by the Eumenides.