The idea that underlies this constantly recurring formulary, κῆρες ἔβαν θανάτοιο φέρουσαι, emerges clearly when we come to consider those analogous apparitions, the Harpies. The Harpies betray their nature clearly in their name, in its uncontracted form ‘Ἀρεπυια,’ which appears on the vase-painting in fig. 19; they are the Snatchers, winged women-demons, hurrying along like the storm wind and carrying all things to destruction. The vase-painting in fig. 19 from a large black-figured vessel in the Berlin Museum[453] is specially instructive because, though the winged demons are inscribed as Harpies, the scene of which they form part, i.e. the slaying of Medusa, clearly shows that they are Gorgons; so near akin, so shifting and intermingled are the two conceptions. On another vase (fig. 20), also in the Berlin Museum[454], we see an actual Gorgon with the typical Gorgon’s head and protruding tongue performing the function of a Harpy, i.e. of a Snatcher. We say ‘an actual Gorgon,’ but it is not a Gorgon of the usual form but a bird-woman with a Gorgon’s head. The bird-woman is currently and rightly associated with the Siren, a creature to be discussed later (p. 197), a creature malign though seductive in Homer, but gradually softened by the Athenian imagination into a sorrowful death angel. [Illustration: FIG. 20.] [Illustration: FIG. 21.] The tender bird-women of the so-called ‘Harpy tomb’ from Lycia (fig. 21), now in the British Museum, perform the functions of a Harpy, but very gently. They are at least near akin to the sorrowing Sirens on Athenian tombs. We can scarcely call them by the harsh name of the ‘Snatchers.’ And yet, standing as it did in Lycia, this ‘Harpy tomb’ may be the outcome of the same stratum of mythological conceptions as the familiar story of the daughters of the Lycian Pandareos. Penelope[455] in her desolation cries aloud: ‘Would that the storm might snatch me adown its dusky way And cast me forth where Ocean is outpour’d with ebbing spray, As when Pandareos’ daughters the storm winds bore away,’ and then, harking back, she tells the ancient Lycian story of the fair nurture of the princesses and how Aphrodite went to high Olympus to plan for them a goodly marriage. But whom the gods love die young: ‘Meantime the Harpies snatched away the maids, and gave them o’er To the hateful ones, the Erinyes, to serve them evermore[456].’ Early death was figured by the primitive Greek as a snatching away by evil death-demons, storm-ghosts. These snatchers he called Harpies, the modern Greek calls them Nereids. In Homer’s lines we seem to catch the winds as snatchers, half-way to their full impersonation as Harpies. To give them a capital letter is to crystallize their personality prematurely. Even when they become fully persons, their name carried to the Greek its adjectival sense now partly lost to us. * * * * *