Another function of the Harpies links them very closely with the Keres, and shows in odd and instructive fashion the animistic habit of ancient thought. The Harpies not only snatch away souls to death but they give life, bringing things to birth. A Harpy was the mother by Zephyros of the horses of Achilles[457]. Both parents are in a sense winds, only the Harpy wind halts between horse and woman. By winds as Vergil tells us mares became pregnant[458]. [Illustration: FIG. 22.] As such a Harpy, half horse, half Gorgon-woman, Medusa is represented on a curious Boeotian vase (fig. 22) of very archaic style now in the Louvre[459]. The representation is instructive, it shows how in art as in literature the types of Gorgon and Harpy were for a time in flux; a particular artist could please his own fancy. The horse Medusa was apparently not a success, for she did not survive. It is easy enough to see how winds were conceived of as Snatchers, death-demons, but why should they impregnate, give life? It is not, I think, by a mere figure of speech that breezes (πνοιαί) are spoken of as ‘life-begetting’ (ζωογόνοι) and ‘soul-rearing’ (ψυχοτρόφοι). It is not because they are in our sense life-giving and refreshing as well as destructive: the truth lies deeper down. Only life can give life, only a soul gives birth to a soul; the winds _are_ souls as well as breaths (πνεύματα). Here as so often we get at the real truth through an ancient Athenian cultus practice. When an Athenian was about to be married he prayed and sacrificed, Suidas tells us, to the Tritopatores. The statement is quoted from Phanodemus who wrote a book on _Attic Matters_[460]. Suidas tells us also who the Tritopatores were. They were, as we might guess from their name, fathers in the third degree, forefathers, ancestors, ghosts, and Dêmon in his _Atthis_ said they were winds. To the winds, it has already been seen (p. 67), are offered such expiatory sacrifices (σφάγια) as are due to the spirits of the underworld. The idea that the Tritopatores were winds as well as ghosts was never lost. To Photius and Suidas they are ‘lords of the winds’ and the Orphics make them ‘gate-keepers and guardians of the winds.’ From ghosts of dead men, Hippocrates[461] tells us, came nurture and growth and seeds, and the author of the _Geoponica_[462] says that winds give life not only to plants but to all things. It was natural enough that the winds should be divided into demons beneficent and maleficent, as it depends where you live whether a wind from a particular quarter will do you good or ill. [Illustration: FIG. 23.]