In the black-figured vase-painting in fig. 23, found at Naukratis and now in the British Museum[463], a local nymph is depicted: only the lower part of her figure is left us, drapery, the ends of her long hair and her feet, but she must be the nymph Cyrene beloved of Apollo, for close to her and probably held in her hand is a great branch of the silphium plant. To right of her approaching to minister or to worship are winged genii. It is the very image of θεραπεία, tendance, ministration, fostering care, worship, all in one. The genii tend the nymph who is the land itself, her and her products. The figures to the right are bearded: they can scarcely be other than the spirits of the North wind, the Boreadae, the cool healthful wind that comes over the sea to sun-burnt Africa. If these be Boreadae, the opposing figures, beardless and therefore almost certainly female, are Harpies, demons of the South wind, to Africa the wind coming across the desert and bringing heat and blight and pestilence[464]. [Illustration: FIG. 24.] It might be bold to assert so much, but for the existence of another vase-painting on a situla from Daphnae (fig. 24), also, happily for comparison, in the British Museum[465]. On the one side, not figured here, is a winged bearded figure ending in a snake, probably Boreas: such a snake-tailed Boreas was seen by Pausanias[466] on the chest of Cypselus in the act of seizing Oreithyia. There is nothing harsh in the snake tail for Boreas, for the winds, as has already been noted (p. 68), were regarded as earth-born. Behind Boreas is a plant in blossom rising from the ground, a symbol of the vegetation nourished by the North wind. On the reverse (fig. 25) is a winged figure closely like the left hand genii of the Cyrene cylix, and this figure drives in front of it destructive creatures, a locust, the pest of the South, two birds of prey attacking a hare, and a third that is obviously a vulture. The two representations taken together justify us in regarding the left hand genii as destructive. Taking these two representations together with a third vase-painting, the celebrated Phineus cylix[467], we are further justified in calling these destructive wind-demons Harpies. On this vase[468] the Boreadae, Zetes and Kalais, show their true antagonism. The Harpies have fouled the food of Phineus like the pestilential winds they were, and the clean clear sons of the North wind give chase. It is seldom that ancient art has preserved for us so clear a picture of the duality of things. [Illustration: FIG. 25.] * * * * *