Aeschylus had behind him, to draw from, a great wealth of bogey types; he had black Keres, such as those on the shield of Herakles; he had Gorgons, he had Harpies, but he had no ready-made shape for his Erinyes, only the Homeric horror of formlessness. What will he do? What he _did_ do is clearly set forth by the priestess. When she first, in the gloom of the adyton, catches sight of the sleeping shapes, she thinks they are women, they have something human about them; but no, they are too horrible for women, they must be Gorgons. She looks a little closer. No, on second thoughts, they are not Gorgons; they have not the familiar Gorgon mask; there is something else she has seen in a picture, Harpies, ‘those that snatch at Phineus’ feast.’ Can they be Harpies? No, again, Harpies have wings, and these are wingless. Here precisely came in the innovation of Aeschylus; he takes the Harpy-type, loathsome and foul, and rids them of their wings. It was a master-touch[582], lifting the Erinyes from the region of grotesque impossible bogeydom to a lower and more loathsome, because wholly human, horror. The ‘Gorgon shapes,’ which indeed amount almost to Gorgon _masks_—so characteristic is the ugly face with tusks and protruding tongue—have been already fully discussed (p. 187), but for clearness’ sake another illustration, which can be securely dated as before the time of Aeschylus, may be added here. The design in fig. 46 is from a black-figured _olpe_ in the British Museum[583]. It is signed by the potter Amasis (Ἄμασίς μ’ ἐποίησεν), and dates about the turn of the 6th and 5th centuries B.C. The scene depicted is the slaying of the Gorgon Medusa by Perseus. Medusa is represented with the typical ugly face, protruding tusks and tongue. On her lower lip is a fringe of hair; four snakes rise from her head. She wears a short purple chiton, over which is a stippled skin with two snakes knotted at the waist. She has high huntress-boots and two pairs of wings, one outspread the other recurved. The essential feature of the Gorgon in Greek art is the hideous mask-like head; but she has usually, though not always, snakes somewhere about her, in her hair or her hands or about her waist. The wings, also a frequent though not uniform appendage, are sometimes two, sometimes four. In common with the Harpy, to whom she is so near akin, she has the bent knee that indicates a striding pace. That Harpy and Gorgon are not clearly distinguished is evident from the vase-painting already discussed (p. 176, fig. 19), in which the Gorgon sisters of Medusa are inscribed Harpies (Ἀρεπυια). [Illustration: FIG. 46.] [Illustration: FIG. 47.]