Tantalos, denied that he ever took it, Merope and Kleothera were snatched away by the Harpies and given to the Erinyes.’ In the light of this version the vase-painting is clear. The moment chosen is the coming of Hermes to claim the dog. It is no use Pandareos denying he had it, for there it is, larger than life. The vase-painter had to put the dog in, to make the story manifest. The two women spectators are the daughters of Pandareos, Merope and Kleothera. Who is the winged figure? Archaeologists variously name her Iris, a Harpy, an Erinys. Iris I unhesitatingly reject. Between a Harpy and an Erinys the choice is harder, and the doubt is instructive. Taking into consideration the Lycian character of the story, and the not unimportant fact that the design of the reverse represents a Lycian myth also, Bellerophon and the Chimaera, I think we may safely say that the figure is a Harpy, but it is a Harpy performing the functions of an Erinys, avenging the theft, avenging the broken oath, come also to fetch the two maidens whom she will give to be handmaids to the hateful Erinyes—so near akin, so fluctuating are the two conceptions. * * * * * The fact then that Aeschylus brought them on the stage and his finer poetical conception of horror compelled the complete and human formulation of the Erinyes; before his time they have no definite art-type. The Erinyes of Aeschylus are near akin to Gorgons, but they lack the Gorgon mask; nearer still to Harpies, but wingless. It is curious and interesting to note that at the close of the _Choephori_[589], where they do not appear on the stage, where they are visible only to the imagination of the mad Orestes, he sees them like the shapes he knows— ‘These are like Gorgon shapes Black-robed, with tangled tentacles entwined Of frequent snakes.’ [Illustration: FIG. 49.] Aeschylus felt the imaginative gain of the purely human form, but his fellow artist the vase-painter will not lightly forego the joy of drawing great curved wings. In vases that are immediately post-Aeschylean the wingless type tends to prevail, though not wholly; later it lapses and the great fantastic wings reappear. On the red-figured vase-painting[590] in fig. 49—the earliest of the series and dating somewhere towards the end of the 5th century—we have the scene of the purification of Orestes. He is seated close to the omphalos—sword in hand. Above his head Apollo holds the pig of purification, in his left hand the laurel; to the right is Artemis as huntress with spears; to the left are the sleeping wingless Erinyes; the ghost of Clytaemnestra beckons to them to wake. From the ground rises another Erinys, a veritable earth demon. The euphemism of the vase-painter makes the Erinyes not only wingless but beautiful, as fair to see as Clytaemnestra. [Illustration: FIG. 50.]