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Harpies: Difference between revisions
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|Text=[[File:woodhouse_1012.jpg|thumb|link={{filepath:woodhouse_1012.jpg}}]][[Ἅρπυιαι]], αἱ. | |Text=[[File:woodhouse_1012.jpg|thumb|link={{filepath:woodhouse_1012.jpg}}]][[Ἅρπυιαι]], αἱ. | ||
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==Wikipedia EN== | ==Wikipedia EN - harpy eagle== | ||
The harpy eagle (Harpia harpyja) is a neotropical species of eagle. It is also called the American harpy eagle to distinguish it from the Papuan eagle, which is sometimes known as the New Guinea harpy eagle or Papuan harpy eagle. It is the largest and most powerful raptor found in the rainforest, and among the largest extant species of eagles in the world. It usually inhabits tropical lowland rainforests in the upper (emergent) canopy layer. Destruction of its natural habitat has caused it to vanish from many parts of its former range, and it is nearly extirpated in Central America. In Brazil, the harpy eagle is also known as royal-hawk (in Portuguese: gavião-real). | The harpy eagle (Harpia harpyja) is a neotropical species of eagle. It is also called the American harpy eagle to distinguish it from the Papuan eagle, which is sometimes known as the New Guinea harpy eagle or Papuan harpy eagle. It is the largest and most powerful raptor found in the rainforest, and among the largest extant species of eagles in the world. It usually inhabits tropical lowland rainforests in the upper (emergent) canopy layer. Destruction of its natural habitat has caused it to vanish from many parts of its former range, and it is nearly extirpated in Central America. In Brazil, the harpy eagle is also known as royal-hawk (in Portuguese: gavião-real). | ||
==Wikipedia EN - Harpy== | |||
In Greek mythology and Roman mythology, a harpy (plural harpies, Greek: ἅρπυια, harpyia, pronounced [hárpyi̯a]; Latin: harpȳia) is a half-human and half-bird personification of storm winds. They feature in Homeric poems. | |||
[[File:Harpij - I.I Schipper 1660, graveur Matthius Merian, naar J.Jonstons' "Naekeurige Beschryvingh van de Natuur".jpg|thumb|A harpy in Ulisse Aldrovandi's Monstrorum Historia, Bologna, 1642]] | |||
They were generally depicted as birds with the heads of maidens, faces pale with hunger and long claws on their hands. Roman and Byzantine writers detailed their ugliness. Pottery art depicting the harpies featured beautiful women with wings. Ovid described them as human-vultures. | |||
The harpies seem originally to have been wind spirits (personifications of the destructive nature of wind). Their name means "snatchers" or "swift robbers" and they steal food from their victims while they are eating and carry evildoers (especially those who have killed their family) to the Erinyes. When a person suddenly disappeared from the earth, it was said that he had been carried off by the harpies. Thus, they carried off the daughters of king Pandareus and gave them as servants to the Erinyes. In this form they were agents of punishment who abducted people and tortured them on their way to Tartarus. They were vicious, cruel and violent. | |||
The harpies were called "the hounds of mighty Zeus" thus "ministers of the Thunderer (Zeus)". Later writers listed the harpies among the guardians of the underworld among other monstrosities including the Centaurs, Scylla, Briareus, Lernaean Hydra, Chimera, Gorgons and Geryon. | |||
Their abode is either the islands called Strofades, a place at the entrance of Orcus, or a cave in Crete. | |||
Hesiod calls them two "lovely-haired" creatures, the daughters of Thaumas and the Oceanid Electra and sisters of Iris. Hyginus, however, cited a certain Ozomene as the mother of the harpies but he also recounted that Electra was also the mother of these beings in the same source. This can be explained by the fact that Ozomene was another name for Electra. The harpies possibly were siblings of the river-god Hydaspes and Arke, as they were called sisters of Iris and children of Thaumas. According to Valerius, Typhoeus (Typhon) was said to be the father of these monsters while a different version by Servius told that the harpies were daughters of Pontus and Gaea or of Poseidon. | |||
They are named Aello ("storm swift") and Ocypete ("the swift wing"), and Virgil added Celaeno ("the dark") as a third. Homer knew of a harpy named Podarge ("fleet-foot"). Aello, is sometimes also spelled Aellopus or Nicothoe; Ocypete, sometimes also spelled Ocythoe or Ocypode. | |||
Homer called the harpy Podarge as the mother of the two horses (Balius and Xanthus) of Achilles sired by the West Wind Zephyrus while according to Nonnus, Xanthus and Podarkes, horses of the Athenian king Erechtheus, were born to Aello and the North Wind Boreas. Other progeny of Podarge were Phlogeus and Harpagos, horses given by Hermes to the Dioscuri, who competed for the chariot-race in celebration of the funeral games of Pelias. The swift horse Arion was also said to begotten by loud-piping Zephyrus on a harpy (probably Podarge), as attested by Quintus Smyrnaeus. | |||
The harpy eagle is a real bird named after the mythological animal. | |||
The term is often used metaphorically to refer to a nasty or annoying woman. In Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing, Benedick spots the sharp-tongued Beatrice approaching and exclaims to the prince, Don Pedro, that he would do an assortment of arduous tasks for him "rather than hold three words conference with this harpy!" | |||
