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 . When a person suddenly disappeared from the , it was said that he had been carried off by the harpies. Thus, they carried off the daughters of king 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 . They were vicious, cruel and violent.
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