[564] Smith’s Dict. art. Harpyiæ. On the same subject, see Nägelsbach Hom. Theol. ii. 12. Friedreich, Realien, p. 667. Crusius on Od. xx. 77; and Voss as there quoted, whose opinion is, I think, quite erroneous.
The Ἐρινύες are of much greater importance; and their position deserves the more careful inquiry, because it has, I think, been often misunderstood, perhaps from being appreciated only through the delusive medium of the later tradition, which appears to me to have let drop all the finer elements of the conception, by a process similar to that which it effected upon the great Homeric characters of Achilles, Helen, and Ulysses.
It is quite insufficient to say of these personages, by way of description, that they are the avengers of crime[567], or that they grudge the bliss of mortals, or that they defend the authority of parents[568]: and it is wholly erroneous, in my opinion, to treat them as ‘originally nothing but a personification of curses pronounced upon a guilty criminal[569].’
[567] Friedreich, Realien, (p. 677.) §. 198.
Let us first collect the facts respecting their position in Homer.
1. In the narrative of Phœnix we find that when, at the instigation of his mother, he had sought the embraces of a παλλακὶς, for whom his father had a passion, the father, incensed, invoked the Ἐρινύες to make him childless. ‘This curse,’ he says, ‘the gods (θεοὶ) accomplished, and the subterranean Jupiter, and awful Persephone,’ Il. ix. 449-57.
2. The mother of Meleager, on account of his having slaughtered her brother, invoked Aïdes and Persephone, beseeching them to slay that hero: whereupon the Erinūs, here called ἠεροφοῖτις, ‘that walketh in darkness,’ heard her from Erebus, and the city was besieged. But here the Erinūs appears to act, if not wholly in favour of Meleager, yet against his mother. The city is assaulted, forced, and set on fire. The family, including the mother who had cursed him, entreat Meleager to deliver them, and attempt to attract his favour by splendid promises of a demesne, to be conferred on him by the public. Only when the palace itself is assailed does he consent. He repels the enemy; the demesne is not given him: and, on account of his thus relenting only at the last moment, Phœnix quotes him as a warning example, for Achilles to avoid. (Il. ix. 565-603.)