FABLE AND FOLKLORE 193 



found it rising in a spring, flowing into a marsh, and then 

 disappearing underground — a good setting for strange 

 happenings, and he refers to the legend in his usual 

 bantering way, thus: 



"There is a tradition that some man-eating birds lived on its 

 banks, whom Hercules is said to have killed with his arrows. 

 . . . The desert of Arabia has among other monsters some birds 

 called Stymphalides, who are as savage to men as lions or 

 leopards. They attack those who come to capture them, and 

 wound them with their beaks and kill them. They pierce 

 through coats of mail that men wear, and if they put on thick 

 robes of mat the beaks of these birds penetrate them too. . . . 

 Their size is about that of cranes and they are like storks, 

 but their beaks are stronger and not crooked like those of storks. 

 If there have been in all time these stymphalides like hawks and 

 eagles, then they are probably of Arabian origin." 



The Greeks knew also of half-human Harpies, of web- 

 footed Sirens, of the Birds of Seleucia, and of various 

 other ornithological monstrosities, so that the tale of an 

 Egyptian one was easily acceptable to their minds. The 

 ugliest of the ugly flock were the Harpies, bird-women, 

 on whom the ancients expended the direst pigments of 

 their imagination, and whom Dante makes inhabitants of 

 the gnarled and gloomy groves wherein suicides are con- 

 demned to suffer in the nether world — 



There do the hideous Harpies make their nests 

 Who chased the Trojans from the Strophades 

 With sad announcement of impending doom; 

 Broad wings have they, and necks and faces human, 

 And feet with claws, and their great bellies fledged 

 They make lament upon the wondrous trees. 



The Romans liked Herodotus and his story as well as 

 they pleased the Greeks, and Pliny heard or invented 



