Virgil (70-19 BCE)
“The Harpies…no monster on earth more cruel,
no scourge more savage, no wrath of the gods has
ever raised its head from the Styx’s waters.
The faces of girls, but birds! A loathsome ooze
discharges from their bellies, talons for hands,
their jaws deathly white with a hunger never sated.”
- From The Aeneid (Book III, approximately line 260) by Virgil, translated by Robert Fagles (Penguin Books edition, 2006).
